[Mani ATH 87]

 

[smedley]

  Yup  have a 10 band a side hardware equalizer hooked to my Onkyo stereo .  Makes my speakers and my Koss Pro DJ's  sound amazing . 

 

[drtturnip]

Yes.
 
It seems that all headphones have inherent peaky treble response, some of which is by design. Check the graphs. There is almost always a big dip between 3k and 5k accompanied by a few more dips and peaks and then a sharp rise in the 9k 10k region. I do my best to obtain a flat response using tones sweeps and different music. When I A B the non equalized to equalized a light comes on and I say to myself, oh that's where the music was hiding!

 

[chewy4]

Quote:

Yes.
 
It seems that all headphones have inherent peaky treble response, some of which is by design. Check the graphs. There is almost always a big dip between 3k and 5k accompanied by a few more dips and peaks and then a sharp rise in the 9k 10k region. I do my best to obtain a flat response using tones sweeps and different music. When I A B the non equalized to equalized a light comes on and I say to myself, oh that's where the music was hiding!

I think that trend is almost always by design, if not always. It would be too big of a coincidence that it follows the equal loudness curve that much by accident.

 

[briskly]

Quote:

The nice thing about that EQ is that it'll manage the volume level for you.

 

[Oregonian]

​

All. The. Time. How anyone listens to stock iTunes, for example is beyond me, when can fine tune for .99 cents.

 

[Achmedisdead]

You definitely need the right headphones to be able to go EQ-free.

 

[Mani ATH 87]

Quote:

The nice thing about that EQ is that it'll manage the volume level for you.

What do you mean?

 

[extrabigmehdi]

Quote:

What do you mean?

Seems there's an auto button.  From what I've understood,  no need to manually adjust the volume slider to avoid clipping.

 

[Mani ATH 87]

Quote:

Seems there's an auto button.  From what I've understood,  no need to manually adjust the volume slider to avoid clipping.

I use replay gain anyways, not really ever in any range even close to clipping with the music I listen too.

 

[misterblack]

I use Amarra with iTunes (all my audio is in ALAC). It's a little buggy, but once you learn how to use it, works great.

 

[extrabigmehdi]

Quote:

I use replay gain anyways, not really ever in any range even close to clipping with the music I listen too.

Nope , this doesn't work this ways.
Using any dsp (in this case, the eq) , can induce digital clipping, and replaygain can do nothing to prevent it.
You have to foresee in advance, how much headroom "volume headroom" is necessary, for any particular dsp, to prevent clipping.

 

[Mani ATH 87]

Quote:

Nope , this doesn't work this ways.
Using any dsp (in this case, the eq) , can induce digital clipping, and replaygain can do nothing to prevent it.
You have to foresee in advance, how much headroom "volume headroom" is necessary, for any particular dsp, to prevent clipping.

Clipping is easily audible when it occurs. I have a few classical songs where it occurs with the foobar volume as well as the windows volume maxed. With replaygain and prevent clipping on, it removes it entirely.

Other then classical music, I've never heard any of my 10,000 songs come anywhere near clipping, EQ or no EQ.

 

[Achmedisdead]

Quote:

Clipping is easily audible when it occurs. I have a few classical songs where it occurs with the foobar volume as well as the windows volume maxed. With replaygain and prevent clipping on, it removes it entirely.

Other then classical music, I've never heard any of my 10,000 songs come anywhere near clipping, EQ or no EQ.

I do the same with all my Rockbox-running DAPs....replaygain enabled along with prevent clipping. Works like a charm, and I can adjust the sliders anywhere I like.

 

[devhen]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SmOgER /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 

I used to try software EQ, but it always give me an impression of some distortion which I don't like. Only when my EQing is minimal, I don't hear the distortion, but at the same time, it doesn't give me much difference in sound as it's minimal. Am I doing something wrong?

 
Unless you tried physical EQ, I will say distortion is caused by headphones not being able to reproduce particular frequency (quite common if you are boosting muffled 2k+ tone), try one step higher/lower frequencies, or if it's 4-8k, just boost highs on 16K and see how you'll like it.

 
Its not your headphones clipping its your DAC not able to produce values much higher than 0db. The solution is to reduce the EQ levels across the board such that the highest level EQ setting is at the 0db mark and then just turn up the volume to compensate. Some software EQs will do this for you automatically, for example the "Auto Level" button in foobar2000's EQ.