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Originally Posted by LnxPrgr3 /img/forum/go_quote.gif
You experience reality with very peaky hearing, with your hearing's response varying wildly depending on where a sound originates -- why try to "fix" your ears when listening to music?
The only problem I see with headphones is that they're not speakers in front of you, and so will sound different than a speaker setup. However, your response to the flattest responding of speakers placed in front of you still won't be flat, nor will your response be flat to a live event in front of you. Does real life sound unnaturally harsh as a result?
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The reason that one would attempt to "fix" his/her ears (and the entire sound chain feeding the ears) through equalization methods is to normalize one's hearing to some theoretical norm (in these discussions, Piccolo has assumed that a "normal" FR is flat; however the recording studios may master to some other FR shape). Whatever the "normal" FR curve looks like, the general idea is to equalize in order to hear a track as the sound engineers mastered it to be heard.
And yes, "your response to speakers in front of you" WILL be flat if you follow Piccolo's method. That is the whole idea that many in this thread seem to be missing. Piccolo's method includes the entire sound chain, including the human brain and its perception. It is the Head-fier's brain that is perceiving the sound volume at each frequency as he/she performs the frequency sweeps and equalizes while listening to pink noise during the practice of this method. This is a closed-loop system, whereby the brain causes the fingers to tweak the equalizer. The brain then receives new information (as modified by the new equalizer settings) from the headphones, and again tweaks the equalizer, etc. This process continues until the brain perceives a flat response.
And yes, your perceived response to a live event could theoretically be normalized to flat (or to any other shape) if you controlled the equalizers in the sound system carrying the signals produced by the live event from where you were sitting. (Alternatively, you could probably accomplish a"perceived flat" result if you listened to the live concert with microphones, a preamp, an equalizer, a head-amp, and closed headphones. (This is precisely what new-technology hearing aids attempt to accomplish, by the way.)
And yes, music in real life may sound unnaturally harsh, whether listening via headphones or speakers, if any part of the sound chain causes an unnatural peak somewhere, as exemplified by the headphone anomaly discussed by Piccolo. Turning to another example, it is very common for music to sound very lo-fi to those of us with hearing loss notches at various frequencies. Of course, modern music tracks are not mastered to sound lo-fi. The hearing impaired may dramatically increase fidelity and soundstage by boosting frequencies that he/she perceives as notches prior to equalization.
[size=small]C A U T I O N!!!!!!![/size]
Note that excessive boosting to compensate for a very deep notch (e.g., 30-40 dB) can be VERY dangerous; because it may expose the person to damaging noise power levels during strong passages at the notch frequencies. Such a damaging situation is insidious because the affected person does not hear the damaging sound power at the notch frequency as excessively loud. That is, the body's normal feedback mechanism to warn of the damaging situation ("sound so loud that it hurts") is crippled by the hearing loss; and excessive boosting in the absence of the negative feedback creates the dangerous situation. This is analogous to a person with defective pain and pressure nerve endings who cuts himself and does not know that the event has happened until he sees himself bleeding or burns himself and does not know about it until he smells burning flesh, etc.
I have presented the extreme case of a person with a deep notch in hearing FR as an example that is not subtle and is (hopefully) easier to understand. However, the audiophile whose combination of equipment and hearing FR is flat (or conforms to the music mastering "norm", whatever that FR curve might look like) without equalization will likely be the rare exception. Because of the variability of equipment, ears, and brains, most of us will likely benefit from equalization of our audio chain (including electronics, sound transducer, ears, and brain) to a "normal" response, which Piccolo has reasonably assumed to be flat, in the absence of some other standard response curve. By the way, the mastering industry might do audiophiles a big favor in this regard
by saying what curve they do master to.
It is also true, I believe, that our brains include wonderful compensation mechanisms that take over when one or more of our senses is impaired or absent altogether. Thus, the blind tend to develop better-than-normal hearing and sense of touch. The deaf may become more sensitive to non-verbal cues, etc. Likewise for those of us with less than perfect hearing. Changes in our hearing FR curve generally occur gradually over time, allowing the brain's compensation mechanism plenty of time to adjust. Thus, music may continue to sound pretty good to a hearing impaired person who has long forgotten what it used to sound like 20 years ago, for example. Such a person may be astounded to hear equalized music, though, which may reveal "new" sounds that have been beyond that person's realm of experience.
A fascinating corollary to this is that a sensory-impaired person whose impairment is compensated for (or perhaps permanently removed via a medical procedure) may not be entirely pleased with the outcome. Many of us have heard occasional stories of blind persons whose sight was miraculously restored, only to feel at least confused, if not disappointed altogether with their sudden, radically modified sensory experience. Might similar sensations may be felt by the hearing impaired when listening to equalized music? But I digress...
Equalizing the entire audio chain, including electronics, ears, and brain to some "normal" FR curve, including perhaps a flat line, establishes a baseline which
may represent a transform of audio track information to an audiophile's perceptions as the mastering engineers intended, frequency and amplitude-wise. (As Piccolo mentioned, higher-order psycho-acoustics, if any, are beyond the scope of these equalization exercises.) Using such an equalized state as a starting point, some may wish to further equalize to add effects that are perceived as pleasing (e.g., pump up the bass, etc.), as Piccolo has suggested.
Bruce (EE, Patent Attorney)
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