The DIY'rs Cookbook

[johnjen]

I'm hopping that we can send in a 'variety' of other HPs to get some curves for them, so we can begin to use them with a better match inside of the sonarworks plug-in.

Audeze's, HiFi Man, etc are all missing from their available averaged HP list.

I know my modded 800's no longer 'fit' the stock 800 curve, even though the averaged (and no limits) curve works fairly well.
But recently I'm playing with EQ to adjust the mid range to better match up my 800's

I just wish there was a way to NOT have to ship them to Latvia.
Besides the time frame (2+ weeks) and cost ($300+) there is the real issue of damage or getting lost or stolen etc.

Ahhhh, the horror stories that I've heard…

JJ :atsmile:

 

[connieflyer]

Have been playing around with the 700's and the 800 curve, thought I would try the 650's and 65' curve and did not like it at all.  But plugged my 700's back in with the 650 curve and played around with settings, and like what I hear.  In JRIver I use the -6 Tilt and +3 bass boost.  Can you tell me what the wet/dry button does, could not find anything on their site about it.  With this setting am not using any other tweaks and it sounds a little flatter in the treble and base is good and tight.  Listening to Two Steps from Hell-Icarus and lots of soundstage.

 

[BIG POPPA]

Miller and Kreisel did the Push Pull Phase Reversal with the Subs in 1989. You can check it out here http://www.kreiselsound.com/timeline.php . So when John brought it to my attention, was very familiar with it. Now I'm tweaking it a little different than JJ on my rig.

 

[johnjen]

This is kewl as Schiit…

If you are in anyway interested in tubes, ya gotta watch this.

https://youtu.be/8n4WVRKkmww

JJ

 

[johnjen]

Have been playing around with the 700's and the 800 curve, thought I would try the 650's and 65' curve and did not like it at all.  But plugged my 700's back in with the 650 curve and played around with settings, and like what I hear.  In JRIver I use the -6 Tilt and +3 bass boost.  Can you tell me what the wet/dry button does, could not find anything on their site about it.  With this setting am not using any other tweaks and it sounds a little flatter in the treble and base is good and tight.  Listening to Two Steps from Hell-Icarus and lots of soundstage.

The wet/dry 'ratio' is the amount of the EQ curve that is passed on to the rest of the digital stream.

In effect it can lower how much of the EQ 'contribution' you want to add, down from 100%.
IOW it’s a volume control for the EQ curve you have created.

And playing around with the tilt and bass boost controls is a good way to be able to 'adjust' the total impact that any curve will make on your headphones.

And remember as you change ANYTHING in sonarworks it should also change the SSBB settings, since the goal is to match where and as these 2 EQ settings blend together.

Which means as one EQ setting falls off it should mate up with next EQ curve as the frequency rises (or falls).
Just like a crossover curve on speakers.

So as the amount or frequency of the SSBB is adjusted it will 'match up' with the no limits curve at different places on the sonarworks curve.

JJ

 

[hekeli]

And I truly wish I had the instrumentation to be able to investigate this more fully and try and figure out why this tweak is so effective in our very low power systems.
The conventional thinking is that if I'm using, during extreme peaks, say 100mW to drive my HD800's, (3-600Ω load) from my Rok amp (max power is 1700 to 850 milliwatts) then this PRT really shouldn't make much if any difference.
Except it does. :headscratch

 
Thanks everyone, seems interesting enough. Need some find some plugs now and try with my nfb-1amp, which should have plenty of power too heh..

 

[DougD]

This is kewl as Schiit…

If you are in anyway interested in tubes, ya gotta watch this.

https://youtu.be/8n4WVRKkmww

JJ

 
If I ever complain about the price of quality tubes, somebody please kick me. (But I don't think it will be necessary.) 

 

[Barra]

  Miller and Kreisel did the Push Pull Phase Reversal with the Subs in 1989. You can check it out here http://www.kreiselsound.com/timeline.php . So when John brought it to my attention, was very familiar with it. Now I'm tweaking it a little different than JJ on my rig.

Wow, that is really interesting. I have their MK sub as you can see in my signature and can tell you that I have yet to hear another sub that beats it in terms of clean, hard hitting bass with none of the typical fuzz, vibration, or excess noise that come from lessor subs. Whats funny is that I knew that it was their sealed chamber dual speaker push pull tech that provided the enhanced SQ, but I didn't know until you pointed this out that it was also a phase reversal tech that was responsible. My MK is almost three decades old and makes my new BW sub sound like sh_ _ in comparison. No wonder!

 

[Barra]

This is kewl as Schiit…

If you are in anyway interested in tubes, ya gotta watch this.

https://youtu.be/8n4WVRKkmww

JJ

Seems easy enough, are you going to try making some?   

 

[MrSlim]

I'm hopping that we can send in a 'variety' of other HPs to get some curves for them, so we can begin to use them with a better match inside of the sonarworks plug-in.

Audeze's, HiFi Man, etc are all missing from their available averaged HP list.

I know my modded 800's no longer 'fit' the stock 800 curve, even though the averaged (and no limits) curve works fairly well.
But recently I'm playing with EQ to adjust the mid range to better match up my 800's

I just wish there was a way to NOT have to ship them to Latvia.
Besides the time frame (2+ weeks) and cost ($300+) there is the real issue of damage or getting lost or stolen etc.

Ahhhh, the horror stories that I've heard…

JJ

 
I have been looking at headphone equalization for some time now and was interested in Sonarworks as well, but was put off by the fact that they didn't have the K601 on their list, which would have required a custom measurement.  
 
I also looked into the DIY equalization thread, but being the mostly lazy sort, decided there had to be a better way.  That is when I stumbled onto Tyll's headphone measurement project on Inner Fidelity.  He is trying to measure as many Headphone models as possible and is doing it for free!   He/Inner Fidelity will even pay the UPS shipping both ways if you are located in the US, for any models he has not already measured.  Since you have a modified 800, he may be willing to measure it as a distinct model with mods. If you haven't seen it already, here's the list of headphones that he has already measured: http://www.innerfidelity.com/headphone-data-sheet-downloads.  
 
I sent Tyll my K601's and they are now part of the list.  I now have a baseline measurement to work with and have been looking at purchasing the headphone EQ VST from MathAudio http://mathaudio.com/headphone-eq.htm.
 
Then I would use the process discussed here: 
http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/big-sound-2015-bob-katz-eqing-headphones-harman-target-response#g3fLpJ1GGmo4UiQV.97 to come up with the EQ differences required to match the measured response to the Harman Target response.  

 

[johnjen]

Seems easy enough, are you going to try making some? :blink:

hahahahahahahahaha

I'd need a MUCH bigger house and lab…

JJ :atsmile:

 

[johnjen]

I have been looking at headphone equalization for some time now and was interested in Sonarworks as well, but was put off by the fact that they didn't have the K601 on their list, which would have required a custom measurement.  

I too have been fussing with adding EQ to my setup.
I tried several free and commercial parametric EQ plug-ins but none of them 'clicked' for me, they just didn't really seem to help all that much.
Until I tried Sonarworks.
And yeah they don't have many popular headphones on their list which does limit their wide spread usefulness.

I also looked into the DIY equalization thread, but being the mostly lazy sort, decided there had to be a better way.  That is when I stumbled onto Tyll's headphone measurement project on Inner Fidelity.  He is trying to measure as many Headphone models as possible and is doing it for free!   He/Inner Fidelity will even pay the UPS shipping both ways if you are located in the US, for any models he has not already measured.  Since you have a modified 800, he may be willing to measure it as a distinct model with mods. If you haven't seen it already, here's the list of headphones that he has already measured: http://www.innerfidelity.com/headphone-data-sheet-downloads.  

I too have sent my 800's into Tyll for measurement and now have the results from his measurement setup.
This is my 'baseline' for my further fussing with adding the SSBB and now I'm using an additional EQ plug-in to boost the mids along the lines of the Harmon target curves

I sent Tyll my K601's and they are now part of the list.  I now have a baseline measurement to work with and have been looking at purchasing the headphone EQ VST from MathAudio http://mathaudio.com/headphone-eq.htm.

Then I would use the process discussed here: 
http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/big-sound-2015-bob-katz-eqing-headphones-harman-target-response#g3fLpJ1GGmo4UiQV.97 to come up with the EQ differences required to match the measured response to the Harman Target response.  

Thanks for that link, it looks very promising, and I'll fuss with it as my next EQ experiment.

But one of the more interesting aspects that I have been striving for and have gotten much closer to, is being able to bring up the very bottom end to near flat.
This, once its properly blended into the rest of the spectrum yields rather spectacular results, and in ways that can be quite surprising.
This was my primary emphasis and goal, and the PRT helps enable all of this by 'helping' the amp deliver this low frequency with much greater focus and power.

Thanks for the link, I'll definitely see if I can use it on my Mac

JJ

 

[johnjen]

snip
I sent Tyll my K601's and they are now part of the list.  I now have a baseline measurement to work with and have been looking at purchasing the headphone EQ VST from MathAudio http://mathaudio.com/headphone-eq.htm.

Then I would use the process discussed here: 
http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/big-sound-2015-bob-katz-eqing-headphones-harman-target-response#g3fLpJ1GGmo4UiQV.97 to come up with the EQ differences required to match the measured response to the Harman Target response.  

I downloaded the plugin and played with it a bit.
It is primarily an EQ resonance reduction package.
It will only cut (not boost) frequencies.
And the type of filters available (just one) is fairly limiting as well.

I have been using Toneboosters TB FLX4 plugin which has a TON of different filters but only can have 6 filters used at a time to play with.
Fortunately that is enough for me to compensate the midrange of my modded 800's.

And the interaction between these different filter types can be quite dynamic and useful when trying to mimic actual response curves.



And it has lots of 'control' so the amount of compensation can be 'dialed in'
And it only costs ≈ $23.

JJ

 

[MrSlim]

I downloaded the plugin and played with it a bit.
It is primarily an EQ resonance reduction package.
It will only cut (not boost) frequencies.
And the type of filters available (just one) is fairly limiting as well.

I have been using Toneboosters TB FLX4 plugin which has a TON of different filters but only can have 6 filters used at a time to play with.
Fortunately that is enough for me to compensate the midrange of my modded 800's.

And the interaction between these different filter types can be quite dynamic and useful when trying to mimic actual response curves.



And it has lots of 'control' so the amount of compensation can be 'dialed in'
And it only costs ≈ $23.

JJ

 
Thanks for letting me know about the MathAudio limitations. Have you looked at this: https://sourceforge.net/projects/equalizerapo/ ?  It looks interesting, but I expect only has one type of filter as well..

 

[connieflyer]

I have been using this plug-in for JRiver for quite awhile, works well, and free also.
 
http://www.rs-met.com/freebies.html
 
Lots of other free audio plugins as well on same page.  Worth a look