[Hasashi]

So I have given this a try and just going to give a little report on what I've experienced.
Equipment: akg k240, ibasso d6
 

 
So of course, I've noticed a drop in the highs, which is to be expected. What I also thought I'd expect is a flattening of the sound, namely a reduction in bass and highs. The highs most definitely were tamed, but probably as a psychological counteraction, bass seemed to be boosted despite my reductions in the slight bass peaks. Is this what others have experienced as well? or am I just delirious from listening to too much pink noise and sine waves 

 

[Rico613]

Once peaks are reduced the overall volume can be increased.  So other frequencies are more audible.  This is what you want - a wider range of sound which results in more detail and a expanded sound stage.
 
It takes practice to set the EQ.  I usually do it when I'm well rested, and not distracted.  In the past I would get a certain EQ fatigue which lead to mistakes.  Now I try to do it in 10-15 minutes, and then back off.  This seems to yield better results.

 

[DoomForce]

Once peaks are reduced the overall volume can be increased.  So other frequencies are more audible.  This is what you want - a wider range of sound which results in more detail and a expanded sound stage.

It takes practice to set the EQ.  I usually do it when I'm well rested, and not distracted.  In the past I would get a certain EQ fatigue which lead to mistakes.  Now I try to do it in 10-15 minutes, and then back off.  This seems to yield better results.

How often do you equalize your phones? I decided to follow your advice and skip the pink noise part and adjust mainly though trying to flatten the sine wave. This is what I experienced:

With a pair of cheap yet trustworthy in ears, the signature is pretty flat and there's like, 3 audible peaks only. With Edition 8 there's about 10 of them or more, sometimes occurring through one ear alone. The signature seems heavily modified over a flat one, and tempering with it feels like possibly ruining the tuning that the engineers made during the design.

I find that chopping some peaks down by 2-3dB gives me an acceptable loss of fidelity in those frequencies, any more and I feel that I am losing information (and when it's on the high frequencies, the sound appears muddy). From what I read, it should not be like that. Am I doing something wrong or am I approaching this with the wrong mentality?

 

[Rico613]

I don't use the same system for EQ so it is hard for me to comment about the details.  Hopefully others can comment about your experience.
 
I will post a summary of my procedure soon.  The principles of EQ are the same, so I think the knowledge is transferable from one system to another.

 

[DoomForce]

 
I will post a summary of my procedure soon.  The principles of EQ are the same, so I think the knowledge is transferable from one system to another.

 
I will definitely enjoy reading your summary and get one step closer to understanding the dynamics behind proper equalisation. 

 

[Rico613]

.

 

[PiccoloNamek]

Wow, this thread is still semi-active after all this time. It seems like I wrote it only yesterday!
 
I wanted to reply to Rico's post. Using equipment like that is the ultimate way to equalize headphones (and many other things) in the manner that has been discussed here. Back when I used to do sound work for churches professionally, I often employed similar equipment for various reasons. Being able to do such things in analog is far easier and more intuitive than messing with things like Electri-Q, as nice as it is. If I had the money I'd probably have a nice little rack setup to apply the equalization to everything coming out of my computer.

 

[k00zk0]

PiccoloNamek,
 
The link to download Sinegen 2.1 from tucows here contains malware along with the download. You can extract the exe file using 7-zip and see it yourself. People trying the guide are getting directed to this courtesy of Head-Fi. I have posted about this half a year ago and nobody has yet to clean it up. Reflects well on the technical skill of our community...
 
I uploaded sinegen.exe without the toolbar installer here: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B6IxqGzcxDWTeGhycEdFeEdhZzg

 

[Rico613]

  Wow, this thread is still semi-active after all this time. It seems like I wrote it only yesterday!
 
I wanted to reply to Rico's post. Using equipment like that is the ultimate way to equalize headphones (and many other things) in the manner that has been discussed here. Back when I used to do sound work for churches professionally, I often employed similar equipment for various reasons. Being able to do such things in analog is far easier and more intuitive than messing with things like Electri-Q, as nice as it is. If I had the money I'd probably have a nice little rack setup to apply the equalization to everything coming out of my computer.

 
For a while I used iZotope Ozone 5 along with Audirvana on my computer and it was a lot of fun and worked well.  I just went back to CDs because iTunes didn't catalog classical music very well.   Setting up the hardware EQ required extra interconnects and power supply management which ran into some serious $$$  I'd recommend finding a software solution unless playing from CDs or Vinyl.  

 

[leeperry]

^ Yep, O5 provides the most natural sounding EQ I've found for our needs.

Wow, this thread is still semi-active after all this time.

 
This tutorial is pure gold, kudos again!

This one is also pretty sweet: http://www.davidgriesinger.com/headphones.htm

 

[numbercube]

I am kind of confused... The loudest frequency through Sine Gen should be heard at 3.5 kHz, right? It should sound 8 dB louder than 1 kHz. I have got half a dozens of headphones, including HD 800, HD 580, HE5LE, Beyer 880, Stax 202, but I do not hear a peak at 3.5 kHz on any pair. Measurements indicate the opposite. So I guess my HRTF is quite different from that of the measuring dummy head. What are your experiences?

 

[Rico613]

^ Sorry, I'm not familiar with Sine Gen.  In general I can say that the goal of EQ is to have a nice even audible signal as you increase the frequency without any peaks or dropouts.  The real test is whether the music sounds more spacious and detailed once the EQ curve is set.

 

[408388]

:blink:

The first song I listened to on the XBA-1s was Stairway to Heaven, and it brought tears to my eyes. Everything was just so beautiful. (I'm assuming that's a standard reaction to a first encounter with good audio equipment.) I really liked those. Everything was...crisp. Overtones were positively buzzy. Anyways, due to utterly dumb cable design, where the left ear cable went directly into the combined cable, while the right ear cable was about three times as long and was supposed to go around the back of the neck, which meant every time anything jerked on the headphone cable, 100% of the stress was transferred to the left earbud alone, the solder connecting the left cable to the left earbud wore out and eventually shorted. That's why I'm only buying headphones with detachable cables from now on.

I know this post is old, but do you mind sharing your EQ for the XBA-1s or if that's still not possible a description of the peaks and your adjustments would be appreciated. I've been trying to EQ mine using rockbox for android and am running into the problem you described, that using pink noise has the effect of unintentionally reducing treble too much. Thanks very much

P..S. That happened to my cable to, I can send a pic of the fix if you like

EDIT: I've a general question for everybody: what if you experience troughs rather than peaks at certain frequencies? As you can see herehere, the XBA-1s shoe a significant drop after 1KHz which is in fact very noticeable in the sine wave. At first I thought I was hearing a peak at 1KHz until I released it was simply this low point straight after giving this illusion. Is it still best to leave this rather than boost the signal to try to make up for it? Thanks

Also, I experience no peaks between the frequencies suggested, instead the most noticeable peal is at 3.3KHz (which is in fact very painful). I assume this is due to the XBAs having a very pronounced mid and rolled off bass & treble, but correct me if I'm wrong.

EDIT2: I've finally finished EQing, but I used an app called ArmAmp which was the only Android app I could find with a parametric EQ. My settings were: 3,300Hz at -9.0dB, 400Hz width, and 10,000Hz at -7.0dB with 500Hz width (the first makes most difference).

 

[efeyth]

Hey I'm new to this audio stuff and you guys probably all have crazy expensive headphones and such so i hope you don't mind if i ask if the HyperX Clouds having this effect? Whenever I play CS:GO the sound is extremely higher pitched then my old siberia elites, I just wanted to know if this was the case and how I'd go about fixing it? Thanks

 

[Soundsgoodtome]

Subaru