[Racheski]

I saw this mentioned a couple other times, and I agree - EQ can really get you a long way toward getting a sound more suitable for your tastes. Especially since your rig is pretty damn strong. I would not drop another cent on this setup before doing some EQ experimentation, there is a lot of quality hardware there and I can almost guarantee you can coax a satisfying sound out of it.

Since your source is PC, you can use Equalizer APO and its Peace frontend. They can produce outstanding results with some careful adjustments. If you do go this route, keep in mind that when EQing you want to lower things you want to deemphasize, rather than raise things you want to emphasize. The latter will lead to clipping.

EQ doesn't always work out, but at its best it can save you hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, so it is always worth a try first.

Oratory1990 EQ presets are a great place to start. He uses the Harman target response for over ear/on ear headphones.
https://www.reddit.com/r/oratory199...ets_update_131120/?ref_source=embed&ref=share

 

[Hoegaardener70]

@krt230

Your headphone, amp and dac sucks change it up.

Get openback headphones and move on to STAXS!

Sure, we all love headphones which are without any bass impact and blow up if you forget to de-dust your furniture or to close the window when a cloud is in the sky. LOL.

 

[CopperFox]

Wow, I can't believe it but this seems to have helped quite a bit.
Really appreciate the advice.

Also make sure that 24 bit audio and over 44.1Khz sample rate is enabled in the sound device windows settings. Sometimes even automatic windows updates can reset that to 16 bit and 44.1Khz.

 

[Roderick]

@krt230 since this is apparently your first headphone setup have you considered that you did not know what to expect and had unrealistic expectations? You might want to consider a more affordable secondary system That might help to put things into perspective and make you appreciate your main system more. High-end audio is not just simple research-buy-listen sort of of thing. Diminishig returns hit hard and to get most of your system you need to aknowledge the little things that seperate it from lesser gear.

Also if you are coming from speakers, even affordable ones, it might just be that you don't like headphones. Because lack of visceral bass and realistic soundstage headphones are inherently flawed way of listening.

 

[chrisdrop]

Another thing that hasn’t been mentioned (I don’t think) is music production quality. There is a lot of very poorly produced music out there. My tastes have coevolved with my gear. The better the gear the more you can hear the production quality or lack thereof. You can search for well produced music to benchmark your system and ears.

 

[jdegg79]

Any resolution to this? I have some issues too and wanted to know what, if anything, worked.

 

[krt230]

I've been through a lot of experimentation trying to fix my issues. I'll try say what helped me, not sure it'll be helpful.

I started with:

Computer playing Tidal
AudioQuest Carbon USB
Burson Audio DA-160 (10 years old? at this point)
AudioQuest Mackenzie RCA
SPL Phonitor XE
Danacable Lazuli
Focal Stellia

Based on suggestions here, I first purchased Audivana - this helped.
Then I sent back the SPL Phonitor and purchased the Woo Audio WA33 standard. Again, an improvement, but still disappointing considering the cost.
Next I purchased the Chord Hugo TT2, but had to wait about 4 weeks for it to arrive.
Before the Chord arrived, I also purchased a used pair of HE1000se to see if open back headphones helped. It did. Until they stopped working two days later.
I then purchased a new pair of Utopia. Hated them. They were uncomfortable and left me with extreme listening fatigue. Those went back.

Based on some of the more flippant comments here, I (and my wife) really started to wonder if I was doomed. Still, some people were very helpful and I decided to push through despite my ever shrinking bank account.

At the same time I sent the Utopia back I received the Chord TT2. With my new amp and dac, I now had zero headphones. Frustrated, I narrowed it down to the Phi TC or Susvara. Simply due to the wait (and some apparent comfort issues), I ordered the Susvara.

Today is actually my second day with the WA33, Chord dac, and Susvara.

I can say, without hesitation, this is the best money I have ever spent, period. I'm in awe over how great this sounds - it's what I've always hoped for and what I expected based on all my research here on head-fi.

This setup is factors above my original and easily worth the money. In hindsight, I can't really expect all people to spend this much, so I wonder how much of the issues I faced was simply due to synergy. No idea, but I couldn't be happier now. I doubt this actually helped, but thought I'd respond just in case.

 

[kyotousa]

Please do not throw any more significant amount of money yet.
One thing about using Tidal settings to make sure you have 'normalisation' off and 100% volume set in your OS(windows/linux) is good advice as well.
Try below in this order:

1. Overear headphones need to have good seal with your head, the place where it touches the skin around your ear.
So if you wear glasses and put overear HPs you might have sound leakage between pads and your skin.
If you have bushy amount of hair it might has similar effect.
So make sure you have good seal between the pads and skin of your head.

2. Make sure you do not have any wifi/blueetooth devices placed close to your usb cable and your dac/amp.

3. If you have USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 sockets in your computer, use USB 3.0 for usb cable that goes to your DAC.
Why? USB 3.0 has fixed voltage all the time while USB 2.0's voltage is system controlled and when you have many devices connected system may treat certain USB 2 socket differently then depending from current use.
By plugin your usb cable to other socket like USB 3.0 will result in up to few minutes lasting driver reinstallation process so give it a time.

4. Make sure you do not have any wifi/blueetooth deviced placed close to your usb cable and your dac/amp.

5. Try to connect your usb cable directly to your SPL Phonitor XE usb input instead your Burson DAC. It has inbuilt DAC as well.

6. Turn off sound enchancing functions on your SPL Phonitor like Matrix on off.

7. Maybe you have your audio devices powered into the electric socket that is close to some noise heavy home-devices like refrigerator. The you may try to use an extension cord and plug your audio devices to the socket that is few meters away in your room (just to test if that helps or not).
If you cannot change that then cheap and good option is this for example https://www.brennenstuhl.com/en-DE/...protect-line-60.000-a-8-way-3-m-h05vv-f-3g1-5
It has EMI/EFI filters that will filter the noise in your electric circuit. Plug your all audio to that.

Thats all I have in mind for now before you will start spending next hundreds/thousands of dollars

Why would you set the normalization off. Normalization is setting everything to reference level, which is equivalent to volume setting at 100%.

 

[Bonddam]

The problem you have is not knowing what you like which is the issue with headphones. For me it took crazy amounts of money to find what I like.

 

[Redcarmoose]

I've been through a lot of experimentation trying to fix my issues. I'll try say what helped me, not sure it'll be helpful.

I started with:

Computer playing Tidal
AudioQuest Carbon USB
Burson Audio DA-160 (10 years old? at this point)
AudioQuest Mackenzie RCA
SPL Phonitor XE
Danacable Lazuli
Focal Stellia

Based on suggestions here, I first purchased Audivana - this helped.
Then I sent back the SPL Phonitor and purchased the Woo Audio WA33 standard. Again, an improvement, but still disappointing considering the cost.
Next I purchased the Chord Hugo TT2, but had to wait about 4 weeks for it to arrive.
Before the Chord arrived, I also purchased a used pair of HE1000se to see if open back headphones helped. It did. Until they stopped working two days later.
I then purchased a new pair of Utopia. Hated them. They were uncomfortable and left me with extreme listening fatigue. Those went back.

Based on some of the more flippant comments here, I (and my wife) really started to wonder if I was doomed. Still, some people were very helpful and I decided to push through despite my ever shrinking bank account.

At the same time I sent the Utopia back I received the Chord TT2. With my new amp and dac, I now had zero headphones. Frustrated, I narrowed it down to the Phi TC or Susvara. Simply due to the wait (and some apparent comfort issues), I ordered the Susvara.

Today is actually my second day with the WA33, Chord dac, and Susvara.

I can say, without hesitation, this is the best money I have ever spent, period. I'm in awe over how great this sounds - it's what I've always hoped for and what I expected based on all my research here on head-fi.

This setup is factors above my original and easily worth the money. In hindsight, I can't really expect all people to spend this much, so I wonder how much of the issues I faced was simply due to synergy. No idea, but I couldn't be happier now. I doubt this actually helped, but thought I'd respond just in case.