agnostic1er
Head-Fier
Hello,
The HE500 is a great headphone, specialy for its price, being already perfect to my ears. But "already perfect" isn't perfect. It suffers from some tiny but anoying defaults, at least linked to my high quality solid-state diy headamp:
- slight loss of sub-bass around 20Hz ("audeze alike" target, lol)
- slight bump in the 30-90Hz range (sometimes a little boomy)
- slight loss in the 1-1.9kHz range (lack of naturalness on human voices, piano notes...)
- emphasis in the 8-10kHz range ("hissssssss")
So I decided to test, measure and listen to some grill-mods: not satisfiying.
Then I decided to buy a miniDSP with its 31 graphic equalizer plug-in. After a long trip into analyses of published frequency responses of high-end headphones, own measurements and trials on my HE500, I ended to the following equalization (velour-pads).
My headphone sounds now amazingly natural, uncoloured, fully bodied and tonaly balanced.
Those who own a graphic equalizer but cannot measure, I encourage trying this config, I guess you will not be disappointed!
blues: both channels unequalized, red/orange: both channels equalized
http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/9818/9w31.png
equalizing config:
http://imageshack.us/a/img62/9513/ktdr.png
The HE500 is a great headphone, specialy for its price, being already perfect to my ears. But "already perfect" isn't perfect. It suffers from some tiny but anoying defaults, at least linked to my high quality solid-state diy headamp:
- slight loss of sub-bass around 20Hz ("audeze alike" target, lol)
- slight bump in the 30-90Hz range (sometimes a little boomy)
- slight loss in the 1-1.9kHz range (lack of naturalness on human voices, piano notes...)
- emphasis in the 8-10kHz range ("hissssssss")
So I decided to test, measure and listen to some grill-mods: not satisfiying.
Then I decided to buy a miniDSP with its 31 graphic equalizer plug-in. After a long trip into analyses of published frequency responses of high-end headphones, own measurements and trials on my HE500, I ended to the following equalization (velour-pads).
My headphone sounds now amazingly natural, uncoloured, fully bodied and tonaly balanced.
Those who own a graphic equalizer but cannot measure, I encourage trying this config, I guess you will not be disappointed!
blues: both channels unequalized, red/orange: both channels equalized
http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/9818/9w31.png
equalizing config:
http://imageshack.us/a/img62/9513/ktdr.png