[Beagle]

Quote:

umm beagle, it actually does. a little.
 

 
EQ can change the positioning of instruments and voices and imaging of same? I don't think so. Those are in the recording. If you wanted to change that, you'd need to remix. If a headphone has a well-matched set of drivers, pads and housings, you should hear this. The most a headphone can do by itself is move the drivers away from the ears, giving an exaggerated sense of space.

 

[streetdragon]

Quote:

 
EQ can change the positioning of instruments and voices and imaging of same? I don't think so. Those are in the recording. If you wanted to change that, you'd need to remix. If a headphone has a well-matched set of drivers, pads and housings, you should hear this. The most a headphone can do by itself is move the drivers away from the ears, giving an exaggerated sense of space.

it can remove center clutterness by a certain degree (before it starts to sound awfully hollow), and widen soundstage overall by a little. it's possible to push back certain frequencies if needed (depends on preference) it can't really change imaging , but it can widen it.
 

 

[Eisenhower]

Quote:

Three questions. One, why only 'close', or are we assuming a lack of ability on the part of the EQ user (see the paragraph above yours)? It's not an unreasonable assumption in general terms, but for the argument I'd rather assume perfect use. Two, what are the reasons it wouldn't have the same distortion characteristics? Three, for that matter, would you be able to hear by ear the difference in distortion between an HD 650 and a functioning vintage ortho? Regarding the angled drivers; the ortho won't have HD 650 written on its side either, but that should make as much difference as whether the drivers are angled or not. We're interested in changing the sound waves that arrive to the eardrum, which is what angling the drivers does, and which is what EQ does. Also, on the subject of imaging, it's possible (from having seen channel balance measurements) that the HD 650 will have mismatched drivers, hindering its imaging. Via EQ and certainly more specifically via convolution, the channel imbalance can be corrected and the imaging improved.

 
Even using measurements, I don't think it is possible (nor necessary) to get a perfect match between the frequency responses. But yeah, just doing EQ by ear (which is what most people do) will not result in a perfect replication of the sound signature unless you have crazy good hearing. But assuming you can do it perfectly is pretty silly.
 
They won't have the same distortion characteristics because open, dynamic headphones are completely different than ortho headphones. Namely, for low frequencies (below 100Hz), open dynamic headphones always have more distortion because the driver is moving freely with no resistance. There are also other physical properties of the driver diaphragm that might result in more distortion for the orthos at higher frequencies.
 
I don't understand your response about the angle drivers. Seems like you are conceding but are quibbling about channel imbalance with the hd650, which is irrelevant (and not true). I actually said earlier that EQ can change imaging in some regards, but that change the fact that angled drivers add something which EQ cannot replicate.

 

[vid]

Quote:

but for now i just cant see how it is possible with differences in distortion,decay,resonances,earcup sound reflection and refraction,transient responce and others. as far as i know it is impossible to overcome those with just the eq. if you do succeed and prove me wrong well thats good then i would like to hear about it.

 
I already have proved you wrong as far as all the items on your list minus distortion are concerned. Even in distortion I've partially proved you wrong when one considers that any skew in the frequency response is distortion. I've given you links to this proof, but you forget (I think you forgot in about two hours).
 
Quote:

EQ can change the positioning of instruments and voices and imaging of same? I don't think so. Those are in the recording. If you wanted to change that, you'd need to remix. If a headphone has a well-matched set of drivers, pads and housings, you should hear this. The most a headphone can do by itself is move the drivers away from the ears, giving an exaggerated sense of space.

 
Depends on the context - you can change the positioning of a certain instrument if you know the frequency range taken up by that instrument and if no other instrument is enroaching on that range. Whether this would be a realistic effect, I don't know. In any case, a pair of headphones can hardly claim to change the positioning of individual instruments any better than that - whether a pair of headphones has this or that imaging will simply boil down to the sound that comes to your eardrum which your brain then processes for positional cues. And the claim is that if you can mimic that sound, you've mimicked the soundstage.

 

[streetdragon]

hmm yeah my bad i forgot about them, i guess i shall have a look through it then

well my apologies for my pointless uhh.... points i kept pressing on here. i guess i should have read through the material before posting

really cool stuff going on there btw

 

[Hooster]

So, on topic. Vid, using the type of EQ you are talking about, convolved eq, what would someone who wishes to remove the "Sennheiser veil" need to do in terms of labor and how much would the hardware and software needed to achieve this cost? Would you consider such a procedure superior to simply buying a pair of HD800 cans?
 
It may not be very well understood in this thread that the eq you are talking about is very different from what most people understand as eq.

 

[Eisenhower]

I already have proved you wrong as far as all the items on your list minus distortion are concerned. Even in distortion I've partially proved you wrong when one considers that any skew in the frequency response is distortion. I've given you links to this proof, but you forget (I think you forgot in about two hours).


Depends on the context - you can change the positioning of a certain instrument if you know the frequency range taken up by that instrument and if no other instrument is enroaching on that range. Whether this would be a realistic effect, I don't know. In any case, a pair of headphones can hardly claim to change the positioning of individual instruments any better than that - whether a pair of headphones has this or that imaging will simply boil down to the sound that comes to your eardrum which your brain then processes for positional cues. And the claim is that if you can mimic that sound, you've mimicked the soundstage.

You can't change the position of an instrument by changing the frequency response, which is what standard EQ does. There are weird sound processors that do other things, but they in general are not ideal.

Now, having a nice flat frequency response is beneficial for revealing instruments which contribute to the apparent sound stage... but it won't change their actual positions. To do that, you have to actually change the driver placement, which EQ cannot mimic. The reason driver placement matters is because studios mix the music using monitors placed in front of them, not at the sides of their heads like headphones do. The headphone which is widely regarded as having the best sound stage is the AKG k1000 because it lets you angle the drivers as though they were speakers. The HD6xx headphones have similar, albeit less extreme, angled drivers.
This is also why so few IEMs have good sound stage / imaging.


I think you are overstating the ability of EQ. It pains me to say it because 99% of audiophiles greatly understate it.
The biggest limitation of EQ, and one of the reasons it gets a bad rap, is that people tend to use it to increase bass which is a bad idea for open dynamic headphones since they all have lots of distortion below 100Hz. But this isn't a problem with EQ, it is a problem with the inherent design of the headphone.

Back to the main topic, I think it is pretty clear that the answer is: YES, you can remove the "veil" by increasing the treble (by decreasing everything else) with EQ.

 

[stv014]

Quote:

I think you are overstating the ability of EQ. It pains me to say it because 99% of audiophiles greatly understate it.

 
It depends on how you define "EQ". For vid, it is apparently anything that you can do by convolution, so it can be any linear time invariant processing. This can be generalized to having a pair of impulse responses (left and right headphone channel) for each input channel (e.g. a total of 4 for stereo input), so it is possible to create crossfeed, virtual surround, placing a mono source in a 3D space with reverberation, and of course equalizing the frequency/phase response. With that very broad interpretation of "EQ", it is indeed possible to manipulate the sound stage.

 

[Eisenhower]

It depends on how you define "EQ". For vid, it is apparently anything that you can do by convolution, so it can be any linear time invariant processing. This can be generalized to having a pair of impulse responses (left and right headphone channel) for each input channel (e.g. a total of 4 for stereo input), so it is possible to create crossfeed, virtual surround, placing a mono source in a 3D space with reverberation, and of course equalizing the frequency/phase response. With that very broad interpretation of "EQ", it is indeed possible to manipulate the sound stage.

Yeah I mentioned the exceptions in my post, and referred to EQ as "standard" EQ:

You can't change the position of an instrument by changing the frequency response, which is what standard EQ does. There are weird sound processors that do other things, but they in general are not ideal.

Of course you can manipulate the sound stage with all sort of different processing tricks, but it isn't going to replicate the use of angled drivers, at least not with any reasonable amount of effort.

Most crossfeed circuits aren't really meant to improve sound stage as much as they are to prevent headaches from extreme channel separation. I mean, does playing mono music through IEMs sound as if the music was coming in front of you? No, not really.

 

[streetdragon]

so i am still technically correct in the end. since it is impossible with the standard eq, no matter if its parametric or a graphic with over 9000 bands.
it appears it was a simple misunderstanding again

 

[morijinal]

This one is pretty interesting - it makes the sound cleaner, and it sounds less compressed in the midrange. The bump at 16k adds a nice edge to the highs. The bump at 60 and the subsequent valley make the bass a little more prominent without spilling into the mids. The bump at 1k represents vocals. I named it "Divided" for obvious reasons.
 

 

[Gallade475]

so, i was wondering, would it be best to get a DT880 and eq down the treble spike and boost the mids a tiny bit, Or get hd600 and boost the highs and the subbass? If i do that then it comes down to qualities that don't depend on frequency response like durability, bass control, detail, and decay yada, yada, yada.
 
So in short, if i was using eq on both headphones, which one would be better?
 
I listen to everything. If i find a band i like, i listen to it. so i have no defined taste other than good or bad.

 

[TMRaven]

Eq'ing the sub-bass will be much, much harder.  Sub-bass is moreso about the physical limitations of the driver/enclosure than the actual frequency balance.  You can make the sub-bass louder, but it won't be more impactful or as tight.  Eq'ing the treble down can produce cleaner results with an EQ.  Playing around with the mids can be quite tricky with an EQ.

 

[streetdragon]

drivers that aren't capable of making much subbass really can't make much subbass even though you put like a +12 on it, if you do so it would become rather bloated and bleed into the midbass. while not increasing the subbass that much themselves. 
for the vocals the 1khz point affects the forwardness, the 500hz mostly affects the lower vocal and the body of the sound, 2khz gives the vocals energy.

well i don't have either headphone so i wouldn't know, if i do i would probably be able to tell you though

 

[Gallade475]

DT880 it is then i always liked the metal construction over the hd600's plastic anyways. and the coiled cable is a big plus for me since I will be getting the pro version.