https://www.rtings.com/headphones/1-4/graph#16092/4046
Sorry, but this is not a treble’s decent default curve. Even taken on the first ”sitting” without Jude’s special care, it is still not decent at all.
Trebles is the one area where measurements are the least reliable, show the highest amount of variation, even with similar tests rigs, and are the least relevant to your own ears as it's where anatomical influence on FR variation at your ear drum is the most important.
Rtings' measurements show a -10dB response at 4800hz. Of all the measurements we've seen so far for the APM they are the outliers in that area. That doesn't make their measurements invalid, but it just shows that particularly above 1000khz you need to be very careful about how you interpret FR curve measurements. And you're over-interpreting them and probably relying too much on Rtings' score (which is a useless, over-interpretation of their own measurements).
Given the eight or so measurement sets we've seen so far from websites whose methodology is reasonably known, we can see constant trends across measurements :
- An excellent response below 1000hz. It isn't because of the exact magnitude of the bass response, where individual preferences vary anyway. It's because it's very smooth with no significant peaks or valleys, something fairly rare with closed headphones.
- a fairly conservative response around 2000-4000hz, but with a fairly benign response : there is no high Q (sharp) peak or dip.
- a lack of constant tendencies in the trebles response above that : we have a rather poor match between measurements in terms of where the peaks or dips are located, let alone their magnitude. This is not surprising as most headphones will show a lot of variance in measurements above 5000-6000hz or so. The only thing that I personally look for in that area with measurements is whether I get constant features or not, such as a 8000hz peak with most Beyedynamics headphones across various measurements. In the case of the APM it seems that peaks and dips in the trebles are less a product of the headphones' intrinsic design and rather a case of interaction with the test rig / listener's ears.
The first two points mean that at least up to 4000hz the Airpods' Max are very easy to EQ to a satisfying degree in that range. In the realm of closed back BT headphones, let alone closed back full stop, this is exceedingly rare. Hence why I think that their curve is very decent to start with.
Above 4000-5000hz it's difficult to know, but that applies to most headphones in general. Most will show peaks or dips that are at least just as significant as the ones measured on the APM, regardless of whether they're closed or open, wireless or wired. If Rtings's measurements above are not decent to you, then I wonder what you'd think of that :
https://www.rtings.com/headphones/graph#12049/4012/1659
As far as I'm concerned, when they're on my own head :
- trebles is probably the one area where I subjectively find the APM's most objectionable, but at least the peaks aren't painful to my ears unlike most other BT over-ears I've listened to last or this year. headphones such as the A50, M3, Bose 700, PX7, etc. I simply can't listen to and certainly can't EQ to my satisfaction given the very high Q peaks they exhibited when mounted on my ears.
- on my head at least, Rting's dip at 4800hz simply isn't there at all, something that's easy to check simply by adding 10dB with a fairly high Q. The result is ear-rape to me. I've listened to headphones with a built-in null, such as the HD350BT at around 4200hz or so. You can hear such nulls by playing single tones and shifting up or down the tonality. No such null on the APM at 4800hz.
- EDIT : that being said, I certainly would love to be able to EQ them up a little bit somewhere around 3000hz.
