[SO74]

Hello what does this do? Is it effective? Does it work? If it does, does it change the sound of the headphone or the file itself? 
 
thanks

 

[bigshot]

ITunes' equalizer is pretty crappy. It puts a setting into the file, but doesn't alter the file. It's just a flag for the setting to be switched on in playback. I don't use it.

 

[jaddie]

  ITunes' equalizer is pretty crappy. It puts a setting into the file, but doesn't alter the file. It's just a flag for the setting to be switched on in playback. I don't use it.

 
There are several issues with the iTunes EQ, all of which end up with "crappy".  I don't use it either.  There are a group of present contours that someone decided were useful, but they are really pretty extreme.  The do, however, show up in iPods too, so it's easy to set a track to always play with the Rock EQ setting, and it pretty much does that on all iPods.  That way the files never get changed, only the player, so you can reset your EQ at any time without damaging files.
 
My big issues with the iTunes EQ function is that it's not user-settable, so that means it will never be what I want, and I've noticed that using EQ on an iPod sometimes radically increases distortion, often to an unacceptable level.  It's just bad app programming. I do think this will eventually get fixed in an update at some point, if for no other reason than we've lived with lousy EQ long enough, and other music apps seem to handle EQ just fine. 

 

[TMRaven]

I would not bother EQ'ing on the iPod or other apple mobile devices, because you can't manually tune the EQ yourself.

On the computer with iTunes however, the EQ works well if you want to do simple, small adjustments to your headphones.  For example, rolling the treble off of an HE-400 or boosting the low bass on an AD700.  

Just make sure to either EQ down or compensate with your pre-amp so you won't clip the music.