https://www.innerfidelity.com/content/harman-tweaks-its-headphone-target-response
I wanna discuss harman target for in-ears headphones
i see
1) a good sub bass boost and lowered upper mid bass to reduce mid bass bleed and muddiness which is good
2) a high peak at 3khz which i dont understand (for better harmonics maybe)
3) a relatively high 8khz need explanation for that (better cymbals maybe)
4) a sharp rolloff at 16khz for in ears ( why not 20khz?)
i was looking for one ideal allround equalization for my KZ ES4 and Rose North Forest separately so i came across this article posted here in some thread i dont remember
I think that the sub boost is a bit too much (remember, they are trying to find flat response) but everything else I agree with. Without a proper boost of 8-10dB starting at 1K and peaking at 3K voices become dark and not clear enough. Sharp rolloff in the end is irrelevant, there is almost no information above 15K meaning that you can do pretty much whatever you want here with frequency response without damaging anything.
Since we are on the KZ topic, I'd say that pretty much all of the hybrid KZs have a boosted 2K, that is, they even peak at 2K in some instances which is very low actually (in my experience, it's better to peak later than 3K then much earlier), then there is a huge dip where treble information is lost and a not ideal peak around 10K.