EQ? Anyone using one?

Unless you have access to the original recording and the chain used to record it, you can’t. At which point it is all just a question of which compromises, ideals and aesthetics you want to hitch your wagon too.

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The beauty of this EQ debate is that we are talking about something that is free (one of the rare gifts in this hobby). If you are on the fence about EQ the best advice I can give you is to just try it yourself. It takes less than 5 minutes to download Equalizer APO and Peace GUI and have it up and running. It is fun to play around with and you might be surprised that you hear a setting that you enjoy. Save that as a preset for the future and just turn it on and off as you please.

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That is very true, and I do plan to experient. Especially with the equal loudness setup. What is available for Mac?

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It has been a while since I explored Mac EQ options, but I believe I used to use either Boom or eqmac at some point.

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As the saying goes, “you can never go home again”. I think artists and engineers generally listen to the final mix on a variety of systems and settings to make sure it sounds “good” in a variety of situations so that it will appeal broadly.

Even if there was a magical moment where it all came together for the artist and they were like “this is it!”, we can never go back to that moment. What was the system, what was the volume setting, what was the room, what time of day, had they just spent a wonderful night with their partner, had they gone for a swim that morning and still had some water in the ears (how much in which ear?), or maybe they’d just smoked a joint? Too many variables!

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My thoughts on the matter (as if anyone had actually asked :wink: ) are that the choice of EQ is something that is just as subjective as the choice of music that one makes.

Looking at the subject from 3 different points of view, which are all relevant to myself and are only my personal opinions, would be as an artist (musician etc.), as a sound tech (although some prefer to call themselves engineers) and as a final user (the listener).

From the Artist POV

As an artist, I started performing on stage at 16 and was performing regularly until about 5 years ago when I finally decided that I was tired of getting home as the sun came up (concerts finish very late here!). On stage, while we would all like to think that the audience is hearing what we want them to hear, honestly, we are totally at the mercy of the FOH sound guy. What the audience hears is completely out of our hands as an artist and all we can do is make sure we perform to the best of our abilities and try to forget about everything else (this is something that many artists can’t do and doesn’t end well).

In the studio… it depends. Whilst there are studios that have things perfectly aligned, these are usually out of reach for the bands and artists that are not top tier (i.e: wealthy enough to afford the studio time). In smaller studios, you are more dependent on the equipment that is available and the person doing the recording and mastering. Here the artist obviously has a say in what is the finalized recording but we need to remember that studio time is not cheap, so a lot of lower cost artists need to make compromises and factor in the cost.

Finally, as an artist, in regards to us wanting the final user (i.e: listener) to hear things exactly as they were recorded, well yes, there is time and effort spent to search for our “sound” but at the same time, as an artist, I am happier if someone decides to EQ my music and then listen to it rather than discard the music because it was “lacking in bass for their preference” or something similar.

From a Sound Tech POV

Moving on to my point of view as a sound tech. I have worked in both studio and in live events and again, a lot of the time this involves compromises and doing the best you can with what you are given.

In a live event, you are depending on things like room acoustics, the amount of people at the event, the PA system provided etc. etc. In this case, you have to work with what you have. In this day and age, many measuring systems have made life a lot easier for tuning and set up. You can use software to assist you in the placement of speakers and subwoofers etc., although I find ears to be just as important! In this case, I use DSPs to do the basic tuning for the event (delays, eliminating unwanted rebounds and peaks etc.) and then use the console EQ to adjust to each band and each bands member as the show goes on.

Again, in the case of high tier bands, you can specify much more than a secondary act, who is more dependent on what the venue (or organization) supplies. As a tech, I invest 100% of my energy into making things sound as I feel they should but this is only my personal taste, no matter what it sounds like (within reason) some people will hate it and want more bass or more mids etc. My job is to create the best sound possible (to my ears) and have the artist(s) trust in me (which is not always easy). I am totally dependent on the tools I have to do the job, along with the effort of the artist(s) and no matter how hard I try, no two performances will sound exactly the same.

In a studio, it is different. In the studio you can rerecord, remix, remaster, add in effects, process later etc. My preference, in a studio, is to record a sound that is as clean and uncoloured as possible. If I need to add EQs, filtering, effects etc. I prefer to do so at a later time, once the track is recorded. Now, there are obviously some amazing studios that have amazing setups where everything is exactly how the producer wants it, again, these studios are usually at the top end of the price bracket, so at lower end studios we make do with the tools we have (again).

I love to sit down with the artist and go through things but I will say that many many artists are amazing musicians but have no idea about how to search for that sound they have in their head, which can make things more difficult as you start going around in circles to end up back where you started (this can also be the case with producers as well). In these cases, I will make tweaks without the artist being around and then get their opinions later. Again, it is all about the artist trusting you to do your job and you making the artist feel like he is making the decisions.

I will also say that maybe in larger studios they are more interested in cable impedance etc. but in the majority of studios I have worked in (mostly building them rather than operating them) the best cables are those that work and don’t introduce unwanted noise. If something sounds strange, then cables (and other items) are swapped around to find a solution, but as long as the cables and connections are of good quality, nobody is counting the electrons flowing along them.

In relation to the end user, from a studio point of view, nobody expects the listener to have the same set up and room acoustics as the studio where it was recorded and/or mixed and mastered. The only thing you can do is try to have it sound as good as possible (and as close to that sound in your head as possible) on a large variety of systems. For example, I think the majority of music listeners today have speakers and systems that are bass heavy meaning that if your recording is bass heavy also (which a lot of modern music is, but that’s a different discussion) then it will be overpowering for those who don’t want excessive bass. However, if you reduce bass to counteract this, then someone who is listening on a flatter system (or without a sub for example) will find it anemic.

This makes it impossible to ensure that your recorded track will sound as you want it on everyone’s system, therefore, all you can do is find a good middle ground (or give away free headphones with your album :smiley: ). This is particularly present in a lot of music that was recorded in the 80’s (and 90’s) where the most common studio monitor for mixing was the Yamaha NS-10. The NS-10 was by no means a great speaker and the majority of people who are passionate about audio would probably hate them, however, it was a monitor that was very well known and the running joke was “if you can get it to sound good on the NS-10, it will sound great everywhere else!”.

From a listener POV

Now, my final point of view, as the end user, in other words, the listener and music lover. While there is a huge amount of people that are interested in high-end audio, the truth is that the majority of people who listen to music haven’t even heard of the brands that are discussed among audiophiles. Most music lovers are just that, someone who loves music. They don’t have any idea if the system they are listening to (be this speakers, headphones or even a live concert) is anything like the original sound, they just know if they like the result or not. If someone has a system that doesn’t sound as they want it to, then EQ is a great way to tweak a sound to their liking.

Does this mean it is no longer a true representation of what the artist wanted you to hear? To be honest, I very much doubt that you speaker set up is high on the priority list of an artist, unless that artist is specifically creating music for the audiophile world (which, admittedly, some are). Let’s pick, just as an example, a song that was mixed on a pair of NS-10 monitors, let’s say “Born In The USA” by Bruce Springsteen. This track was mixed and mastered using a set of studio monitors with a frequency response graph that looks like this:


(graph from Sound On Sound)

That means that to be able to reproduce what they were hearing in the studio (without even entering the room acoustics and the fact that everyone hears music a little differently) you would need a set of speakers that have a similar FR. Now, if we take a different song, say “Paris” by The Chainsmokers, this was mixed on a pair of Genelec 8351s. This graph shows the FR of the Genelec monitors (I can’t guarantee this is exact as I can’t find the one from Genelec):


(graph from Gearslutz)

It’s very easy to see the difference between the Yamaha’s and the Genelec’s, so, as an extreme example, if you wanted to listen to a bit of Bruce Springsteen followed by The Chainsmokers, you would need to swap monitors, or… use EQ :wink:

So, my extremely long post (which I apologize for) is basically to say that no matter how much you spend on a system, no matter how many graphs and measurements you read, no matter what you do, the only real result you can aim for is for it to sound good to your ear.

It is not possible to be 100% true to the original recording as even the studio wasn’t 100% true to it, they just got it where they wanted it. If the studio production, or the live FOH tech, reached results that sound amazing, then they did a good job but they can only know this with the system(s) they have at their disposal.

The same goes for us audio lovers (notice I didn’t say music lovers as there are more people that love music than gear), if we reach a point where our system is perfect to our tastes then I believe that that is the highest goal that can be achieved. EQ is just another vehicle that can help us reach our destination.

Again, my apologies for such a long winded post!!

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It’s awesome to hear the perspective of a working musician and tech!

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This was the best description of how I felt about the subject! I’m not anything but a listener of music, but what you wrote was exactly what I was thinking when trying to formulate my thoughts on this to myself lol…how can anyone know what the artist “actually” wanted? without having them come to your house and EQ your setup for you lol. Plus knowing that equipment and people are all factors…EQ is probably even more subjective than the rest of our hobby lol. Great write up and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it!!! I wish I could give you a star next to the heart :wink: as this was the best explanation to date that I have read on the topic. Cheers, and thank you for putting the time into writing it! I learned a lot, and aligned with a lot of your points!

Fantastic! (my new favorite word, I’m sure it will begin to annoy people soon).

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Don’t apologise, this is a top quality post. Thank you for allowing me to hear your thoughts. As @pwjazz said it’s great to get a perspective of someone who actually works in the industry and has experience. There are so many brilliant contributors on this forum and it’s a pleasure to read their posts.

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Thanks for the kind words :blush:

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Alright, sorry about the wait guys. I’ve got the EQ file here.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/535786870995419137/598284353868529705/Final_E2000_Fix.peace

Just click on the link and it should download. I had uploaded it to a channel on a Discord server I’m in. Note, this file will only work in Peace. It won’t work with vanilla EqualizerAPO, or other PEQ’s. Just import the file into peace and it should work.

This is the EQ I use for my Final E2000 since it had come with very little 3KHz energy. Unit variance on these are a little nuts.


The after results. I’m still trying to figure out why the second resonance peak (or hump) looks like that. Perhaps I might need to recalibrate it.

So I am looking to explore EQ since my headphones arrived. I am really interested in @I_want_all_the_tacos link of David Griesinger lecture on headphone equalization. All the information needed to calibrate is found here. My problem is that I have a Mac. Does anyone know how to use a Winebottler and can get this working on a Mac?

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Thanks for the info on DMG Audio EQuick…

Purchased it after a “quick” demo.

Thanks…Robert

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The discussion is so thorough here it’s hard to think of a new or unique approach that hasn’t already been described. For me, the goal is arriving at a more natural sound that minimizes or eliminates flaws and irritations such as “constricted”, boomy, muddy, grainy, glassy, brittle, and all that other stuff. It helps to have a dozen good headphones on hand, so you can walk your EQ for a given headphone iteratively toward a sound that has the best properties of the other 11, and none of their flaws.

I’ve been very successful with about 1/3 of mine, somewhat successful with another third, and the rest I just give up on. For the successful ones, I get a sound that has really good detail between the low-mid bass up to the upper treble where wire brush harmonics have that delicate delay, and 90 percent of my music sounds good to excellent on that headphone.

But, it’s usually a tedious and iterative process, because each change of a slider - even with a good parametric EQ - usually impacts something else. For me it’s important for the music player to apply the EQ to the digital data before it goes to the DAC, and also important to keep the preamp setting below the maximum boost setting, to prevent overload distortion. With some highly-regarded headphones, the difference with EQ switched off and on is astounding.

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Old thread but perhaps I can get it moving again. I use EQ all the time. My recent EQ project was with the Audeze LCDi3 IEM. I performed EQ with the RME ADI-2 DAC fs.

I originally used the Cipher cable with a iPhone SE. I used Audeze’s own EQ to get the sound acceptable. The technicalities of this IEM are S class but I still couldn’t get exciting enough tonal performance. I found myself reaching for this IEM less and less till it was just gathering dust and was thinking of selling it.

Bought the ADI-2 and went to town. It took a few hours but by god, now I can’t take the IEMs off (I have a lot of fairly expensive IEMs, headphones, and speakers).

With ADI-2 you can also EQ MQA titles in Tidal.

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Do you use Roon? I usually use the Cipher and iPad or iPhone with my LCDi3’s, I’ve been wanting to dial them in on my Bifrost2/Lyr3 stack. Not sure the “recommended” LCDi4 setting is the best starting place. Audeze has not released an update for the i3.

I’d appreciate your thoughts on parametric settings.

Finally, these LCDi3s are the best IEMs I have. I really like them. How do they compare to your other high end ones?

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I use Audirvana with Tidal which does not have all the features of Roon but does seem to improve sound quality (more clear). Audirvana clearly describes source and destination bit depth and frequency.

I looked at Crinnicle’s graph for the LCDi3:

And raised the 4k-5k region 4-6 db Q 1. I also lowered the 1k region 4db Q 0.5. For personal taste I love elevated sub-bass and up the region 50Hz 6db at 0.5 Q. Not something I would recommend. I do play with EQ a lot however.

The LCDi3 is open/Airy (never like these imprecise terms but its all we have) with great imaging and detail. All the technical check boxes. They sound more like “headphones” than my headphones due to expectations. I love how light they rest on the opening of my ear canal. I can forget that they are there.

I love the warmth and overall base of my Focal Radiance headphones. Like sitting in front of a fire with a good brandy.

My UM MEST IEMs are incredibly detailed with an imaging like no other device. They constantly surprise would be a good description. They are S class technical IEMs also but are not open/airy like the LCDi3.

Most telling is that I like the LCDi3 more that my Hifiman Anandas. They are better than the Anandas in almost every category. I do sometimes just prefer headphones however.

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Thank you @CrankyRat. I know what you mean. I have a hard time liking IEMs, and the Audeze do sit lightly because of the clip. Forgetting that they’re there is a big deal with an IEM.

I like speakers most of all, but yes, I prefer headphones most of the time over an IEM. The Hive Nectar eStats are my current favorite of what I own, and as far as listening time - well the Grado RS-1e probably comes in 2nd. I like it’s light weight, great soundstage, lack of sealing out room noise, and ability to just jam with an iPhone and Dragonfly Cobalt.

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The Loki is very limited - in terms of bands and technology/ I adore Schiit but this isn’t one of their winners… I started my audio adventure in '73 when I tried to build a stereo better than my fathers Quad. In '77-'78 I tried a Soundcraftsman (very good for the time), but it was easy to set it so you could cause phase issues, Never touched again until just over a year ago. Parametric EQ - Toneboosters EQ from TIDAL. Any ridiculous settings you try, doesn’t cause the EQ to misbehave.

Every headphone I have has mods, and they all use parametric EQ, and they are all well better than before - EQ on its own equals or exceeds the mods. 48 years mostly sworn off from EQ, maintaining the purist snob attitude. Put it this way, every headphone in the world needs EQ - the physics alone demands it. An amazing can like a HFM Susvara can manage w/ a Susvara, and if you have $10k+ very transparent electronics OK.

But with middling stuff such as the HE-6se, HE-500, HEX v2, HD-600 - all modded with a Rag 1 and a Gumby 1 - nope - need the EQ.

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I’m with your Dad. Quad is one of my favorites. And I do remember Sound Craftsman et al.

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