So one of the many inadequacies I have in this hobby would be determining frequencies. My Kef floordstanding speakers have an annoying thump in a specific frequency, probably room treatment related, but recently I’ve picked up on that thump when listening to old headphones. Either my brain/ear’s are more sensitive to this frequency or I am focused on it. Like if you take an interest in a specific model of car that’s all you see on the road.
Anyways, how do you all pick out frequencies in music?
I’m sure others will have better ideas on this. But when I EQ by ear, I use EAPO’s Configuration Editor. And I usually start with a variable GEQ (not parametric EQ) that has a limited number of bands at 20, 63, 200, 630, 2k, 6.3k and 20k Hz.
I select the band or point I want on the GEQ graph using a dragbox, and raise and lower it using the up/down arrow keys on my computer keyboard, to get a better idea of the range that’s affected.
If I want more discrete control, then I will add more bands in-between the above. The bands above divide the bass, midrange, and treble ranges up pretty nicely and simply though, using essentially a decade-based approach.
You could also use a single PEQ peak filter, and dial the frequency around on it while playing some pink noise, to see how it effects different frequencies.
EAPO’s Configuration Editor is a bit clunky compared to many other EQ interfaces. But it is still quite powerful and flexible. And if you want to learn more about it, there’s some add’l info here…
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/equalizer-apo-questions-discussion.953410/
Since you seem to be going down the EQ path, I’m also gonna suggest that you look at some of these videos by Super* Reviews, which explain how to use the EQ features in his squiglink graphing tools.
I’m still learning about these myself. So I still use EAPO’s Config. Ed. to create all my EQ. But I use squiglink graphs to experiment with different targets for my headphones, by averaging the frequency responses of different headphones I like together. Listener’s HBK 5128 squiglink is one useful tool for this kind of thing. There’s also a bit of a learning curve though to using the squiglink graphs and getting the most out of them.
A couple small caveats to the above. Mark (Super* Review) does a pretty good job in these videos. In the first one though, he seems to suggest that the goal of EQ should be an in-ear response that’s close to the flat FR of your source. What I think he really means in this case is a perceptually flat response… which will not look flat on a raw frequency response graph measured inside the ear at the DRP (ear drum reference point).
The other caveat is to be aware of the limitations of your headphones. Most open dynamic headphones will begin to distort if you try to boost their sub-bass response too much, for example. So the amount of bass boost you can apply in that range will be effectively limited. And some planars and e-stats can also be limited by their excursion in the low frequencies.
Some headphones with inferior drivers can also start to break up modally if you try to boost their volume too much in the higher frequencies.
Just be aware that EQ cannot overcome some of the physical limitations inherent to your headphone’s design and construction. And what you see on an EQ’d graph may not be exactly what you’ll hear on your own head when the EQ is applied.
There is also a tone generator in the Equalizer tab of squiglink graphing tools that can be used to listen to the pitch of your headphones at different frequencies.
I’m not that big a fan of using such a personalized approach to tuning in the higher frequencies as Mark describes in the last video btw. And prefer to target the average response of a number of good headphones instead. When I EQ by ear, I generally tend to use broader band adjustments to tweak the overall tonal balance. YMMV on this of course
Thank you for the thorough responses. I’m kind of tucking this into my back pocket until I have a listening station set up. Also waiting for my Tungsten to arrive so it can wreck all of my headphones and I need to play with the rest of them.
Also sorry for the non-comment here. One of my oldest and closest friends got in a car accident and ended up in the hospital so I’m a little off today and just want to click away on my keyboard. He’s fine and heading home but it whacked out my day. I haven’t read any of your response, just saving it until I can do critical listening and then take it into consideration.
Sorry to hear about your friend, and hope he’s doin better. No replies are necessary btw, unless you have questions or other comments on some of the above.
There may also be some easier solutions for what you want than the above. Mark has another video in his EQ series that looks at some different PEQ apps, for example. I haven’t tried any of them though (except EAPO), so can’t offer much commentary at this point.
Harman also had an software program called “How To Listen” that was designed to train participants in their studies how to recognize different frequencies. I don’t know if it still works, but there is some more info about it here…
One caveat I will add to Mark’s PEQ app vid. This is something I’ve already touched on elsewhere here. If you’re using a software EQ on a PC (like EAPO), then make sure that the bit depth and sample rate are also appropriately set in your audio device settings for the hardware, software, and audio content you’re using. It’s best to do this before installing the EQ software so you don’t have to reconfigure it again later to use the new audio settings.
Use a sample rate that’s appropriate for your content, and use a bit depth higher than 16 bits for better resampling of your audio.
