[Vonx]

wait, so how does this help me if I do most of my listening from my portable device? Its not like you can "save" the equalization settings to your headphones...?
 
im confused, please help!

 

[Roller]

Quote:

wait, so how does this help me if I do most of my listening from my portable device? Its not like you can "save" the equalization settings to your headphones...?
 
im confused, please help!

This thread is basically about EQ settings that make headphones sound "better" or more accurate, which is something to keep as reference for whatever EQs you have available to configure, be it computer EQs, hardware EQs and what's found on PMPs. So, if you have a PMP with customizable EQ settings, then you can try and adjust it according to EQ presets available on the thread, for instance.

 

[MaciekN]

You can use foobar to save the file with DSP effects applied (right-click on selected item and then select convert), although, your portable device might need a totally different equalization than the one on PC.

 

[ProcessJunkie]

Anyone has 2 cents to help me here?
 
Quote:

So guys, i have kinda of a situation here.


 
There's nothing to choose from.
 
 
 
 

 

 

[MaciekN]

Did you run it as a plugin from foobar? Or did you run it as a standalone?

 

[ProcessJunkie]

Standalone.

 

[MaciekN]

Then install vst bridge and add the equalizer as a plugin in foobar, you won't have to set any output devices etc, it will work fine.

 

[jmwreck]

Quote:

Standalone.

install George Yohng's vst wrapper install and follow the instructions and start from there

 

[ProcessJunkie]

Thank you so much, guys, i'll try this tonight, then i post the outcome here. 

R.

 

[proedros]

this sould be sticky.

 

[jerg]

Here's my 8th (?) iteration of equalization for my M50's, more specifically, for foobar2k -> wasapi -> E7 DAC (with bassboost @ 1)  -> M50's with a few mods.
 
Now my M50's sound neutral like...vanilla icecream. A bit cold for my taste, but really damn neutral. I think I like it.
 

 
I sat down yesterday and perfected the equalization for the mids (before this, the mids part is just a big hill I tweaked by-ear). Bass is...too nondistinctive to EQ properly IMO; the lowest I can go while still able to accurately perceive small dB differences is ~300 Hz.

 

[scruffsaudio]

I'm relatively new to this forum but I've been a headphone user forever. I write and mix music for a living...
 
For any other AKG Q701/K701/etc owners, try these settings. Here's a screenshot of my EQ plug-in inside Logic.
 

http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/533/q701correctednov19.png     <-- full size
 
I worked on this for about 5 hours and finally felt satisfied when some 24-bit lossless audio files of big, wide, deep top-grade mixes finally sounded big, wide and deep. I referenced all sorts of music, but Electronic (Massive Attack- Angel), Soundtrack (Tron Legacy) and Hip Hop (Kanye West- Stronger) are what I feel pushes any playback system to its limits of frequency response whilst exposing the upper mids and highs in detail.
 
Basically, most or all of us agree the 701s are a bit clinical in the upper mids / highs -- you might say "fast" or "overexposed." Fixing this was my first priority (though I didn't go as far as I desired because I still need accuracy for mixing). If I were listening solely for pleasure, I might cut off another 1 or 2 dB at both 2.2K and 6.7K. The next priority was to get the sub-bass up to a proper level... to balance and energize the low end all together.
 
So those 3 songs I mentioned... they're excellent for testing the overexposed hi mids / highs and providing support for what should be a fully extended bass. If you have your own preferred reference playback, use it... just make sure that when you do all this EQ stuff, you use material you're sonically familiar with.
 
A note about the settings: if you didn't notice, the furthest two left filters and furthest right filter are disengaged. That's how they're supposed to be: off. So ignore them, they have nothing to do with the settings of the 6 filters in between. Also, you'll see on the low-shelf at 99hz, there's a "shift" setting of -79%. If you're not familiar with "shift" in EQ and/or your plug-in doesn't have the feature, then use a bandwidth of 0.18 instead of 0.88 on that low shelf.
 
Otherwise, please let me know if you're able to try this and let me know if it translates to an improvement for you.
 
Cheers.
 
JS

 

[Joe Bloggs]

Just a quick note to say that equalizing roughly based on this guide has turned a pair of unassuming $10 Philips SHE3580 canalphones into my preferred listening phones for everything, over a pair of $200 Etymotic ER-4P (which I consider unsuitable for EQing, most notably because of a lack of bass, a lack of comfort and not really having any treble spikes to correct).
 
Also, as I mentioned before, human hearing is not flat over the whole frequency spectrum, which leads to inaccuracy in balancing the frequencies by ear.  For those of you who got VAC and VSTHost working so that you are checking your EQ on the fly directly from SineGen, I created a replica of the 60dB equal loudness curve:
http://www.mediafire.com/?7b9olaa40qk4lfh

 
What I'm doing now is running two copies of Electri-Q between the VAC input and the speaker output in VSTHost.  The first copy is loaded with the equal loudness curve preset.  With the first EQ alone, a pair of headphones with response at the ear equivalent to a loudspeaker with perfect response will theoretically sound as loud at all frequencies if you play tones at 60dB (loudness of a normal conversation)--if your perception of loudness is the same as the average ISO 226:2003 test subject.
 
With the second copy of Electri-Q, I will tweak my custom EQ preset until all frequencies do actually sound as loud to my ear with SineGen playing through the two EQs.  The EQ should then be the perfect when you remove the equal loudness curve EQ from the chain.  I will try this myself and report back on my findings.
 
If you want to try this yourself, verify that the equal loudness curve preset is loaded correctly (I have to load it twice every time for the curve to be correct;  you would have to set M->Skin->Gain Range to 30dB just to be able to see the whole curve...) and make sure you don't clip the bass frequencies which are equalized above the zero mark on my preset.  That would mean outputting at -30dB or lower on SineGen for going all the way down to 20Hz with a flat second EQ.  If sounds don't reach 60dB at your ears with that output level even with system volume at max then you may have to give up EQing down to 20Hz.

 

[SobbingWallet]

Nevermind, stupid question.

 

[Argyris]

Just popping in here again. A long while I posted about doing this with my DT880. Since then I've refined my methodology (or, more precisely, did what the tutorial actually said and used the pink noise instead of just sine-sweeping) and the results were quite different. Basically what I did wrong before was lower the "baseline" along with trying to suss out the peaks. Therefore, though I finally got the peaks sorted, everything around them was too low as well. This, I suppose, is why the tutorial recommends the pink noise, so as you can make the notches just as wide and deep as they need to be to eliminate the peaks and nothing else.
 
Some folks wanted to see my results before, so here's the updated curve:
 

 
 Filter 1: 5827.6 Hz | -6.0 dB | 0.3 Oct BW
*Filter 2: 7577.8 Hz | -6.0 dB | 0.5 Oct BW
 Filter 3: 10920.0 Hz | -6.0 dB | 0.5 Oct BW
 Filter 4: 13879.0 Hz | -5.0 dB | 0.3 Oct BW
 
*This peak will almost certainly occur in a different place for different people, as I believe it's related to my own ear resonance.
 
What's really interesting is that it matches up very well with the following, even though I used nothing but my ears to make my curve:
 

 
These are the raw frequency response curves for the DT880 and the DT990. My curve lines up almost perfectly with the one for the DT990, leading me to believe that HeadRoom's plots for the DT880 are off, or else my sample is more DT990-like in its treble. Maybe this is why so many people have different impressions of the DT880--could there perhaps be some DT990-esque DT880s floating around out there? (FTR, I have the 250 ohm version, and both these plots are for the 250 ohm variants of their respective models).
 
Anyway, I trust my ears, not the HeadRoom plot, and my ears say that there are four ~6 dB peaks of varying widths. The second peak in my plot, which occurs above the 5-6kHz one (and which is absent from the HR graph), seems to exist in every headphone I test, so I think it's some sort of resonance peak (it's usually around 7.4kHz, which is double the 3.7kHz presence peak). Also, my third peak is centered higher up than in the above plot. Looking through some of the DT880 curves others have posted, I see I'm not alone in my final result. Many folks have four peaks, usually of similar amplitude and centered in similar places.
 
But the big question everybody probably wants to know is, what's it sound like EQ'ed up? Some of that special airiness that the DT880 is known for disappears, but with it goes most of the harshness and sibilance, and the overall balance is much more natural to my ears. Detail, of course, is somewhat lessened but not to a terrible extent. As far as I'm concerned, that detail was never there to begin with if it needed the extra treble to bring it out. Overall, these are still airy, quick, and resolving with the EQ, except now they don't bite my ears off anymore. The biggest revelation, actually, is the midrange--it really perks up (which it would have to, because, as I've argued before, it's not "recessed" between the treble and the somewhat light bass on these, but rather overshadowed by the high end).
 
Overall, I highly recommend following this method. I offer my curve just to illustrate that there's not a whole lot that needs to be done to a DT880, apparently, so it's a good candidate for this type of adjustment. Don't copy my result verbatim; your pair of DT880s is likely different (more like the HeadRoom ones perhaps?), and so are your ears.