Not to long ago I had in my possession a Beyerdynamics DT990-250 whose sonic features are described as "strong bass and tremble." Some people have described it as being mids recessed, bright, and with good amounts of bass.
There is a bit of different opinions as to whether it's characteristics are pleasant or fun. Some people will say that its an appropriate headphone for movies and some types of music. Regardless, I have not seen anyone say this is a neutral headphone. We are talking quite a few different heads and ears. Are these features captured in the measurements? Well lets see:
The measurement above indicates that this is a relatively smooth FR with strong bass, and even stronger tremble. It is well extended as well. Mid-range seems recessed relative to bass and tremble, but flat in the region between 1kHz to 4kHz.
Prior to observing the measurements, I did perceived this headphone to be very bright, but otherwise very pleasant. The tremble bothered me with certain songs: Isao Tomita's "
Claire de Lune", Bob Marley's "
You could be loved", among others.
As far as equalization is concerned, I used Audacity (Linux) to EQ a couple of "reference" songs (songs I've heard on many different rigs) using the measurements above as a reference. Here are the equalizer settings:
What happened after applying the equalizer to the songs? They sounded a lot more pleasant to me. Some details that were previously obscured by the tremble and the bass came forward, and I no longer had any issues with fatigue. I could turn up the volume a bit with out feeling discomfort.
Given that many other people (with different HRTF) have similar impressions of this headphone, I gather they would perceive similar improvements if they apply equalization.
As far as faulty equipment is concerned, I'm not aware of a single rig that is problem free (even expensive and reference level Orpheus.) There are however rigs with less issues than others. And by the same rationale that we have HRTF (among other things) differences, things can be further tailored to your preferences using an EQ.