[bagwell359]

So when I last wrote about EQ here and offered up my findings for cans such as the HE-500 and HE-6se they looked like your basic valley/mountain chain. I even added/adjusted settings for ringing of planars (6 or 10 band parametric).

What's good about being short of money is you revisit assumptions about your equipment.

Skimming over a Headphonesty piece, they suggested just taking away narrow bands of what doesn't sound 'good'. Damn if it doesn't work. Collected EQ is more relaxed, well more transparent. I think its particularly crucial for planars, Take the HE-6se settings: A little add for the low bass and a bigger add for the upper mid hole at about 1785 Hz and a narrow high spike for the 14k divot. Listen to just those - its an improvement, Take them off and go with narrow but steep dips set at 3.75k, 7.5k, 10k for ringing. Well cutting ringing is more effective at improving the sound than the raised bits. Combine them and its better still. But I'd go 80% for the ringing control over the raised bits. Certainly the FR of this can doesn't suggest these ringing settings. Need a waterfall plot to see it.

Current setting of my moderately modded HE-6se v1, with little time put in so far, better in a few days.

Low shelf : 34 2.4, .92
Analog bell 1785 4.7 2.4
Analog bell 3750 -5.0 4.2
Analog bell: 7500 -4.5 6.15
Analog bell: 10000 -5.8 8.2
Analog bell: 14000 8.6 8,1

I used to use 10 bands and it did less good than these 6.

Comments?

 

[DivineCurrent]

I have a similar EQ in the upper mids and treble for my HE-500 with Velpads. 3700-4200 Hz sounds elevated to me using Sennheiser HD650 as reference, so I also EQ -5 dB there. Treble at 9.5 - 10 KHz I EQ -5 dB. Although I use wider Q values, 4 for both. I do use narrow Q 7 bands for the Focal Clear MG at 6 kHz and 10.5 kHz, and I agree narrow filters can make a huge difference in timbre. When doing sine sweeps, it’s easy to pick out those narrow spikes in the frequency response, and EQ can be a big help. The dip at 14kHz is probably an ear reflection/interaction, so it will vary depending on your individual ears. Try using a sine sweep program to hear any resonances or nulls in that high treble area.

 

[bagwell359]

I have a similar EQ in the upper mids and treble for my HE-500 with Velpads. 3700-4200 Hz sounds elevated to me using Sennheiser HD650 as reference, so I also EQ -5 dB there. Treble at 9.5 - 10 KHz I EQ -5 dB. Although I use wider Q values, 4 for both. I do use narrow Q 7 bands for the Focal Clear MG at 6 kHz and 10.5 kHz, and I agree narrow filters can make a huge difference in timbre. When doing sine sweeps, it’s easy to pick out those narrow spikes in the frequency response, and EQ can be a big help. The dip at 14kHz is probably an ear reflection/interaction, so it will vary depending on your individual ears. Try using a sine sweep program to hear any resonances or nulls in that high treble area.

Very good feedback. Nice description of your set-up too.

 

[bagwell359]

More work has altered the HE6se v1 settings here:

36 2.8 1.00 (low shelf)
1785 4.3 2.45
4306 -4.0 6.50
7340 -4.2 8.90
9615 -4.4 8.20
14100 3.2 1.10 (high shelf)

I'm still sorting out the 7340 and 9615 settings, but they are probably close. The 4306 Hz setting is dead on (for my phones/ears/equipment).

Keep at it, its worth it.