[kiteki]

The dedicated listening room is an anechoic chamber lined with meter-thick acoustic wedges, duh!

 
Yes, or just put velvet everywhere.

 

[Joe Bloggs]

Is this velvet thing a pet joke of yours?

 

[khaos974]

Quote:

The only people who should use eq are recording,cutting and mastering engineers.
 
if you need eq to make your system to sound good there is a fault elsewhere, maybe even in the
recording. The secret to audio heaven is finding the best masterings of the music you love.

 
What if the mastering engineer is mastering on an equalized system, plenty of them do.

 

[streetdragon]

to compensate for the headphones they were using maybe? we would have to eq our headphones to match flat as much as possible then, or eq it to be more punchy and colourful like some of the less pure and more fun loving listeners (okok i know it defeats the point of buying a $500 headphone and a $1000 amp but im talking about the whole spectrum, high and low too)

 

[bigshot]

Color is a bad word to describe it. You aren't adding color by goosing frequencies, you're altering the balance of the sound. Boosting one frequency can mask other frequencies. If everything is balanced, you can hear everything and it's clearer.

Flat response is more fun and punchier too.

 

[Vkamicht]

Quote:

Color is a bad word to describe it. You aren't adding color by goosing frequencies, you're altering the balance of the sound. Boosting one frequency can mask other frequencies. If everything is balanced, you can hear everything and it's clearer.
Flat response is more fun and punchier too.

 
This is how I find it works, too. I've read endless posts here about "accurate" sound being boring, but how is it boring when it sounds frighteningly real? If anything, realer than real, if that makes sense. Sometimes you can over-EQ your own physically flawed hearing out and have a system that essentially sounds like the music is wired directly into your brain. That's how I feel sometimes with mine

 

[kiteki]

I've read endless posts here about "accurate" sound being boring, but how is it boring when it sounds frighteningly real?

 
It's because most transducers have low efficiency, resolution and dynamics.  They are powered by a fridge magnet bought at K-mart and just have lots of sine wave error.
 
A perfect speaker will sound frighteningly real via flat.

 

[ultrabike]

Quote:

A perfect speaker will sound frighteningly real via flat.

 
I think is got more to do with the fact that speakers don't have to deal with the extreme channel separation provided by headphones. Crossfeed alleviates this problem somewhat, but speakers have the perfect HRTF.
 
Also, flat is not boring in my opinion. Badly recorded or produced music can be boring...

 

[kiteki]

Perhaps someone should ask these questions to a microphone enthusiast forum.  I'm sure they'd have something interesting to say on the natural FR / EQ reception of microphones.

 

[Joe Bloggs]

Quote:

 
This is how I find it works, too. I've read endless posts here about "accurate" sound being boring, but how is it boring when it sounds frighteningly real? If anything, realer than real, if that makes sense. Sometimes you can over-EQ your own physically flawed hearing out and have a system that essentially sounds like the music is wired directly into your brain. That's how I feel sometimes with mine

 
This.  The HRTF for speakers at the eardrum has all these peaks and dips at the high frequencies that should cue me to the position of sounds.  With my parametric EQ for my IEMs all the peaks and dips at high frequencies (which don't correspond with my HRTF in the first place) are EQed out.  What I lose in spatial positioning (never really had actually, since the unaltered resonances for IEMs don't match that of speakers, I won't get good positioining with the stock sound anyway) I gain in a "flatter than flat" response.  Everything sounds more real, treble sounds smoother than silk sliding off a baby's bottom, and the detail is just jaw-dropping

 
kiteki told me to go audition some real earphones, here's my response:
 
Quote:

Per your suggestion, I went to Mongkok and demoed the best IEMs I could get my hands on.
 
I said before in ljokerl's IEM thread that tuning an IEM in detail with a parametric EQ is like no-holds-barred total racing spec modification for a car, even something like a Toyota Supra, in racing trim, can beat a stock supercar.  That turned out to be the whole truth from what I heard today.
 
SHE3580 A-spec (standing for the A-shaped EQ curve, and also for full-on racing tuning) went up against
Westone UM3X
Sony XBA-3
Senn IE80
JVC FXD80
 
And none of them except the XBA-3 got even close without the help of the 10-band EQ on Poweramp.
 
I played pre-EQed tracks on the SHE3580 and the unaltered tracks I just re-loaded on my phone on the challengers.
 
Main tracks tested were
Hotel California (from Hell Freezes Over album)
Re-Sublimity (OP to Kannazuki No Miko)
 
The UM3X and IE80 sounded similar: bloated bass, muffled highs.  I would even put the stock SHE3580 above them.  (but below the FXD80 and XBA-3)
FXD80 sounded ok, except they had amazingly boosted high highs.  Not at sibilance frequency but still, they sound good for about a minute and then it's time to either dial in EQ or take the phones off or claw your ears off.
The XBA-3 was the best of the bunch for me.  It gets the balance about right, and with a boost to 1kHz and 2kHz on the equalizer the timbre is also about right.  Without that boost vocals sound off.  Still can't compare to the SHE3580 A-spec in smoothness in the highs.
 
I tried to pay attention to the imaging like you said, but couldn't find anything special in them.  I demoed the IE80 because DustDevil told me those are supposed to have a reputation for great imaging, well I didn't hear anything like that.  If anything thanks to the instruments sounding more realistic to me on the SHE3580 A-spec, they at least gain a more realistic presence in my headstage.  None of the phones gave me convincing out-of-head imaging.  The XBA-3 imaging was a bit different from the rest in that the opening guitar plucks off to one side in Hell Freezes Over sounded like they came from *right next to my ear* with the XBA-3, unlike with any of the other phones.  I don't consider that a merit though, and for the rest of the piece it doesn't image particularly differently, except it images a bit better than the other challengers because it has the most realistic timbre among them.

 
It just sounds pants-on-head dumb that the $10 SHE3580 A-spec consistently beats the snot out of an all-you-can-eat buffet of the most expensive IEMs I can find in shops, though, doesn't it? That's why I told kiteki the goal is not to "match" the JH16 with $10 IEMs, it's to BEAT it.

 

[kiteki]

wait, you put the stock SHE thing above UM3X and IE80?  I haven't heard any of those three but I think you should just start a new thread on all this and get your torchlights, water and rice ready.

 

[Joe Bloggs]

You obviously left out the flame retardant suit.  I think my SWAT team uniform should help me there though if I soak it in water or something

 
I would if I could, but my auditory memory is short and my ability to describe sounds in conventional audiophile terms even worse.
 
I wonder if tip selection may have handicapped those two though, the UM3X was wearing comply and the IE80 wearing olives.  If you're lean on treble to start with those aren't the best things to wear.  And when I first put on the IE80 the sound was so atrocious, I thought I was getting a bad connection.  Turns out I'd stuffed the olives in so tight that their sound hole had totally closed and were muffling the sound.  I got better sound by pulling them back out some, but anyway the physical fit just seemed suboptimal soundwise.

 

[kiteki]

Well I once demoed the IE8 and it sounded so horrible I just assumed it was a fake and left it at that.

 

[Nevod]

Quote:

 
I think is got more to do with the fact that speakers don't have to deal with the extreme channel separation provided by headphones. Crossfeed alleviates this problem somewhat, but speakers have the perfect HRTF.
 
Also, flat is not boring in my opinion. Badly recorded or produced music can be boring...

There are better than crossfeed options if you use computer as source. Personalised HRTFs though ain't so easy to get, but there are some HRTF bases where you could get one.

 

[ultrabike]

Quote:

There are better than crossfeed options if you use computer as source. Personalised HRTFs though ain't so easy to get, but there are some HRTF bases where you could get one.

Linky?