[Claritas]

The most common reasons for preventable error: ignorance and laziness.

I'm lazy about it at home but not in my car, maybe because my headphones are so much better than my car stereo.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

I'm lazy about it at home but not in my car, maybe because my headphones are so much better than my car stereo.

 
In a car usually the problem isn't always an imbalanced response. Lots of upgraded systems still neglect the one real problem: you're not driving a McLaren F1. Sitting off to one side means you'll be closer to the driver's side tweeter and driver's side midwoofer, while the sub is in the trunk. The microseconds of delay won't sound like a delay to the human ear and brain, but it's enough for tweeters to sound shrill because you hear each microseconds apart, plus reflections on the windshielf if they don't have enough toe-in to prevent its dispersion pattern from hitting the windshield too much. Ditto for the sub - if you hear the 80hz to 150hz of the bass drum in front before you hear the 80hz (or so) and below coming from the sub, the double-pedal action of a metal drummer for example will sound more like a mudslide than a machine-gun like succession of hits on the drum. No EQ setting can fix these - you can cut -6db from 3khz to 6khz and still hear sharp "s" and "t" sounds relative to the rest of the music, while cutting on the sub gain or on specific low frequencies will just mean you'll hear more of what the front speakers are making rather than the sub that's out of sync with it.

 

[Vkamicht]

2) A lot of audiophiles want to be purists, and if you EQ, the idea is you will not be hearing what was recorded, exactly as it was recorded. Someone who uses EQ would just say "well whats more important, having it sound good to me, or being "true" to the source?", a fair arguement for sure!

 
I believe this is the main reason for most, though I find it kind of weird... I've never heard a headphone that didn't impart a serious (usually undesirable) character onto the sound. If you want to hear the closest to what was recorded, "EQing away" the headphones/equipment is pretty crucial. IMO, anyone that doesn't EQ is left to the mercy of the headphone designer and the luck that they work well with your particular ears. I mean, I'm the guy that bought both the LCD-2 and Beyer T1 and re-sold them because they sounded like trash compared to my very precisely equalized DT-990 so what do I know 

 

[TenMoonsNorth]

If you expect it to sound bad then it will probably sound bad.
 
Someone hears plenty of people saying that EQ makes the sound worse and they either parrot that or try it out themselves under the expectation that it will sound worse and unsurprisingly it sounds worse. That is expectation bias.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

  If you expect it to sound bad then it will probably sound bad.
 
Someone hears plenty of people saying that EQ makes the sound worse and they either parrot that or try it out themselves under the expectation that it will sound worse and unsurprisingly it sounds worse. That is expectation bias.

Or they don't know how to EQ.

 

[LugBug1]

 
Or they don't know how to EQ.

Exactly. I'd rather do a few well chosen tweaks on an eq then spend hundreds on different amps trying change the sound. Especially if you really like a headphone apart from one aspect of its FR. 

 

[jirapatpum]

Personally clarity, texture, detail, soundstage are example of things that eq can't help. Eq has to do with getting the right tonal balance. Most people seems to think that by using eq, they can make 150 usd speakers sound like 1500 usd speakers. That's not the correct way of using eq. People should get the best possible sound by concentrate on their main gear first. If some frequency still off due to limited space or speakers placement, that's the job of eq.

 

[LugBug1]

  Personally clarity, texture, detail, soundstage are example of things that eq can't help. Eq has to do with getting the right tonal balance. Most people seems to think that by using eq, they can make 150 usd speakers sound like 1500 usd speakers. That's not the correct way of using eq. People should get the best possible sound by concentrate on their main gear first. If some frequency still off due to limited space or speakers placement, that's the job of eq.

Absolutely. But it goes without saying that an equalizer is only ever going to alter the FR But tonality will be changed for good or bad and this is a very important aspect. 

 

[ProtegeManiac]

  Exactly. I'd rather do a few well chosen tweaks on an eq then spend hundreds on different amps trying change the sound. Especially if you really like a headphone apart from one aspect of its FR. 

 
Or in my case, the response curve on worn out earpads - new earpads on my HD600 and I get a lot less reasons to compare it against an HD800 (and I have no idea what that sounds like on worn pads, which are also more expensive).

 

[LugBug1]

   
Or in my case, the response curve on worn out earpads - new earpads on my HD600 and I get a lot less reasons to compare it against an HD800 (and I have no idea what that sounds like on worn pads, which are also more expensive).

If you've just put some new pads on I would bend the metal part of the headband outwards a little. This relieves the pressure and keeps the pads from getting squashed over time. I went through numerous pads till I discovered this. Keeps the soundstage more open too. 
 
The HD800 pads are very thin to begin with so I don't think that wear affects the sound any. I have read that the metal part can start to touch your face when they do squash though.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

  If you've just put some new pads on I would bend the metal part of the headband outwards a little. This relieves the pressure and keeps the pads from getting squashed over time. I went through numerous pads till I discovered this. Keeps the soundstage more open too. 
 
The HD800 pads are very thin to begin with so I don't think that wear affects the sound any. I have read that the metal part can start to touch your face when they do squash though.

 
I don't like the seal when the headband is bent outwards - sound gets a bit too thin and I can hear my A/C a lot more (despite some of the sound going through the open back anyway). At most I just use them with each earpiece at about seven or eight clicks out from the headband.

 

[MrTechAgent]

The main reason people are against it is:

1. Signal path cleanliness (As has been said)
2. "Flat" response. If the headphones suck buy new headphones, don't EQ.
3. Esoteric reasons
4. Peer pressure

I personally don't care much. If I don't EQ my ears will adjust fine. I use EQ for: (Not in the following order.)

1. Old tapes
2. Having fun
3. Crappy recordings
4. Getting closer to a flat response if there is a large peak or dip


Having worked in a studio with a really good listening room, I can say FLAT sounds pretty lifeless and boring. Give a flat headphone to a "normal" person and their response will be: "Sounds like $hit..." For people "in the know", flat can be fulfilling of course.

Haha ..the last sentence kinda matches my experience when I was new to HiFi , but calling my ears defective was totally worth it friend ! ;P

 

[Vkamicht]

  Personally clarity, texture, detail, soundstage are example of things that eq can't help. Eq has to do with getting the right tonal balance. Most people seems to think that by using eq, they can make 150 usd speakers sound like 1500 usd speakers. That's not the correct way of using eq. People should get the best possible sound by concentrate on their main gear first. If some frequency still off due to limited space or speakers placement, that's the job of eq.

 
I disagree, but keep in mind I'm talking in the context of headphones not loudspeakers. I think what people here describe as "clarity and detail" are exactly what you can achieve with personalized EQ. Soundstage not as much, that's dependent on other factors. I think texture means different things to different people, but hey it might help that too. So tonal balance is the balance of lows/mids/highs to put it simply, right? Someone might listen to a headphone and think it's way over-emphasized in the highs, and EQ some arbitrary high shelf down a bit to "tame the highs". In reality it might be a couple nasty frequency response spikes that make it sound brighter than it actually is - removing these instead of shelving everything above a certain frequency is going to yield a much more natural sound. Detail is really nothing more than the ability to hear everything in the frequency response at a balanced level, i.e. nothing is being masked, nothing is being hidden, though most people equate detail with high frequencies. The inverse of dropping frequency response is increasing the response of everything around it. Headphones with peaky resonances (nearly everything I've heard) have the byproduct of masking the response of the others - they dominate the sound. Once you tame those individually instead of lows/mids/highs as a whole, little hidden sounds start popping up everywhere. That's detail, and I suppose clarity, to me.