My attempt at removing the Sennheiser veil through equalization - Page 10

Quote:

Originally Posted by streetdragon 

...this thread is out of hand

I think the amount of gut feeling is a problem.

the latter i suppose...?

and on the subject of eq, i used to eq every song several years back, but then since i switched computer and lost all those presets, and also i changed headphones and my music collection got pretty large, i got lazy and decided to stick with just 1 setting per headphone. but this isn't a problem for me since i practically listen to only one main branch of music genre, which is electronic music. the modlified eq also works for rock and others too but although genre optimisation would improve on them slightly still. 
also i don't exactly look for a flat response. i just tune it until it sounds good to my ears. it may not be exactly neutral flat, it may be a little V but well if it makes my experience any better im up for it.
also why would you say that eq is a waste of money? time i can imagine since it takes some practice, but why money?

@vid
possibly...? i only used my ears and practice experience to tune afterall

Quote:

Originally Posted by streetdragon 

the latter i suppose...?

and on the subject of eq, i used to eq every song several years back, but then since i switched computer and lost all those presets, and also i changed headphones and my music collection got pretty large, i got lazy and decided to stick with just 1 setting per headphone. but this isn't a problem for me since i practically listen to only one main branch of music genre, which is electronic music. the modlified eq also works for rock and others too but although genre optimisation would improve on them slightly still. 
also i don't exactly look for a flat response. i just tune it until it sounds good to my ears. it may not be exactly neutral flat, it may be a little V but well if it makes my experience any better im up for it.
also why would you say that eq is a waste of money? time i can imagine since it takes some practice, but why money?

@vid
possibly...? i only used my ears and practice experience to tune afterall

There was a talk of skill and to do this really skilfully it looks like you need to throw money at it. On the other hand, if you just want to EQ your phones in a way that sounds nice to you I don't see anything wrong with just doing it by ear. If you are happy with it, it must be working.

It is the perfectionist approach that I think may be a waste of time and money and a source of endless frustration. Music is EQed in different ways in the recording studio. Therefore optimal EQ is not the same for every recording. Therefore going to the time and effort of finding something you think is optimal EQ and using expensive measuring gear and software to achieve this seems like a waste of time. It may sound great for album X but then album Y has different EQ from the get go and....

There is nothing wrong with EQ, it works great and does good things for many people.

ahh i see....
well... maybe i should have mentioned earlier in the thread that i am only interested in the fun approach and not the perfectionist approach. might have caused less confusion here

Is anyone actually suggesting that ibuds can be "turned into" hd800's with EQ or is that just a strawman argument?

All I said was that bad headphones can be improved quite a lot with careful EQing. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eisenhower 

Is anyone actually suggesting that ibuds can be "turned into" hd800's with EQ or is that just a strawman argument?

 

All I said was that bad headphones can be improved quite a lot with careful EQing. 

it can. but it can never reach HD800 performance by just eq'ing.
vid suggested it was possible though with the perfect eq

Quote:

Originally Posted by streetdragon 

and cables do help. but i have only hear'ed differences between low end and... mid? lower mid end ones? so i cant say much about high end recabling

Have you tested cable differences with a switch box (so that you can immediately hear the difference, or lack of thereof), or only in the usual way of "listen to stock version, do the mod (which takes some time), and then listen to the 'upgraded' cable" ? One major reason why "modding" or "tweaking" is so prone to making imaginary improvements to the sound is that the delay in the comparison is too long; auditory memory is limited, and starts to fade after less than a second - humans are basically only aware of the full complexity of a sound at the moment of experiencing it. When there is an expectation of an improvement, imagination fills in the blanks. "Op amp rolling" works the same way. Once the comparison is made blind and with fast switching, the differences usually go away, or become very small at best. While it is not impossible that a cable can sometimes make a minor difference (I mean something like a fraction of a dB that is barely perceptible in an ABX test), it would make no sense for manufacturers to sell their high quality headphones with cables that are so poor that they dramatically degrade the performance. It is simply too cheap to make a cable that is "good enough".

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hooster 

On the subject of EQ, if you have to be really "skilfull" you would have an eq for each genre of music and then special eq for each song. Unless you were satisfied with flat eq, which is boring and well, flat sounding to many people. All the skill needed to achieve that is buying the equipment that allows you to do this. It is out there and if it is any good it is expensive.

There is nothing inherently "boring" about flat frequency response. By definition, it just does not change the sound. A monitor with accurate colors does not make movies more boring either than one that colors everything pink. If your music sounds boring with equipment that has flat frequency response, then that is the fault of the recording, rather than the gear. However, simple tone controls are useful to add user-adjustable wide band coloration to an otherwise neutral system, just like a good monitor can have near-perfect colors by default, but also adjustable color temperature/gamma/etc.

You can find good parametric equalizer plugins for free. However, you may consider the time needed to learn using it properly (even though it is a useful skill for an audiophile) equivalent to the loss of some money.

well the cables i had tested are no way high fi nor is the headphone i had to test. so... yeah i cant say much about cables. difference is very tiny, but is noticable. but it costs way too much.

everyone should start practicing the eq imo, it allows you to get closer to your prefered sound signature, make some improvements here and there for most of the time absolutely free. (best performance to price ratio)

Quote:

Originally Posted by streetdragon 

it can. but it can never reach HD800 performance by just eq'ing.

How do you know?

Quote:

Originally Posted by vid 

 

How do you know?

becasue eq doesn't fix resonances for one

Quote:

Originally Posted by streetdragon 

becasue eq doesn't fix resonances for one

Resonances are also frequency response issues, and therefore can in theory be fixed with equalization. But an EQ is a linear time invariant system, so it will not fix non-linear distortion (of which cheap headphones and ear buds often have plenty), and will not take into account the fact that its response might need to change with factors like headphone positioning or different HRTFs for each person. Also, the correction response may not be practical, for example it could require excessive amounts of boosting at certain frequencies.

Quote:

Originally Posted by streetdragon 

it can. but it can never reach HD800 performance by just eq'ing.
vid suggested it was possible though with the perfect eq

so it can be turned into the hd800 by EQing, but it cannot reach the hd800 performance by EQing.... This doesn't make any sense.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eisenhower 

 

so it can be turned into the hd800 by EQing, but it cannot reach the hd800 performance by EQing.... This doesn't make any sense.

noo you misunderstood me.
i ment "it can" improve bad headphones a lot.
but it will never ever reach HD800 performance with eq'ing alone

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eisenhower 

 

so it can be turned into the hd800 by EQing, but it cannot reach the hd800 performance by EQing.... This doesn't make any sense.

As does a lot of other stuff in this thread.... Glad that you see it too.