Boneez
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Feb 8, 2011
- Posts
- 14
- Likes
- 0
I EQ *very* seldomly, and when I do, it is for my home (read: speaker) setup - never for the headphones. My preamp may be old (see my avatar), but it comes with some of the most conservative yet intelligently-designed tone adjustments I have ever seen on any piece of audio gear ever, and (as they should be), I only use them to compensate for failings in my room if need be.
Realistically, my speakers are point source, dipole and have no crossover to speak of - much like a pair of headphones. Most of what most people love about headphones, when you get down to it, is that a $400 pair of headphones can sound like a pair of electrostatic or ribbon speakers, that are far easier to drive and don't have room effects to worry about. SIngle driver and no crossover network = extremely clean and detailed sound. A lowly headphone like an HD 595 can in fact boast comparatively better bass response than the aforementioned speakers because, although having a driver of something like 40 or 50mm diameter, it only has to generate sound pressure enough to travel something like 1.5 inches to your eardrum, and has no wall behind it to muck around with the long wavelengths. They will also reproduce far more detail than a cone-driven speaker, and as a result, will make badly recorded or mastered recordings sound... well, bad.
Even so, I find EQing said recordings makes them sound overall sound less "sharp" and more muddy, and so for headphone listening I stick to the "cancel" switch. For the speakers I find less is more, and rarely adjust any of the settings beyond plus or minus 1 on the preamp, and usually resort to just moving them around if I need to compensate (which is a pain in the arse). That being said, my old Quad 44 does use hardware for its filters, and I have yet to acquire a digital device to play around with to do the same things, so I can't comment on how much cleaner something like this would be. Experience says it should be pretty bad, as VLC player and the iPod itself both have "digital equalizers", and they sound hideous. There are component fully-digital equalizers out there however (mostly for professional use), and I would figure they would sound rather better.
At the end of the day, if the recording is crap (and your room isn't), then look around for a better recording - a lot of music is really badly mastered, especially consumer releases on iTunes or CD - if you want an older album, see if it has a Mobile FIdelity release, or look for limited edition "original master" releases (which will often be Japanese). Digital transcription isn't as easy as it seems, and the difference between a properly mastered album and a mass-produced edition can be enormous. If you still aren't happy, get another pair of headphones that plays that music more to your liking. People buy speakers based on their musical tastes, and adjust their placement in the room (or the room itself) to suit their music. A pair of Stax earspeakers will do a symphony orchestra quite well, but you may find a nice closed pair of headphones will do Mr. Oizo more justice.
In short - EQing should be done very little if at all, and it is preferrable to skip it if at all possible!
Realistically, my speakers are point source, dipole and have no crossover to speak of - much like a pair of headphones. Most of what most people love about headphones, when you get down to it, is that a $400 pair of headphones can sound like a pair of electrostatic or ribbon speakers, that are far easier to drive and don't have room effects to worry about. SIngle driver and no crossover network = extremely clean and detailed sound. A lowly headphone like an HD 595 can in fact boast comparatively better bass response than the aforementioned speakers because, although having a driver of something like 40 or 50mm diameter, it only has to generate sound pressure enough to travel something like 1.5 inches to your eardrum, and has no wall behind it to muck around with the long wavelengths. They will also reproduce far more detail than a cone-driven speaker, and as a result, will make badly recorded or mastered recordings sound... well, bad.
Even so, I find EQing said recordings makes them sound overall sound less "sharp" and more muddy, and so for headphone listening I stick to the "cancel" switch. For the speakers I find less is more, and rarely adjust any of the settings beyond plus or minus 1 on the preamp, and usually resort to just moving them around if I need to compensate (which is a pain in the arse). That being said, my old Quad 44 does use hardware for its filters, and I have yet to acquire a digital device to play around with to do the same things, so I can't comment on how much cleaner something like this would be. Experience says it should be pretty bad, as VLC player and the iPod itself both have "digital equalizers", and they sound hideous. There are component fully-digital equalizers out there however (mostly for professional use), and I would figure they would sound rather better.
At the end of the day, if the recording is crap (and your room isn't), then look around for a better recording - a lot of music is really badly mastered, especially consumer releases on iTunes or CD - if you want an older album, see if it has a Mobile FIdelity release, or look for limited edition "original master" releases (which will often be Japanese). Digital transcription isn't as easy as it seems, and the difference between a properly mastered album and a mass-produced edition can be enormous. If you still aren't happy, get another pair of headphones that plays that music more to your liking. People buy speakers based on their musical tastes, and adjust their placement in the room (or the room itself) to suit their music. A pair of Stax earspeakers will do a symphony orchestra quite well, but you may find a nice closed pair of headphones will do Mr. Oizo more justice.
In short - EQing should be done very little if at all, and it is preferrable to skip it if at all possible!