[BS5711]

Thank you!
There's been quite a bit of reading down a rabbit hole since you posted this and a lot more research still to do.
I found the 10 band table this is from. I didn't like the recommended pre-amp gain adjustment and, as you pointed out, the bass in bands 1 and 2, but I've created a preset in iTunes for the rest of it.
Early days yet but... big improvement.
At the start of Foo Fighters My Hero there is actually some attack on the drums rather than it sounding like he's just slapping jelly.
Howlin' Wolf's voice on Smokestack Lightnin' actually has some bite to it.
Metallica's The Shortest Straw on ...And Justice For All - The drums... WOW. Finally some life! A much more realistic attacking edge.

I could go on but I think some version of this adjustment will have to factor into anything going forward.
Very interesting. As an ex audiophile purist, this would have once been anathema to me.

I only use EQ sparingly with some gear and some IEM because it isn't convenient with the gear I use but if you have a set up that allows it readily it can work wonders.

Glad to hear it is working out for you. It is very disappointing to not like new gear.

I am sure over time you will progress and refine your set up but it sounds like you have made some really good progress in a matter of hours.

First time I was put onto to EQ a chap recommended setting for a very wonky sounding IEM that I had at that time and it was like listening to an entirely different set of IEM. That one involved several areas with boosts and reductions in the realm of 12 db if I recall. It was unlistenable without EQ !

 

[LobalWarming]

I could go on but I think some version of this adjustment will have to factor into anything going forward.
Very interesting. As an ex audiophile purist, this would have once been anathema to me.

Having been on both sides of the glass, both sides of the recording, the only way being an audiophile purist makes sense is if one listens only to minimal mic'd acoustic music - without any added compression, EQ or 'colourful' A2D convertor. Or any application of mastering 'polish'.

So many impure things and methods go into making the average rock recording it curdles the purist's earwax without even touching the multi-band compressor or bit-crushing clipper.

Adding a little end-of-chain personal headphone EQ is not a crime against purity. It's barely jaywalking across a deserted street at night compared to the mass recording chain atrocities committed with glee by paid audio mercenaries.

 

[Angel III]

Good idea in my opinion, pays to keep the good lady sweet

The HD6.. ear pads don't last forever and you will need to replace them at some stage if you use the headphone enough but do be aware that pads can change the sound very significantly indeed. I initially thought the set of ZMF that I bought sounded good because there was more zing and openness to the sound but within a few hours I could not stand them. Swapping back to stock pads was a breath of fresh air and I ordered a spare set to have on hand when needed. Don't underestimate the difference they make thinking perhaps that they are fine tuning, they are not, they are gross tuning.

Cables .... I will leave you to assess for yourself what headphone cables do or don't do I have spent more money on cables for various headphones and IEM than I would ever admit to my wife but I do so because they give me pride of ownership, I have never noticed a sonic change, not once with probably a couple of dozen cables at least.

Parametric EQ .... just a more refined version of the equaliser that you have been trying. It allows tweaking very specific frequency ranges by inserting numeric values to influence exactly what you want up or down. What you are essentially doing with the push in the upper frequencies is probably some version of what they call a "high shelf" where everything above a certain chosen frequency is increased by a certain chosen db amount and the area at the bottom of the chosen frequency is blended in by a smooth curve with a rate/shape also set to your preference. I have messed with it enough to know a little but am a long way from an expert and can't really guide you on specific software etc for your set up. You can find online resources like "oratory1990" that allow you to enter the various parameters and that usually gives a pretty good starting point for subtle tweaking to personal taste.

https://www.reddit.com/r/oratory1990/wiki/index/list_of_presets/

The below is for he HD650 - you can see the bass is pushed up by bands 1 and 2 which you would probably not want and the treble is lifted over a broad range by bands 7, 8 and 9. The bits in between are tweaking variations from a smooth frequency response curve. The Q factor is the range over which the change from the peak occurs, basically altering the steepness or shallowness of the curve that transitions the peak change back into the curve either side where no EQ is occurring or blending it into some other EQ adjusted curve.

My HD650 are always equalized with the DBX 1231.. happy with this excellent combination. I attach my curve:

 

[ExiledSpeakerAficionado]

RealPhone update:
Installed alongside reading the manual
Followed setup procedure and played with a sample file - Prince's Purple Rain.
Headphones Target - Harman was so vibrant and fun for the first several minutes until my ears felt like they were beginning to bleed from the sound being too sharp. This music malarkey is a fine balance! I tried reducing the brightness setting but it lost its joy and became muffled. More experimentation and fine balance would be needed - once my ears recover!
Followed the manual for the system output to go through it rather than my dac and played iTunes only to have the music stuttering several times per second.
Reread the manual then emailed support.

An update on this issue:
Mac OS Sonoma 14.7 has an app called audio midi setup.
The entry for my arcam dac was set at 48kHz, but the entry for Realphones System-Wide was only 44.1kHz. Changing this to 48kHz resolved the stuttering issue.

Provisional results:
Using "Headphone Targets - Harman" and reducing brightness to 0.0db, (with iTunes equaliser off), the vocals on Pink Floyds The Great Gig In The Sky are once more something to relish and lose yourself within.
Comparing the Realphones adjustment on and off, shows that it is the lower mids have been cleaned up or reduced, providing the upper mids of her voice with the space to come to the fore.
Comparing Realphones to the modified Oratory1990 equaliser adjustments, the equaliser retains the coloured upper mids whilst injecting more life in transients.

Without the skills or experience of adjusting equaliser settings, the Realphones option is looking like the best bet for finding a balance suitable to my ears. I still want to experiment rolling tubes though.

edit: Realphones is using about 20-25% CPU. More of a draw than I would like.

 

[LobalWarming]

An update on this issue:
Mac OS Sonoma 14.7 has an app called audio midi setup.
The entry for my arcam dac was set at 48kHz, but the entry for Realphones System-Wide was only 44.1kHz. Changing this to 48kHz resolved the stuttering issue.

Provisional results:
Using "Headphone Targets - Harman" and reducing brightness to 0.0db, (with iTunes equaliser off), the vocals on Pink Floyds The Great Gig In The Sky are once more something to relish and lose yourself within.
Comparing the Realphones adjustment on and off, shows that it is the lower mids have been cleaned up or reduced, providing the upper mids of her voice with the space to come to the fore.
Comparing Realphones to the modified Oratory1990 equaliser adjustments, the equaliser retains the coloured upper mids whilst injecting more life in transients.

Without the skills or experience of adjusting equaliser settings, the Realphones option is looking like the best bet for finding a balance suitable to my ears. I still want to experiment rolling tubes though.

edit: Realphones is using about 20-25% CPU. More of a draw than I would like.

Good work! We'll make you into a studio monkey yet.

Sorry about the CPU use. RP uses less than 1% CPU on my rigs. It's actually quite an efficient plugin.

Once you get your pair of Siemens E86Cs with Deyan's adapter, going to be even more relish and losing yourself. After you've built a small stash of a dozen 5670 variants.

 

[MindBreak]

Ordered a longer length of my favorite RCA cables for my Vali 3 in preparation for rearranging my desk setup for the Yggy.
https://www.amazon.com/4-5-Foot-Aud...on-Interconnect/dp/B01EL1XCBW?ref_=ast_sto_dp
Ordering my Yggy next week, and I will have to move the Vali 3 to the other side of the desk once it arrives.

 

[HWB3]

That's like me spending half of what I paid for the amp on a tube. But if it sounds good, then do it! Good luck with your Yggy. You've been looking forward to that.

 

[MindBreak]

That's like me spending half of what I paid for the amp on a tube. But if it sounds good, then do it! Good luck with your Yggy. You've been looking forward to that.

Thanks, I have been eyeing the Yggy since I purchased my first piece of Schiit. Yeah, I don't really look at my cable/tube purchases in terms of relative cost either. Like you said "if it sounds good, then do it", that cable sounds more detailed and airy, yet balanced across the frequency spectrum than others I have tried. You get a better representation of what the amp/tube sounds like vs others (at least in my opinion).

 

[jonathan c]

**That's like me spending half of what I paid for the amp on a tube**. But if it sounds good, then do it! Good luck with your Yggy. You've been looking forward to that.

** a milestone well passed! ....

 

[plakat]

Prepared for travel…

 

[Deadwax65]

Prepared for travel…

Good idea. But I would want to remove the tube before traveling.

 

[plakat]

Good idea. But I would want to remove the tube before traveling.

Yes, obviously it’s better to remove the tube. The photo was just from fitting the foam, I took out both thereafter.

 

[bcowen]

Prepared for travel…

Nice!!

 

[RBRIII]

In this week's tube rotation, the 70's era C.G. Conn Ltd branded Sylvania 12AU7A. I must admit, upon rolling them in after it'd been a while since I listened to them, I was not impressed with the bass at all. An ~8 hour period of running some bass-centric tunes on them worked all of that out. Granted, it could have been any music that would have helped warm them up some more but I figured why not add some bass to the "workout" as well? These are another great all-rounder imho, I almost overlooked how well these play most all genres of music.

 

[sghound]

vali3 & the mullard ecc33