[Gradofan2]

The HD650s and Aphex 204 is a "marraige made in heaven" - "perks" them right up, makes them sound like real headphones, without any distortions.

Very subtle, very tunable sound - which makes them sound "alive."

 

[Shahrose]

when you say EQ, you mean software presets, when most of us say EQ here, we're referring to either hardware eq or software eq and actually customizing it ourselves. it totally depends on what you're using. preset EQ's are always crap (especially on ipods), you might luckily find 1 out of the 10 or so provided that actually sounds decent with a particular headphone and even then it will tend to distort and certain music may sound painfully bad.

the reason your sennheiser's don't benefit from the eq settings is 1) none of the presets actually improve the warm sennheiser sound (the presets just don't match the sound characteristics of the senns) 2) the presets add distortion which your previous sony's weren't able to show you and your sennheisers are revealing it.

i've experimented with the foobar equalizer so much that i can seriously make any headphone sound like the way i want (well, almost), and without any distortion or volume effects.
try it yourself.

 

[LnxPrgr3]

I've not noticed this, as long as I'm careful to do one of two things:

• Cut rather than boosting frequencies
• Turn the 'preamp' slider down by at least as much as I've turned the highest slider up

If you don't do one of these, it's easy to cause clipping, especially if you're boosting the lower frequencies.