james444
Headphoneus Supremus
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- Aug 25, 2004
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Does anyone use peq with Serratus? If so can you share your settings?
I do. But take these with a grain of salt, because the frequency response of flathead earbuds depends very much on individual fit.
To illustrate what I mean, here's a set of RAW measurements of the Rose Maria II earbuds with just tenth of millimeters variation in fit. You can see the resulting differences in frequency response, which are significant below 1kHz:
That being said, here's the measured FR of Serratus that correlates most plausibly with what I hear. I've put it up against the Monoprice M350 planar earphones, which are my personal benchmark for neutrality. For convenience, I use diffuse-field compensation, so true neutral would be a horizontal line:
(red = Serratus DF-comp, green = M350 DF-comp, gray = Serratus RAW)
Compared to the M350, Serratus has moderate bass elevation that extends well into the lower mids. I can hear the difference in that M350's mid/upper bass sounds tighter and more detailed, whereas Serratus is slightly more reverberant and less defined in comparison. The difference isn't much, but easily noticeable in A/B.
Past 7kHz, Serratus has significant excess treble energy with a peak around 9kHz, whereas the M350 only starts to rise higher up and peaks around 12kHz. With my ageing ears, I can bear M350's treble without EQ-ing, but not Serratus' energy between 7-10kHz, which introduces some sibilance and skews the note-weight of cymbals towards thinness.
So I've resorted to EQ Serratus (in Neutron Player) with a peak filter of -3dB and a Q of 0.667 at 100Hz to tighten the bass a bit. And I use another peak filter of -5dB and a Q of 2.5 at 9.5kHz to tame excessive treble. Note that I used my measurement just as a reference point, but EQ-ing has been done by ear until I felt it sounded right for me.
My personal need for EQ-ing the Serratus notwithstanding, I think that these are very good earbuds and the best sounding flatheads I've heard so far.
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