[Poetik]

if yiu use eq then at least use subtractive eq.

 

[MohawkUS]

If you push a headphone too far with eq it can sound unnatural or distorted, but a little eq never hurt anyone.
I had to eq the bass up in my AD900s when I had them, it helped a little, but not much.

 

[Eric_C]

When you guys mention iTunes EQ, are you referring to it on desktops/laptops, or iDevices?

 

[TMRaven]

I'm personally referring to desktop.

 

[TobaccoRoad]

Quote:

When you guys mention iTunes EQ, are you referring to it on desktops/laptops, or iDevices?

both

 

[crinacle]

Doesn't the EQ on the iPod... you know... SUCK?

 

[wind016]

 
Quote:

Doesn't the EQ on the iPod... you know... SUCK?

They distort so much that it's useless.
 

 

[FullCircle]

Cowon J3 for me

 

[SP Wild]

I EQ all the time.  I use Easy Q plugin for J river media center.  I don't think I hear too many negatives with EQ...mainly positives.  Its OK....I use fat power cables and silver interconnects and battery power which makes up for any loss quality.  True! 

 
Sorry but how does not using EQ get me closer to the recorded content when I have no idea what monitors they used for mastering?

 

[yifu]

It's more of a subjective thing. I do most of my listening on my iPhone, which has really bad EQ so i just leave it off.

 

[LizardKing1]

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.

 

[matbhuvi]

Quote:

if yiu use eq then at least use subtractive eq.

Makes sense. I only use EQ to get rid of the resonant frequency which causes the extra shrillness. This keeps the natural characteristics of the headphone. If i try hard to make my headphone sound neutral, then the result doesn't sound natural to me.

 

[doctorx]

Quote:

It's cheating.

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.

 

[deadlylover]

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.

 

[flyingbangus]

iTunes EQ via desktop and iPhone suck.
 
I do turn on the bass boost button on my Astro Mixamp 5.8 every now and then when I feel like "feeling" the bass (sub-bass?) on a few dubstep songs that I have. I then turn the bass boost off immediately after that song is done, LOL