I would caution against applying an EQ curve to headphones without review beforehand. If EQ includes large boosts (which the example image and table shows) that can easily introduce clipping distortion if applied linearly without appropriate headroom adjustments.
Additionally, depending on transducer performance large bass boosts may simply increase transducer distortion in the bass frequency. Some headphones respond well to EQ, and others not so much.
I am not opposed to EQ, but it should be applied judiciously, and at least partially by ear. I don't believe trying to exactly match a target curve will necessarily provide good results compared to a more judicious approach.
> I am not opposed to EQ, but it should be applied judiciously, and at least partially by ear. I don't believe trying to exactly match a target curve will necessarily provide good results compared to a more judicious approach.
Agreed. While matching generalized target curves are really helpful when applying EQ to sound waves in a music production setting, from a listeners perspective EQ is going to rely much more upon personal preference.
I've always struggled balancing the subsonic portion of my mixes with the higher ranges, and often times I've ended up with way too much bass, or not enough making my mix sound very thin and unbalanced. Using Izotope's Ozone 8 Tonal Balance Control, it gives me a visual representation of where my track meets or misses a target curve based on genre. So for instance, I can see that the subsonic region of my mix far exceeds the subs in a target curve for rock music, and then adjust the eq on the instruments that fall within that spectrum accordingly. That's super helpful for getting me into the ballpark of a "recognized tonal range for a specific genre", but I fully expect people to adjust the EQ to their own tastes once I get into that ballpark.
That being said, while I expect people to adjust EQ to taste, I'd also like to point out that EQ choices made in the production phase are often intentional creative decisions. That is to say, sometimes artists may want to intentionally go against accepted norms and try something new with their frequencies. Imagine if 70 years ago someone made an Auto-EQ for the music that was popular at the time and then applied it to dubstep music being produced today - it just wouldn't work. When an artist masters a mix, that's how they want it to sound. Similarly to how a chef might be insulted if you poured a bunch of a salt on the dish they just served you without even tasting it, a producer could be similarly insulted if listeners blindly apply EQ to their work before taking time to appreciate what the artist's original intent was.
As an example of my point for using a judicious approach above, applying either of the sets of Sennheiser HD8XX measurements and resulting AutoEQ curves from the Crinacle and oratory1990 folders in the Roon DSP system collapses the headstage and tilts the perceived tone of the headphones from relatively full and engaging with a dip in the 2-3 kHz region to thin and hollow, with an overly bright, brittle top end.
Also, these are two sets of measurements of theoretically the same headphones, each with 10 adjustment points, some quite broad, some very narrow. The overall shape of the resulting curve for the same target compensation is similar, but they have some significant differences in the specifics, and they sound different. We have to remember that measurement systems and individual measurement setup can vary quite a bit, so settings from this tool will bake all of that in as well.
As a comparison, based on review of the measured curves in more of a a big picture way, applying a much simpler EQ with a broad 1.5 dB bass lift up to about 100 Hz, another broad lift of about 3 dB around 2 kHz, and a slight drop of about 1 dB centered around 8 kHz brings the bass and vocals up a little but keeps headstage and overall tone intact. Maybe it's this particular DSP implementation, but I would be wary about trying to use any of the precompiled results directly. EQ can have real benefits, but is going to be more personal than automated settings will capture.
It even has settings for Apple’s Ear Pods [1] (the wired earbuds). I remember being surprised how applying these values makes them resemble regular headphones.
Autoeq is not just a collection of ready-made EQ settings for different headphones, it's also a database of measurements from few different review sites and a tool for creating custom EQ curves. Do you have a specific target that you like? You can create a custom curve tuned for that target. Do you want to know how a certain model of headphones sounds? You can make your current ones sound almost exactly like them.
Really cool project.
I created and opened up the design of a standalone DSP [1] that leverages AutoEQ. The DSP is optimized for our home brewed headphones for VR, but I’ve been using it for my desktop headphones too.
AutoEQ is not a perfect tool, but an amazing (and free) starting point to get the most out of your audio systems.
The precompiled AutoEQ/results/ tree has been a godsend, and so is Wavelet. I honestly would think about buying a pair of headphones that's not in it, unless I'm actively looking for a specific sound signature (but it's really all about price and comfort as far as I'm concerned).
Phase shifts make no practical difference when you're equalizing headphones. You really shouldn't need to use notch filters there.
EQ phase is relevant if the dry signal has a chance to mix with the EQ output.
Changes in phase is not "distortion". When you end up making large boosts (especially to make sub bass audible), that's when your headphone drivers might start to distort sound. This is fixed with less volume, obviously.
An EQ that cuts frequencies can actually increase the amplitude of the waveform due to phase shifts. It's not just boosting. What I'm talking about is more relevant on analog gear which is more sensitive to volume.
Analog distortion of signals also affects the phase. A digital filter might or might not compensate for it, but it's not always bad.
Also, human ears tend to be more sensitive to amplitude than to the phase. Especially if the same filter is applied on both channels, which leaves the phase difference unchanged.
It's more than just human ear sensitivity. Phase shifting changes the relationship between frequencies in a sound.
For example, phase shifting can change the amplitude of a sound. Analog hardware is especially sensitive to changes in amplitude so you might be introducing distortion just by shifting phase.
Depends largely on how it's implemented. There is a big difference between the quality of a well implemented convolution engine and a crappy biquad filter.
Fabfilter isn't really doing anything magical. Its default mode is a pretty normal EQ with phase shifting. Linear-phase mode is like any other linear-phase mode with the same drawbacks.
The primary measurement is called group delay, which is the derivative of phase with respect to frequency (since a linear phase is just a uniform delay). Fortunately we have studies from the 70s publicly available that establish a group delay audibility threshold.
FIRs add vanishingly small amounts of distortion. Their real drawback is in the added delay. For asynchronous music playback this is nothing to worry about, but for video or anything interactive (communications or gaming) it's going to be a real tough pill to swallow.
It would be interesting to compare the suggested EQ curves here vs. commercial offerings that claim to introduce a neutral response like Sonarworks. In theory I think they should be doing quite similar things, but curious if there are any real differences or if they land in the same general area.
All this assumes the headphones are linear devices... which clearly isn't the case!
None of these tools seem to do anything but rudimentary nonlinear correction... Even simple things like measuring and cancelling harmonics nobody seems to do...
it's great project. No idea why some people do not want to eq their headphones at least a little bit. It can make a huge difference. Also frequency response is IMHO at least partially a matter of taste.
Taste, yes; and individual circumstances. My hearing is so good it might count as a disability, but I know where I have peaks and valleys in my sensitivity and a good EQ can help with the spikes taken by tinnitus ringing from youthful big boom car stereo work and explosives.
I checked their suggestions for my headphones against my EQ profile and theirs is pretty good. I like more lowfreq and much less high freq than the "flat" they're correcting for.
They're offering a great resource for skipping the "what does this set of cans sound like" stage. I probably spent 60hr or more dialing these in when i got them.
How can you find out where the peaks and valleys in your hearing are? I've wanted to get basically an EQ curve for my own ear hearing issues if possible as I'm sure I have some minor hearing loss, but wasn't sure how to do that. Any tips?
listen to a frequency generator while twiddling its dial. I dunno what would be the easiest tool to do that with right now, i'd start in audacity or some "audio programming toolkit".
Yes, I know enough to know I can sweep a sine wave, but I also know enough to know it’s more complicated than that. There are various curves that affect the perception of sound volume at different frequencies, like the response of the headphones, the varying response curve of frequency perception at different volumes, the inherent differing volume response curve in your brain/ears that is the basis for stuff like LUFS. I was wondering if there is a correct way to do this that corrects for all these different effects, or something professional you can do or pay for to get this measured correctly.
AFAIK "professional/medical" tests like 8 bands and may have put a decibel meter to their equipment this month. or not.
some professional audio engineers have some special recordings they listen to on everything and use a faith based or at least difficult to quantify internal process to come up with the "right" sound. I'm more in that end of the spectrum.
Ah okay, I'm surprised there isn't something more precise and scientific out there. Interesting to know that the theoretical gold standard I would really want might not even exist.
Edit: I stand corrected, as the poster below mention (I can't reply), I'd want an audiogram from a professional. Thanks!
I don't hear "notes" and "chords", I hear frequencies. My range (at near 50) still goes up to where i can hear the bats talking. In a room with people, i cannot not hear their pulse, breathing, and other biological proceedings...
I had it as a kid, went away in my teen years and now I only have tinnitus. For me it was only on certain frequencies that were boosted and they are near the principal harmonic of my always-there ringing tinnitus or in the frequency of another noise I sometimes hear that's more like a pure sinewave.
As far as I know it's more of a brain thing and not like a super-ear thing.
I've experimented with this and the results seem to vary depending on the headphones. I have a set of planar magnetic hifimans that don't have enough sub-bass out of the box, but can easily make tons of sub-bass with eq adjustments. On the other hand, some of the other headphones I tried this on sound like they're just distorting more when I try to apply similar levels of eq compensation.
There's also no way to apply a system wide eq to an iPhone, so you'll need an external device.
from my experience, it's absolutely necessary if you listen to a lot of podcasts because every tech-illiterate podcaster dude will see an EQ setting on their microphone/recording software and think "low frequencies are manly and sound good" and boost the hell out of it, and it sounds absolutely awful.
Granted my home speakers might have something to do with it, and headphones/earbuds do tend to have a high-pass filter built in just from their construction, so it probably doesn't affect everyone the same way.
I've been using equalizerAPO for desktop for years. I can only think of a handful of content creators that don't pull that bass-boosting garbage anymore, so the high-pass filter pretty much always stays on unless I'm playing music.
Or don't even normalize. The one podcast I regularly listen too regularly has guests record over the phone or DIY and they are often inaudible (to my over used ears). That'd be a great feature on spotify if it doesn't exist
Somebody should really make an easy-mode podcast recording app that functions as a phone call, but records the speakers locally, and then sends the audio to the host. It could even measure the latency on the call can cut that time out. This seems like it would be pretty trivial...
Not really. That's an immediate noise cancellation function, which only works (a) with headphones and (b) by recording the outside noise and adding its inverse to the sound being played.
i don't mean necessarily doing active NC. i was more curious about doing an initial tune with the car at idle or while driving on the road as a way to compensate for the average. is there any value in doing something like that? maybe even just to tune the EQ profile of the car.
Unfortunately on Windows is uses EqualizerAPO which has to be re-enabled every time Windows is updated or it stops working. I've given up on my headphone EQs because of it.
Additionally, depending on transducer performance large bass boosts may simply increase transducer distortion in the bass frequency. Some headphones respond well to EQ, and others not so much.
I am not opposed to EQ, but it should be applied judiciously, and at least partially by ear. I don't believe trying to exactly match a target curve will necessarily provide good results compared to a more judicious approach.