I typically do find an EQ setting for each, but for this match up I stayed away from that. I wanted to present the sound the way I hear them without any adjustment, as in how you may probably hear them. If I want to personally live with an earphone I will either run it on a normal basis with an EQ or pick an earphone that is well balanced from the start so I won't need one.
My basic EQing method is just to run pink noise. There are tracks online or you can just create your own. The main idea here is pink noise is of equal intensity throughout the audio spectrum. The goal is to adjust the EQing till all the frequencies sound equal in loudness. 100Hz is as loud as 1kHz is as loud as 10kHz. There is no dip and no one frequency range overshadows another. This is the goal anyways. If done right, nothing will stand out. Basically I tune the earphone flat to what my ears perceive as flat. It isn't an absolute flat but a flat that I perceive. Realize that "flat" varies from day to day and varies even by volume. Our perception of sound isn't exactly static. I've EQed some of these earphones multiple times over a year's span of time. My setting of teh UM3X from a year ago isn't the same as my UM3X today. It's similar but not exactly the same. I do have a different UM3X, so meh on that too. I've EQed these repeatedly over several days. The end result never quite comes out the same. You do find that you keep coming back to a very similar curve again and again with dB values at about the same level. If you can repeat from scratch and end up basically at the same end result you sort of just leave it here and call it as good as it will get. You're working with an organic mic, so it's not quite an exact science. You just sort of have to end up with something you're happy with, something that's largely repeatable, and something that ends up sounding natural when you actually play music.. Then I just take music as is.
I will say it can take time to get used to listening to pink noise and trying to hear a pile of different frequencies at once. Pink noise is not something you jump into. It's something you acclimate yourself to. I started out using pink noise when I first started running an active setup in my car some years back. By active I mean the HU had the crossover settings built in and I could independently control levels, crossover points, slopes, time alignment, and EQ of every single speaker. I played with a lot of things like test tones, but ended up really liking pink noise. I also ran a large variety of speakers in my car, so I might run a specific pair of tweeters for a month and then step to something else. Maybe I'd try out a different woofer instead. Maybe I just swapped out everything and started with something competely new. I had to reset and rebalance the system every time I changed things. I would literally drive home for 30 minutes with just test tones and noise tracks playing and me just sitting there fiddling with settings. The more I did, the faster I got. If I didn't do anything for a while, I got rusty. For about 2 years there was probably hardly a day I wasn't fiddling with something. Some of it was a byproduct of using mis-matched hardware and pretty much trying to make a compromised setting that worked ok. For the most part, it just sounded wrong, and I would eventually swap in new hardware. Later I learned better and finally started using better matched hardware and avoiding the hassle all-together. Today I run a 3-way setup in my car that's all controlled via the HU for levels, crossovers, time alignment, and EQing. I evolved it to an end package that offers me the best overall capability. It taught me a ton about tuning as well as variety of sound. Pretty much over 3 years I ran over two dozen different brands and models of tweeters, woofers, and subs in the car, everything completely active. For much of the last few years I've exclusively run pink noise and adjusted the same way. I just like pink noise a lot. It's been the easiest tool I've found to where I could get quick and repeatable results. Earphones are a bit easier in that you're only adjusting EQ, but they also tend to be a bit worse in EQ balance too which can be a bit hassle if you don't have a powerful EQ. Speakers are at least largely flat over their functional region, so it's mostly just balancing everything out.
I suggest just doing 10 bands and just up and down, up and down adjusting. Stop after a while and do something else. Then come back to it and start adjusting again. Do you end up at a similar result or is it a bit different now? Come back tomorrow and repeat. Does the setting tomorrow end up about the same or a bit different? Repeat. At some point, you will find yourself just setting everything basically to the same spots. The general shape will end up being pretty much the same every time, day to day. A LOT of the time you're spending is simply you acclimating yourself to the spectrum of sound. You're fiddling with the EQ the whole time, but it's mostly just a learning process. If you find yourself sitting there for an hour just tweaking and ending up with varied results, don't feel bad. It just takes time to get to a point where you hear everything at once.
For the most part, this is what you're doing. Start with 1kHz. Move it up and down and listen to that note region. Focus on that note. Now move the 2kHz region up and down while both hearing that 1kHz tone and the 2kHz tone while you attempt to balance the perceived loudness. Now adjust 4kHz while trying to hear the 1kHz and 2kHz tones at the same time. I'm telling you to do 10 bands like this. Now you won't hear every single band, but the goal is to hear a lot of them at once and to be able to compare the single band you're adjusting up and down in relation to those. This gets a little messy too because the actual shape of the response isn't always smooth and rounded. Some earphones have more of a triangle shape or a sharp ramp up that doesn't fit well with 10 well spaced bands. At the end, it will be set well but still sound a little off till you fine tune the shape. You can simply add more points with the Electri-Q and reshape the curve to a more exact setting. You might end up with 20 to 30 points you're fiddling with to create the end shape you want. At the end, you should be able to take one point and move it in small increments all the way through the spectrum moving it up and down from 0dB and not wanting to add or subtract from anywhere. At this point you're flat, but you're also playing with a pile of points and have a curve that a simple EQ can't replicate. A simple example is I'm using 10 bands that use 8kHz and 16kHz points. Well, many of these earphones don't center their curves at 8kHz, and the 16kHz doesn't really let me shape the curve very well. Adding 6kHz, 10khz, 12kHz, and 14kHz points help fine tune the shape so much better. When I stick to just the 8kHz and 16kHz, it's set as well as it can but still sounds unbalanced because I'm EQing the wrong spots. Until the curve is actually shaped right, it will always sound a little weird. Once you reshape it right, it sounds really even and good. The downside is most people will not have this kind of EQing power, not even close. Heck a lot of music players are lucky to have 3 or 5 bands that adjust in 3dB increments. Electri-Q is up to 64 points stuck anywhere to create any shape and can be adjusted in tiny, tiny dB increments. It's really, really nice, but 99.9% of the people will really, really have nothing like it.
I can't say I'd describe earphones different EQed or not, at least in terms of how they simply present notes. I do try to keep those aspects separate and simply relate to how the frequency response influences the presentation. The difference really only comes down to balance, and some are worse than others which does affect the overall end experience. For example, I really like the UM3X, but it's an earphone I can't live with without EQing. The overall presentation becomes significantly more balanced when EQed, and it's a much more natural experience once this is done. For those that have heard this earphone, liked it a lot, but ultimately couldn't live with the byproducts of its response, it is a significantly nicer earphone once balanced out.
EQing does help take out some of the shortcomings people list with earphones. For example, the recess mids of the UM3X or the mild highs are largely a frequency response issue. The Triple.Fi 10's bright signature and bass presence balance out once EQed. Really, it's not hard to improve any of these earphones with at least a little bit of EQing. Now some earphones benefit from it much less, like the RE252 and e-Q7 which are both very well balanced earphones. There isn't much to fix and using or not using EQing doesn't really matter. However, for earphones that are far more colored, it can become a deal breaker when it comes time to ask yourself "Am I going to keep this or not?"
I would not rank anything different in terms of resolution or sound quality. Frequency response is really only a coloration issue. EQing won't may the earphone more or less dynamic or more or less detailed. EQing just pulls out a lot of the coloration and makes for a more neutral and natural sounding earphone. As well, it can fix tonality issues that can affect perception of the sound stage in terms of location.