How to equalize your headphones: A Tutorial

[maxdot]

Quote:

I'm running into a problem with my HD650. I'm getting rid of some of the peaks but it doesn't sound as good with music. More like i've added the infamous "veil" back to the sound.

Could it be that some of those peaks are meant to be there. I'm not talking about the ear canal resonance around 7.5 kHz (different for everybody) but the peak around 2.5 kHz.

Check out the graph on this page:

HeadWize - Article: Taking Sound In Another Direction by John Sunier

These are the suggested "Biophonic" EQ settings that are meant to make headphones sound more natural, like speakers in a room. If we EQ flat based on what we hear, are we getting rid of these peaks that were intentional by the manufacturer?

Based on that graph, even a slight boost (+2 db and not the +8 db we are hearing) in the ear canal resonance frequency is a good thing.

This might sound too good to be true, but I'm not exhadurating when I say I think I found the holy grale EQ setting for hd650.
 
I did NOT notice this in Sinegen strangely enough. I was watching fellowship of the ring (like I have many times) and decided to try and get rid of that overagressive voice resonance that you get so easily in that movie at higher volumes. I could get treble to go down to an okay level, but that harsh resonance of the voice made the sound very unpleasant in that particular way. 
So I decided to try and get rid of that Resonance. I tried small then did somthing big and BINGO. I hit it spot on! Then I just kept lowering the decibel and lowering and kept on going to almost -10 db in a Hz I have never heard of for hd 650.
Here is what it looks like:

 
879 Hz is the frequency! at 0.4 width.
 
It made the:
Bass more distict, clear, powerful and dynamic.
Voices clear and defined.
Instruments and detailed sound sound clearer.
 
It made such a big difference I'm a bit stunned. I almost feel a bit silly for even doubting TS ideas or that they wouldn't make such big of a difference. 
 
I must say, without that 879 dip I was pretty impressed. Now I am stunned by the difference. I will never go back!! It sounds awesome. I use the same EQ for both movies and music now btw!
I believe this should have been in the opening post though aswell since I would never have found this out without this coincidence of my mind instinctively wanting to get rid of that over resonance. 
 
Some people have had trouble with the sound getting a bit more muffled or whatever. I had that problem too. But now it is crystal clear. I might tweak the treble peaks a bit more though. In fact I would be interested in what all this sine wave and pink noise file is and what to do with it, so I can tweak treble peaks more perfectly.
 
Anyways, thanks for this TS. It makes a HUGE difference, and I'm now officially a believer of this for sure. 

 
edit: I might add that I use little dot mk iii and the powerubes + voskhod (see tube rolling thread) and xonar dx.

 

[Joe Bloggs]

Here's a method that works pretty well I‘ll try to describe in brief

Basically plot points on Electri-Q showing the loudness you hear...like suppose right now you hear 2800Hz is 6dB louder than frequencies around it so you have 2800Hz -6dB as a point...but dunno the bandwidth. Well you listen to a few frequencies on Sinegen, close to the peak say 2000 2500 3200 3800, exact frequencies depend on how sharp the peak is, then plot points on Electri-Q showing the frequencies and dB levels just like with the peak itself. Do this with all the peaks you hear.

Now here‘s the thing... right click on all the points you've made and select “bypass“. Now the actual EQ curve will be flat but you'll have a dotted outline showing the shape of each peak you heard, including exactly how sharp it is and whether it slants more in one direction. Save this using M->export preset.

Here's an example of what you'll get at this point

Notice the points showing the peaks at 5500Hz, 8000Hz and 12000Hz and the troughs at 6500Hz and 9500Hz.  It's a bit messy at this point but if you're the one who created the plot you'll remember what is what.

Now you try to recreate the plot with the actual EQ curve. Leave the plot points bypassed and add actual control points, adjusting the frequency, amplitude and BW of each point until you recreate the shape of the plot with the minimum number of control points.
 
Here's an example of what you'll get at this point

 
Finally find all the control points, right click to un-bypass then press the Del key to delete each one until all the control points are deleted and you‘re left with just the control points and your targetted EQ curve.
 
Here's an example of the final result

Notice how the control points at 5500Hz, 8000Hz and 12000Hz are not quite as low as the plot points.  This is because the control points affect each other even at narrow bandwidth.

It's important to find and delete all the plot points because Electri-Q doesn't remember whether a point is bypassed in its saves, at least with the trial version.

Now save your completed EQ again. BTW, the trial version sometimes messes loads, if the loaded curve is not as you remember it, load again, if it still doesn't work, look for a point that is locked at BW 2.8 and delete that point and load again.
 
edit: updated with illustrations of the process

 

[Magick Man]

I spent a week, yeah a week, going through my favorite headphones and setting the EQ according to this guide. The difference is amazing!

Of course, the cans that I own which are bright, I left a little bright. Same thing with different traits with mids. I tried to preserve some of the flavor of all of them while making them more balanced. This is really fantastic and I thoroughly enjoyed the process.

Thanks very much for the info.

 

[Joe Bloggs]

I updated my post above regarding tuning bandwidth of cuts using Sinegen instead of pink noise with illustrations of the process.  See two posts above this one.

 

[maxdot]

Quote:

I updated my post above regarding tuning bandwidth of cuts using Sinegen instead of pink noise with illustrations of the process.  See two posts above this one.

Yep, much more easy to understand now, thanks.
 
 

 

[Magick Man]

Okay, so I was scolded by my elderly headphone buddy and told that I'm "butchering the sound" from my cans by using EQ. I've been enjoying my HE-6s and he came over the give them a listen this morning to compare them to his HD800s, that I'd been babysitting for him while he was on vacation. Overall, he was mightily impressed and thought the HiFiMANs were brilliant. However, he was shocked to find out that I use EQ to tame some of the more peaky highs. I explained that it's in software, before it's converted to analog. There's no loss of quality, I'm just making them more neutral in sound to match my ears, since that's a very individual thing. I'm not killing the "sparkle', just removing a little subjective harshness. Well, he barely stopped short of calling me a heathen and a heretic. He was also critical of my big Kenwood amp, ignoring the fact that it puts out ~15W (into 50Ω) of amazingly black and neutral power from the phones out, he claimed that it isn't "proper amplification" for high end headphones. :rolleyes:

Seriously, where do people get these funky notions and prejudices?

 

[maxdot]

Quote:

Okay, so I was scolded by my elderly headphone buddy and told that I'm "butchering the sound" from my cans by using EQ. I've been enjoying my HE-6s and he came over the give them a listen this morning to compare them to his HD800s, that I'd been babysitting for him while he was on vacation. Overall, he was mightily impressed and thought the HiFiMANs were brilliant. However, he was shocked to find out that I use EQ to tame some of the more peaky highs. I explained that it's in software, before it's converted to analog. There's no loss of quality, I'm just making them more neutral in sound to match my ears, since that's a very individual thing. I'm not killing the "sparkle', just removing a little subjective harshness. Well, he barely stopped short of calling me a heathen and a heretic.

He was also critical of my big Kenwood amp, ignoring the fact that it puts out ~15W (into 50Ω) of amazingly black and neutral power from the phones out, he claimed that it isn't "proper amplification" for high end headphones.

Seriously, where do people get these funky notions and prejudices?

Sounds annoying to me. He just can't accept that you beat him, that's all.
 
People are closed minded unfortunately more often than what would benifit them (in order to relearn better strategies). Old habits and beliefs will be defended if that is what they want to cling on to. Just basic human nature. What you said probably defied what he has always believed in, that's all. Just realize he's stuck and move on.
 
 

 

[misha0209]

Hi,
 
I've read part of this thread some time back to figure out how to eq correctly. Glad to see it's still going
 
I'd like to ask all the foobar2k users on this thread a question. What VST component are you using to get the Electri-Q vst working in foobar, without having it crash?
I'm using [size=small]VST[/size][size=small] 2.4 adapter (foo_vst), and am getting a lot of crashes especially when loading/saving presets.[/size]
 
Should i give up on the VST component and get the one for winamp along with the winamp dsp bridge, or is that even buggier?
 
Thanks!
 

 

[Roller]

Quote:

Hi,
 
I've read part of this thread some time back to figure out how to eq correctly. Glad to see it's still going
 
I'd like to ask all the foobar2k users on this thread a question. What VST component are you using to get the Electri-Q vst working in foobar, without having it crash?
I'm using [size=small]VST[/size][size=small] 2.4 adapter (foo_vst), and am getting a lot of crashes especially when loading/saving presets.[/size]
 
Should i give up on the VST component and get the one for winamp along with the winamp dsp bridge, or is that even buggier?
 
Thanks!
 

 
There are two VST wrappers available for foobar2000, VST 2.4 adapter (foo_vst) and George Yohng's VST wrapper (foo_dsp_vstwrap). They work differently and have different VST success rates, to a point where none is recommended over the other. If foo_vst isn't working for you, try foo_dsp_vstwrap, but keep in mind that due to the nature of the components, they will always be flagged as unstable by foobar2000's online compatibility report, but pay no attention to this as they both work rather well on their own.

 

[misha0209]

Well i never cared much if an app is flagged as unstable... if it works for me i'm happy
 
Also lied a bit in my first post. i actually tried George Yohng's VST wrapper. it proved to be ROCK solid. in about 8 hours of use, not a single crash, whereas the VST2.4 adaptor used to crash at least once an hour.
Problem is to my ears the VST2.4 adaptor sounded better. George Yohng's VST wrapper turned Electri-Q into the graphic eq component of foobar. it sounded as though the peaks of the music were simply not as high, like the music was a bit restrained, washed out... also both the graphic eq and George Yohng's VST wrapper messed with positioning of elements that had more body in the frequencies i eq'd. this is what made me want to go away from graphic eq component i used for a year...
At first i dismissed it as placebo, but when i started to take notice of it more and more, i converted a file with the 2 solutions, using the EXACT same settings. then bit compared. they were different.
 
Still, thanks! so i'm out of luck then, no other components except the 2?

 

[Roller]

Quote:

Well i never cared much if an app is flagged as unstable... if it works for me i'm happy
 
Also lied a bit in my first post. i actually tried George Yohng's VST wrapper. it proved to be ROCK solid. in about 8 hours of use, not a single crash, whereas the VST2.4 adaptor used to crash at least once an hour.
Problem is to my ears the VST2.4 adaptor sounded better. George Yohng's VST wrapper turned Electri-Q into the graphic eq component of foobar. it sounded as though the peaks of the music were simply not as high, like the music was a bit restrained, washed out... also both the graphic eq and George Yohng's VST wrapper messed with positioning of elements that had more body in the frequencies i eq'd. this is what made me want to go away from graphic eq component i used for a year...
At first i dismissed it as placebo, but when i started to take notice of it more and more, i converted a file with the 2 solutions, using the EXACT same settings. then bit compared. they were different.
 
Still, thanks! so i'm out of luck then, no other components except the 2?

I'm just giving a heads up in case you or someone else unexpectedly found the compatibility report and was alarmed
 
I don't really believe in SQ differences between those two wrappers as their output works in similar ways, it's just the hooks and interface that's different.
 
I've had to bounce between George Yohng's VST wrapper and VST 2.4 adapter, starting with the former, then changing to the latter as the idea of having tighter integration with foobar2000 sounded great and worked great for a long time until the latest version of Ozone refused to work with it, forcing me to go once again to George Yohng's VST wrapper. But I can safely say that both wrappers were easy to use and quite capable through their different ways.
 
AFAIK, there are only those two so far. You can always have separate foobar2000 installations with different component selection and configurations.

 

[indy5]

Quote:

Listen very carefully and try to determine where there are sharp, sudden increases in volume. The bass should be more or less smooth, with peaks in the response becoming noticeable after 1kHz or so. Pay careful attention to the area between 6 and 8kHz, as in my experience most ear canal resonances occur in this area.

I don't know if someone else has said this already, but I for one am not hearing any sudden increase in volume when doing that. Quite the opposite, in fact. I'm hearing a gradual decrease in volume, followed by a gradual return. This happens two times. First, between 5700hz and 6500hz, and the second time, between 7900hz and 9000hz. What's going on here?
 
If it's any indication, I'm using a pair of Sennheiser HD202's.

 

[Mama70]

Nice thread to read indeed.
 
I've been doing some equalization for my Sennheiser HD595's but I made the curves only visually using the headphone measurements from this site(the smoothed curves, not the raw ones) . For equalization I use VAC+VstHost+Convolver combo.
 
So i tried complete equalization using intructions from this thread, SineGen as signal generator and some sweeps played in songbird, and Electri-Q for equalization. I tried this equalization for two different times, starting from scratch both times. I could get the sweep quite smooth but when I started listening the music there was something missing. The feeling of space was gone. Of course this was easiest to discover in live recordings but something was missign also in drums for instance, maybe because they contain low and high notes.
 
For reference I used Pink Floyd's Pulse but in Orbital's Live at Glastonbury I could hear individual people shouting at the audience and locate them but with flat equalization  the sound was, well, flat. For low frequency tests I like to use Massive Attack's Angel but better tracks for drums are Afrotrance's Flying dreams or Dead Can Dance's Yulunga.
 
I'm not so much an audiophile that i could solve this dilemma quickly so for now I continue using my old equalization. Main point of my post is maybe equalization to flat response is not always the best solution.

 

[OPrwtos]

After 6-7 months have i finally EQ'ed my k701's to their best ability? 
 
I used SineGen and this is what i got - 
 

 
I know the top end looks quite intricate lol

 

[R18A]

thanks for sharing such detail