[maverickronin]

Quote:

Wow, this is weird... I wrote that post last night, went to sleep, and today about 10 people had quoted me. As you can imagine, I didn't read the 50 new posts that appeared, but just to clear things up:

Non sequitur...
 

 

[wind016]

Quote:

Wow, this is weird... I wrote that post last night, went to sleep, and today about 10 people had quoted me. As you can imagine, I didn't read the 50 new posts that appeared, but just to clear things up:
 
1 - No EQ will ever ever make a headphone more detailed. Like Rythmdevil said, a lot of the times, if not always, a very detailed headphone is also bright (e.g. K701, RE-0). So let's imagine we had a fairly neutral headphone and a perfect equalizer, one that only increased certain frequencies and nothing else, not tainting the rest. You could boost the treble all you wanted, you would never make it more detailed. I'm sure someone might have a better explanation of what detail is, but I see it as the capability of a headphone to display certain small details of the music that in smaller sound files/worse headphone wouldn't show up. Like the breathing-in a singer does before starting to sing, or the pressure released when a sax players blows the first note. A detailed headphone can reproduce those or not, but equalizing it t be brighter will not by any means make small parts of the sound file magically appear.
 
2 - I never said I was in the recording boot listening to the original sound being created, so no, if it makes you feel better, I'm not sure of what it was supposed to sound like. But I do know what a natural presentation is, and what it isn't. And also, it's not by saying "everything else is tainting the sound" that you can justify EQ. That's like saying we have screwed over the original recording so much that oh well, might as well EQ, it's not like I'm doing any worse. You can enjoy it, sure, I know I do, just don't say it's all the same.
 
3 - Saying "99% of all..." makes whatever you were about to say completely invalid. Ok this one was a joke, but you get me. And the big difference is: I was only talking about a certain kind of modding in which you can actually get more detail than in the original. By now you must have realized I consider detail to be a big part of natural sound, and when I said "more natural" I should have saidt "more detailed", since EQ can make the frequency response closer to the original thing, whatever that was. So yeah, I think that if tou take the foam in front of a driver, you get more detail, however you also get a brighter sound, so might as well leave that person alone, since bright isn't natural.
 
4 - Someone said something about changing EQ settings being just the same as changing headphones... I'm going to skip this one.
 
Look I knew this thread was going to start a mini-flamewar (there aren't any real flamewars on Head-Fi thankfully) and I really don't feel like it. I've seen some threads about EQ and one post stayed with me: it said that there are few things dumber than arguing over something that costs you absolutely nothing. Every single DAP has an EQ nowadays, some better than others. Just try it out and be happy with it, or not. I use one a lot, it's not really that good, but if it makes me enjoy my music more, and doesn't make me pay a dime, what else could I want? However it doesn't make it closer in detail, and that to me is important in perceiving sound as natural.

1. You are never supposed to boost any frequencies in an equalizer. I don't know why anyone would want to boost treble in treble emphasized headphones like HD800 or K701. PSP Neon HR is an oversampling, linear phase equalizer so arguably, it's not as detrimental to detail as whatever EQ you might be thinking but you don't use an EQ to increase detail.
 
2. Natural presentation to me is neutral and not a single headphone I have heard has been neutral. The Stax O2 mk1 through a Blue Hawaii got the closest to me so far, but for everything else, it wasn't even close to natural without some EQing. Some people use tube amps as a sort of EQ, but I have not yet heard an affordable tube amp (meaning sub $2000) that didn't smear details. Precision EQ always sounded more detailed than a tube amp for me.
 
3. OK. I'm not sure what kind of modding you're referring to but most of them tend to have some sort of negative effect on the sound.
 
4. Agreed. Strange one.
 
 
We are mostly going after the same thing, a natural sound. You may be doing so with modding, but not every headphone should be modified. I don't know who would be crazy enough to crack open and play around with a Stax, K1000, or Sony R10. Not everyone wants a Grado and not everyone has the money to tube roll a $3000+ tube amp. If you have a good mastering EQ and a relatively neutral headphone, a bit of adjustment to make it even more neutral can not be a bad thing IMO. If you use an EQ often, you probably shouldn't cheap out on it or use it recklessly. The moment you throw it in your system, they are as important as the rest of your gear.

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

Also on that 1st point, EQing unbalanced headphones CAN lead to more detail perception, at least it has done for me many times, especially regarding XB500 for example that is very unbalanced and the upper bass range is so much boosted it'll "cover-up" midrange microdetail. By optimal EQ settings I can now hear breathings of singers before taking the note as well as fine details in instruments and fingers tapping on the guitars etc that wouldn't be heard if using flat eq setting when everything sounds so much smoother.
 
You will still need a high quality EQ for great results, it's not something that will work with every EQ. Also regarding boosting/lowering. On typical software EQs lowering works best or you can boost and then lower the preamp slider if such is included. Good hardware EQs will also allow boosting frequencies (might not even need to lower pre-amp) without distortion/colorisation which also works kinda like "amping" that brings a more forward / dynamic sound but the EQs that allows this with great result are far in the minority unfortunately. For example this ZO Personal Subwoofer amp / sound "enhancer" device applies some 7~10dB boos depending on headphone to the whole range for a more forward/dynamic sound.
 
More high quality EQs for the people! If there were more of them and less of the crappy software EQs I'm certain people would get more forgiving regarding EQing. I went from a person that never EQ'd to an EQ enthusiast after getting experience with a bit better working EQ.

 

[SP Wild]

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This. And also because I really prefer listening to music as natural as it can be without any artificial enhancements. And on top of that, EQing is not a good way to test headphone's performance for comparison.

On the contrary, I believe EQ is the ONLY way to gauge a headphones capability in certain frquencies by stripping away neighbouring frequencies so you can examine the phones performance of a small frequency band and how other cans hold up in this same area without other frequencies masking the truth.
 
No one seems to argue that the K1000 sounds artificial when its being EQ'd.  It EQ's permanently with a circuit board via hardware and in the analogue stage.  When EQing for listening I mainly go into treble reduction, as did the K1000.
 
Also I don't think EQ can substitute for real tubes, there is no way to EQ in the tube effect of tube amps.
 

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

I will go as far as say as I can't cope without a nice EQ. As I started playing around with EQing using this 10-band EQ in kX Audio drivers I started discovering something that has changed my way of listening and the desire for a good quality EQ probably for the rest of my life as the result it leads to using this technique, is really impressive to me by subjective analysis at least. I'll quote from my ZO Personal Subwoofer review:
 
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First I'm the kind of guy that can spend hours fiddling around with any settings found on my devices I use as I'm a tweaker and looking for that best possible subjective result I can achieve and I'm very pro-EQ enthusiast that I mainly became thanks to the very high quality hardware 10-band EQ found in the kX Audio drivers for my Audigy 2 ZS soundcard which really opened my eyes in how great of an improvement a good quality equalizer can bring, clearly beating any typical software EQ found in for example most of the music players as it doesn't distort or color the frequencies, it'll only adjust the "loudness"-curve like an EQ should be doing in best case scenario. 
 
At first when I started using these kX Audio drivers and the 10-band EQ especially I did some rather typical, minimalistic deviations from zero-level changes to adjust the balance of the headphone. The basshead in me during that time (we're talking probably 5+ years ago) just wasn't quite satisfied yet coming from a computer speaker 5.1 setup which I gave up in favor for listening privacy. Now I tested boosting the lows further and got very satisfied with the bass quantity however the overall balance or sound quality was less than ideal so I started boosting the rest of the range as well by various amounts and ended up with quite similar curve as previously, only the whole range took a boost but bass became boosted a little more in comparision. Eventually I started boosting the whole range even further and to my surprise the more I boosted the whole range, the more I started liking what I was hearing and then I also started realizing exactly how great this EQ was as boosting frequencies by large amounts isn't anything that common software EQs would allow without distorting, in my case the output volume just got louder at the same volume setting which forced me to lower my volume sliders to make up for it. I was puzzled, how could boosting the whole range on my EQ start sounding better than simply boosting the volume, it just didn't sound the same.
 
It's this more "forward" sound which I'd describe as more "dynamic" sounding which I believe is what people enjoy about this ZO device that is a bit difficult to explain in words, it's something that simply has to be experienced on your own. Whether this ZO Personal Subwoofer device uses a similar hardware EQ-technique playing around with the loudness curve and boosting the whole range or not, one thing's for sure, they DO share that similar kind of sound signature change after doing comparisions with my own ears between the hardware EQ and the ZO device. But this is certainly not the only change or benefit the ZO adds, certainly not, but more on that later!
 
Before moving on I'd like to show you my 2 different EQ settings I keep for XB500 for example, one that is minimalisticly tweaked for only better balance and the other which uses this kind of EQ technique with greatly boosted range as a whole that I find providing great results that I spoke about previously making a more "forward" and dynamic experience. Also to set things into perspective of how much of a drastic bass boost capability ZO can add, to get similar kind of bass quantity out of the ZO device as the EQ setting I may only need to use around level 6 or 7 possibly (starting from level 0), whereabouts the contour level indicating light changes from yellow to orange which is roughly only 1/4 of the max capability!
 

​

 
Ultimately I'd like to find SOME1 with the same setup I use just out of curiosity and for feedback (making sure it's not just me that find this nice) and research into this particular subject why boosting whole range on a hardware EQ leads to such sound (and improvement IMO) it does.

 

[Roller]

Quote:

As with many things in life, every single time I fiddle around with something I just make things worse.
Same thing applies to EQ in my experience =P.

Going overboard with tweaking and/or using low quality EQs is what makes your experience to be like what you described.

 

[FullCircle]

Lets say I manufacture headphones....   I design them the way I like them, develop the X over etc etc, the way I LIKE THEM to produce a SQ that I LIKE,   then I sell them to the public, which in turn the owners refuse to EQ because the musics "purity" would be degraded....
 
Do you see the problem with this logic?

 

[LizardKing1]

I think that's kind of a stereotype. I only saw one or two Head-Fi'ers saying they didn't EQ because it made the music less pure, most of the ones not using just said they wanted what was as close to them as natural (let's not have another everything-colors-the-sound argument, k?). And I think there are more mid-fi'ers EQing than not EQing.

 

[genclaymore]

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I just want to hear the music how the musicians/mixers/producers intended. That's also the reason I try to get neutral sounding equipment. Still, I'd fiddle with the EQ if I really felt like some part of the mix was hiding more than I'd like, but that rarely happens.

Same but i dont fiddle with the EQ at all.

 

[LizardKing1]

Quote:

Lets say I manufacture headphones....   I design them the way I like them, develop the X over etc etc, the way I LIKE THEM to produce a SQ that I LIKE,   then I sell them to the public, which in turn the owners refuse to EQ because the musics "purity" would be degraded....
 
Do you see the problem with this logic?

And also, you're only thinking about a segment of the market. There are these things called frequency response graphs which tell you how linear a headphone is. I've never had the pleasure of owning a Sennheiser HD800, but from the graph I can tell you it's pretty damn linear. So no, not all manufacturers make headphones sound how THEY want, some make them sound flat. So yeah, equalizing a headphone with a very linear frequency response would put a distance between what the music was supposed to sound like and what you were listening to. I'm not considering amps and all, but I'm guessing pretty soon someone is going to yell those color the sound as well.

 

[wind016]

 
Quote:

And also, you're only thinking about a segment of the market. There are these things called frequency response graphs which tell you how linear a headphone is. I've never had the pleasure of owning a Sennheiser HD800, but from the graph I can tell you it's pretty damn linear. So no, not all manufacturers make headphones sound how THEY want, some make them sound flat. So yeah, equalizing a headphone with a very linear frequency response would put a distance between what the music was supposed to sound like and what you were listening to. I'm not considering amps and all, but I'm guessing pretty soon someone is going to yell those color the sound as well.

So the HD800 sounds completely neutral to you?
 

 

[deadlylover]

Quote:

Going overboard with tweaking and/or using low quality EQs is what makes your experience to be like what you described.

Well, considering I use the O2's, they sound pretty good to my ears as it is. I just don't know what to EQ because they do nothing wrong =[

 

[FullCircle]

Quote:

And also, you're only thinking about a segment of the market. There are these things called frequency response graphs which tell you how linear a headphone is. I've never had the pleasure of owning a Sennheiser HD800, but from the graph I can tell you it's pretty damn linear. So no, not all manufacturers make headphones sound how THEY want, some make them sound flat. So yeah, equalizing a headphone with a very linear frequency response would put a distance between what the music was supposed to sound like and what you were listening to. I'm not considering amps and all, but I'm guessing pretty soon someone is going to yell those color the sound as well.

      If it was as simple as just using a graph....  all head phones would sound the same
 

 

[Sophonax]

Those who have replied in favor of EQ -- may I ask what equipment / software you are using?
 
I think I wouldn't be opposed to a high-quality equalizer in my system -- for relatively small adjustments only, though.

 

[Satellite_6]

I EQ all the time, any EQ will do, they all sound the same to me.