[bwhsh8r]

I do not think that eq ing the bass would do anything harmful, unless your getting alot of distortion etc.

 

[shawn1cai]

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I do not think that eq ing the bass would do anything harmful, unless your getting alot of distortion etc.

 
Thanks for the assurance!
 

 

[loki993]

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haha thanks for the input guys. I'm guessing that putting the bass up will not damage the cans?
(I am happy with them tho. most bass from any i've owned)

Yeah as long as there isnt any distortion your fine. Distortion however will kill speakers, headphones, fast though.

 

[khaos974]

just be careful with the EQ, its better to substract the mids and highs, leave the bass at normal level and turn up the volume than raise the bass level. 

 

[shawn1cai]

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Yeah as long as there isnt any distortion your fine. Distortion however will kill speakers, headphones, fast though.

thx for the confirmation
 
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just be careful with the EQ, its better to substract the mids and highs, leave the bass at normal level and turn up the volume than raise the bass level. 

never thought of that, quite genius.

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

 
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Can't be bad, it's not like the bass will have enough energy to shatter your skull.

Then you haven't heard my setup. I could add more bass too but it's already enough to notice my ears are vibrating at "normal"/rather low volume listening levels due to bass impact and anything more it would overpower the rest of the frequencies too much.
 
I disagree with the idea of not touching low frequencies and lowering mids/highs on the EQ, then highs and mids completely disappear for my headphones, isn't it better to have both powerful bass and clear mids/highs? I upped both in order to have lots of both, more on bass but highs were upped quite a bit too. For bassheads a gently shaped V-curve usually provides best result with left end reaching a bit higher than right like this:
 

 
But of course the end result will vary depending on EQ used, I'm using a hardware DSP EQ personally along with kX Audio drivers for my Audigy card. I don't think how high you raise the bars really matter that much (ok, could lead to distortion if raised too high depending how it's linked to volume and generally the higher you raise it the warmer/aggressive sound signature and vice versa), but the shape of the curve does matter most on the EQ.

 

[stifa]

I was listening to Schubert's symphony no. 9 with my M50's on a pretty high level , but not crazy high . Guess what - on one part (not a loud one)  the bass distorted so bad I feared I did some damage to the spanking new headphones (already burned in , of course) , but apparently they are fine . So much for "bass loving HP I guess ...
 
 
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"just be careful with the EQ, its better to substract the mids and highs, leave the bass at normal level and turn up the volume than raise the bass level."
 
Well , if you'll do that with the volume turned up enough , you will get the same result , distortion wise . It is dependent on what kind the EQ is and wether the volume algorithm is done before or after the EQ .

 

[khaos974]

I'll be more precise then, to be accurate the best way to equalize depends on how the music you are playing is mastered and what kind of equalization you want to apply.
 
When I say that you should turn up the volume, I mean the potentiometer on the headamp, not the digital volume.
The problem is boosting a frequency band is that you'll run into distortion, clipping and overload, from example, if the bass section of your music is at -3dB at its  loudest, there's a 3dB headroom before clipping, a 6dB boost will make the music clip.
When you are using a negative gain, you'll be reducing the dynamics of the track, which can lead to a boring sound, especially if your music was mastered very quietly.
 
Most recent music is master with so little headroom that you can run into clipping with a mere +3dB. That's why I usually recommend a negative gain on frequencies other than bass. If you have a equalizer with a preamp function, apply a -10dB on the whole signal before boosting a +10dB.
 
EDIT: You may want to use a parametric equalizer to achieve the best results, I suppose you don't want to pay 220 bucks for the Redline Equalizer, but the Electri-Q has a free vst version that works with Foobar and Winamp.

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

Well I have had no trouble boosting the EQs a lot with this EQ I'm using and no distortion or clipping can be heard (despite I tried a "24" boost to the EQ out of interest xD) but I noticed Windows 7's own volume slider should be avoided as much as possible, a value of 35% seems to be good and raising it too much would lead to distortion. Instead I use kX Audio master volume, not using any amp atm but like you said it's always best in that case when using an amp have the digital volume sliders as low as possible and the amp potentiometer at perhaps 70 - 80% for best result.

 

[stifa]

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I'll be more precise then, to be accurate the best way to equalize depends on how the music you are playing is mastered and what kind of equalization you want to apply.
 
When I say that you should turn up the volume, I mean the potentiometer on the headamp, not the digital volume.
The problem is boosting a frequency band is that you'll run into distortion, clipping and overload, from example, if the bass section of your music is at -3dB at its  loudest, there's a 3dB headroom before clipping, a 6dB boost will make the music clip.
When you are using a negative gain, you'll be reducing the dynamics of the track, which can lead to a boring sound, especially if your music was mastered very quietly.
 
Technically speaking it's better to boost a small frequency band than apply a negative gain on a whole mids and highs since you are affecting a small part of the spectrum, but most recent music is master with so little headroom that you can run into clipping with a mere +3dB. That's why I usually recommend a negative gain on frequencies other than bass.
 
EDIT: You may want to use a parametric equalizer to achieve the best results, I suppose you don't want to pay 220 bucks for the Redline Equalizer, but the Electri-Q has a free vst version that works with Foobar and Winamp.

Generally speaking you are right , problem is not all EQ's are made equal . Some will distort sooner then other and some will act the same when attenuating a frequency then boosting the master gain , and when boosting a specific frequency .

 
Quote:

. For bassheads a gently shaped V-curve usually provides best result with left end reaching a bit higher than right like this:
 

 
But of course the end result will vary depending on EQ used, I'm using a hardware DSP EQ personally along with kX Audio drivers for my Audigy card. I don't think how high you raise the bars really matter that much (ok, could lead to distortion if raised too high depending how it's linked to volume and generally the higher you raise it the warmer/aggressive sound signature and vice versa), but the shape of the curve does matter most on the EQ.

You will get the same frequency response with less distortion if you will leave the mids at "0" and boost the lows and highs 3.5dB less , then making up the gain analog-wise . 10dB boost is way up ...
 

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

Yea I'm aware it works like that, but I tested this quite a long ago but noticed no difference and since I'm not using an amp atm I prefer upping the EQ values higher instead. As long as I use Windows 7 volume slider at 35% I can boost EQ by crazy amounts without distortion. On the other hand at 100% Windows 7 volume and kX Audio volume slider at say "15" it distorts like crazy tho but not with 35% on Windows 7 volume slider and kX Audio at 30 (or even 70 - 80 but then I'd quickly become deaf ).
 
The kX Audio driver's hardware DSP based 10 band EQ works really really well, most software EQs I've tried distorts before I get even near the amount bass I can with 10 band EQ plugin, especially if using Creative's own drivers. ^^ At least I haven't yet came across any other EQ which I could load 3 instances of and max out bass and still get no distortion at normal/low listening levels. xD

 

[Mad Max]

lol What
 
3 instances?

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

Yea it's possible or even more as kX drivers are based on DSP plugin system but I don't dare to try with any more than 3, I mean 36dB strenghtened bass... don't wanna ruin my headphones instantly you know.
Yet at 36dB strenghtened it didn't yet distort at up to "normal" listening levels at least, it only becomes stronger. I only tried it like 3 secs tho at that volume level, at low volume I dare testing it longer tho. But the bass is like so many times louder than the rest and sounds like BOOM BOOM BOOM, the rest you can barely hear.
 
Just remember this was done out of curiosity as of when kX Audio driver's bass would start distort but it yet didn't happen at 36dB.

The kX Audio driver has the best bass I've heard so far that doesn't eat up the rest of the frequencies other than if boosting it by crazy amounts (+20dB or more) incl other things like pseudo surround sound why I won't give up on this old SB Audigy card in the first place. It's even so great that I found that Gary's PA2V2 amp provided worse results than simply tweaking the 10 band EQ a bit.
 

 

[Mad Max]

Why don't you just stick with Skullcandies or Beats in that case? No EQ'ing of that manner necessary there

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

Because Skullcandy and Beats are crap and overpriced crap with also styling that's not to my taste. OK I'm not using any highly liked HPs around here, Sennheiser HD 212 Pro and I've also got AKG K 518 DJ (the K 81 DJ clone) and also I've tried both Beyer DT770 Pro 80ohm and Audio Technica ATH-M50. The 212 Pro's probably do match or come very close to both Skullcandy and Beats in bass quantity tho but they also offer a lot of bang for buck for only 43 EUR I bought them for. Despite the huge bass quantity from starters I still like to boost the bass by up to 19dB (while also boosting highs by like 7.5dB to balance it out). I don't only want to hear bass, the kX Audio drivers allows to have a lot of bass and I can still hear the rest of the frequencies fine and I constantly try to balance them as good as possible what I concider suitable for my taste. I really enjoy everything about the HD 212 Pro's once properly tweakened with kX Audio drivers, with the default settings especially the highs sucks and bass sounds a bit made up or fake and they have a rather boring lifeless quite "cold" sound signature with recessed highs. When I boost the bass on the 10 band EQ plugin the bass becomes more powerful but it also starts reminding me more and more of a sub, it's a HP that has a lot of focus on a very low frequency bass for a HP, like around 50~70Hz perhaps rather than around 100Hz like most HPs and I like this kind of bass, not the punchy 100Hz type that most people around here prefer. With highs boosted a bit they become a lot more clear and natural sounding altough these headphones are quite "bright" sounding from starters you have to tweak the highs carefully to not become too bright. Furthermore I like add a bit reverb to simulate the larger room feel like being in a club. Also kX Audio's pseudo surround sound for stereo setup works magnificiently at improving the already suprisingly good sound positioning for these HPs (I game a lot so this is a very important thing to me). Also the HPs are very very light and comfortable so I could wear them for days and days and they've been so stretched out by now so they only sit rather gently or very suitable on my head so I forget I'm wearing them and I don't even get any sweaty ears in the summer and they also block out a lot of ambient noise (usually my parents have to yell at me from close distance to get my attention when I'm listening to music or gaming).
 
Just sounded like you wanted to point  out that I'm only listening to bass and don't care about the rest but that's not the case. I'm using a very uncommon setup (SB Audigy with kX Audio drivers & Sennheiser HD 212 Pro) so you probably have no idea how it really sounds like. I don't even have any interest of buying a new soundcard or headphone as I already tried 2 headphones that are 3x expensier (DT770 Pro & ATH-M50) and returned to the HD 212 Pros as I didn't think it was worth the 3x expensier cost when using kX Audio drivers (altough with crappy Realtek onboard sound as a quick comparision, I couldn't probably stand wearing these HD 212 Pros for a day ). So in short, looks like I've found the perfect setup for me. Even if got lots of cash and I could easily afford buying a Xonar Essence STX or Auzentech Forte and some say $300 HP I don't even have interest in doing it cuz I'm already perfectly satisfied with the current setup and I'm even doubtful if doing so would bring more satisfaction.