"I tried the above settings (without the treble adjustment) and was positively surprised by the result. I also checked for my ear canal resonance, but was not able to detect any. I have read somewhere on this site that due to deep insertion the resonance should be around 13 kHz, which might explain why it didn't occur to me (I'm not the youngest). Are you sure you inserted them real deep (brain piercingly deep)? And did you use a certain type of tips or do these settings work regardless of tips? (I could try it myself, but am currently using my hf5 with Shure black olives, which are so hard to remove fro the stem.)"
Those were for the HF2 so should be right for the HF5 (apart from canal resonance, of course).
I am almost certain that at the time I was using the grey/large triple flange. I didn't have them buried that deep. I found that isolation seemed to suffer and audio was (perhaps) slightly muffled when as deep as that. That maybe because I have a deviated ear canal (which Tyll Hertson also has; and whose articles alerted me to this possibility) on my right ear. I can tell this with some degree of certainty because ear plugs won't go deep on the right ear however much force I use; and tend to pop out by morning. So YMMV.
If I do go brain-deep then it rather feels like the first flange goes inside out and is a rather disconcerting feeling, then followed by a seeming loss of isolation/muffling. I haven't sine-swept this; maybe tomorrow. 13Khz is approaching my own limit as I'm well beyond my teens, and I can hear not much beyond 14Khz on any phones. But, yes, brain deep resonance may be significantly higher than 8.5Khz.
As for the 8500Hz hump: it's clearly audible to me, and it's as sharp and pronounced as I detailed.
It would appear, however, that I have the HF2s deeper in than
these guys had their etymotics.
I remember that page from some time ago, but your post inspired me to find it again. Note that they also equalised out at about 3Khz and also 5db. I totally don't remember that detail and am thoroughly pleased with myself.
However, I must admit that I didn't spot the approx 3Khz hump until a post at innerfidelity detailed the passive vs diffuse field theory issue, and that etymotics had a hump of seemingly 12db at 3Khz according to innerfidelity 'grey' unadjusted frequency charts (ie, rather than the applied "head transfer" theory, coloured freuency line, which makes up their official result and which seems to accord to the etymotic's diffuse-field - wrong - theory). I tried -12db and it was far too strong and eventually arrived at -5db; like that link.
It's still a wonder to me that I didn't spot the 3Khz hump when I first sine-swept the HF2. However, apart from subscribing to the O2 designer's 'expectation bias' theory, I have to say that piccolo's technique of using SineGen2 to manually (via the mouse) do this has not been as good for detecting humps for me as simple 'ticking' sweeps; where the sweep is a wav file which 'ticks' at specific frequency boundaries such as at 1Khz and then 2Khz, 3Khz, 4Khz etc, both fro finding humps AND their widths. I'll see if I can find the website that generates those wav files for your convenience tomorrow. (Warning: set a lower volume as sinesweeping is very high-intensity, generally rather protracted, and so may cause hearing damage; the crackling I got on one or two occasions still has me worried and I definitely have developed a mild case of tinnitus, only noticeable in near silence, though on only one ear so it's difficult to blame it on sinesweeping).
What I can tell you, as an interesting aside, is that the bass on the etymotics, with that equalisation I detailed, is delicate sounding compared to my equalised Superlux 681F (F for flat) full sized phones. Delicate and yet highly sensually pleasurable compared to the Superluxes, which is just, well, bass. Very much depends on the music, however. It's for me an extraordinary and unexpected finding. I've been trying to find a way to replicate the effect on the Superluxes, which have wonderful soundstange that the HF2s lack, with a stronger negative bass equalisation on them. Not worked so far; I just lose bass which was already weak. Accudio have a Superlux equalisation for the plain 681s (and maybe also also the 681Fs if memory serves). However my buddy has run off back home with his ipod so I don't know what it it at the present time. Maybe it'll give me that Etymotic delicate/pleasing bass.
