[ADUHF]

I hope you weren't referring this...

Quote from somewhere on the interweb:

"The spectrum of pink noise has a -3dB/octave slope, or constant energy per octave. It looks flat when using a logarithmic frequency scale. Pink noise is usually used for equalizing rooms because it shows up as a flat line on standard 1/3 octave band analyzers."



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_noise

A hypothesis (referred to as the Tweedie hypothesis) has been proposed to explain the genesis of pink noise on the basis of a mathematical convergence theorem related to the central limit theorem of statistics.[31] The Tweedie convergence theorem[32] describes the convergence of certain statistical processes towards a family of statistical models known as the Tweedie distributions. These distributions are characterized by a variance to mean power law, that have been variously identified in the ecological literature as Taylor's law[33] and in the physics literature as fluctuation scaling.[34] When this variance to mean power law is demonstrated by the method of expanding enumerative bins this implies the presence of pink noise, and vice versa.[31] Both of these effects can be shown to be the consequence of mathematical convergence such as how certain kinds of data will converge towards the normal distribution under the central limit theorem. This hypothesis also provides for an alternative paradigm to explain power law manifestations that have been attributed to self-organized criticality.[35]

​

 

[tbger99]

I've been playing around with the Equalizer APO for a while now, and I thought I'd share my 2 cents on what I've had found with regards to the subject of mastering and editing with headphones, thanks to the help I've got from people on this thread, especially ADUHF. I hope I'll manage to put it out clearly using my limited English writing abilities.

The headphone I'm currently using is a Beyerdynamic DT48S, which are simply better than the other choice I have now - an AKG K240DF. Tuning the levels to what I thought was better using various kind of music, I could finally get something good out of this headphone. Its crazy highs, which are very harsh and unnatural, are now very clear, and it also does a satisfying job on the lows - better than what I'd expect (I've never heard anything below, say, 150Hz out of this headphone). The blurry / muddy sound signature has totally disappeared as well. And with all this said, I've yet to hear any artifacts (distortions) because of the EQ, thanks to the advice given above about the Analysis Panel on the program. I can clearly hear that the headphone's tonality has become much more close to natural sounding, with everything I'm playing through it.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, that if I made it so well with the DT48S, then I guess anything else would yield great results. In other words, if you're looking for the same thing as me, then I'd say you should try to EQ a good headphone that you already have, before deciding to upgrade (especially given my goal is pretty hard to achieve and could cost a lot of money and time). Of course, I'm not talking about a poor headphone like mine - that's just for testing out the program, but you also don't necessarily have to go straight to the expensive ones like I did (I really hope I'll get at least great results with the HD800 that's on the way though - otherwise it's quite a waste of money). It's worth a try, anyway.

 

[ADUHF]

Glad to see that you're making some progress towards your goal, tbger99.

I don't know if you've seen some of my other posts on this, but after a doing a bit more research on the subject, I've now switched from using a 24-bit 44.1 kHz sample rate to using 24-bit and 48 kHz, since I mainly use my headphones for listening to music and videos on YouTube. The reasons for this are explained a little bit better in the link in my signature.

So this is the way my setup currently works... My computer (a laptop in this case) is connected to my Samsung TV via an HDMI capable, which transmits both video and sound (up to the 24/48 sample rate). I then have my TV connected to a cheap little DAC (which was around $25 from Best Buy) via a TOSLINK optical cable. And the DAC is connected to my headphone amp via stereo RCA cables. It's a very simple, tidy arrangement that seems to work quite well. And it cost me almost nothing to put together. And since switching over to the new sampling rate, it is also now completely optimized for the standard video sampling rate of 24/48. And the sound seems virtually flawless to my ears. The level of detail and nuance that I can pick up from good YT recordings (and even some of the bad ones!) in my EQ'd headphones is quite remarkable!

So yes, it is possible to achieve very high quality sound on a small budget... if you have the time, energy and patience to pay attention to alot of the smaller details in your setup. Understanding how all this stuff works has taken quite a bit of time and research though. And for many people, I'm not sure if it would really be worth all the trouble.

The TV also has it's own internal audio DAC and analog audio output. For whatever reason though, I found that I like the sound quality a little better on the separate $25 DAC via the TV's optical output.

I also have a separate Blu-ray player connected to the TV via HDMI for watching movies. So I can listen to them on the headphones as well. I have not figured out an easy way to EQ the sound for the other sources connected to TV though. So that only works when streaming videos from the PC.

 

[tbger99]

Just a thought: a soundcard with both digital inputs and outputs (preferably Toslink ones) would let you gather all streamed audio in your computer, allowing you to control everything through it.


Roy

 

[ADUHF]

Just a thought: a soundcard with both digital inputs and outputs (preferably Toslink ones) would let you gather all streamed audio in your computer, allowing you to control everything through it.

An interesting idea Roy. Thank you for the suggestion. I'll look into it further.

 

[tbger99]

I personally am using an arrangement like that in my setup, with one PC as a source (YouTube, in your case) and another PC (a 2nd one) as a general audio station, with all sound sources connnected to it via a soundcard. Well, just for what its worth.

 

[ADUHF]

I personally am using an arrangement like that in my setup, with one PC as a source (YouTube, in your case) and another PC (a 2nd one) as a general audio station, with all sound sources connnected to it via a soundcard. Well, just for what its worth.

Very interesting. I only have one working PC at the moment. So I use my TV for all my source switching. Both audio and video. It doesn't allow me to EQ the content coming from the other sources going into the TV though. Which is currently just a Blu-ray player. (Though sometimes I also use an old-school VCR for watching old VHS tapes.)

Previously, I took the analog audio output of my TV, and ran that into a little compact Mackie mixer (the Mix8). And used that for both my EQ and headphone amp, since it has a headphone jack. That was with my old AKG K553 headphones. And it actually worked ok. The sound quality was not as good though as my current setup, for a variety of reasons. But mainly because the 32 ohm impedance on the AKG K553 was a bit on the low side for use with higher impedance pro audio gear.

I could still include a mixer, or an analog EQ like the Schiit Loki (or Bellari EQ570) in my current setup. And just put that in between my DAC and headphone amp. That would certainly work with my setup. And it would give me some basic EQ (and also left-right stereo balance via the mixer) controls for the other video sources going to the TV. As well as for the computer. Which would probably be good enough for most of my video entertainment needs.

It is also one of the reasons that I wanted a headphone amp with both RCA and XLR inputs, like the Bellari HA543... So I could potentially connect the main +4 dBu XLR outputs on a mixer directly to the headphone amp, using balanced XLR cables.

 

[ADUHF]

In case anyone is interested, I have posted some fairly detailed info on reference audio levels for home and professional theaters here...

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/mat...ientific-process.956701/page-11#post-16262608

There's also a link to the same post in my sig.

 

[Audi5000]

I've done editing for lectures and virtual classroom presentations. most of it was in Soundforge so as you know we can 'see' the fine details of the wav.
but AKG K240 (higher ohm version) was absolutely fine for me. some editing sessions took over 6 hours and i never felt uncomfortable/hot.