Greetings! As my user name implies, I am a big fan of Roon’s convolution engine for room correction and, now, for optimizing the sound of headphones. Audeze partnered with Roon to install “presets” for most of their models, so it was easy for me to simply click on the LCD-X button within DSP settings to implement recommended FIR filters for mine.
Recently I found that jaakkopasanen had posted dozens of WAV files as part of his GitHub AutoEq project, any of which I can install to hear different approaches to equalizing not just my Audeze LCD-X, but products from many other manufacturers. Thanks Jaakko!
I downloaded files from AutoEq for the Audeze, Oppo PM-2, Sennheiser HD580 and even my old Concept CE-H “orthodynamic” (OEM by Fostex), all of which showed improvement. Problem is that none of these were created for bit rates above 48kHz, which means that Roon’s convolution engine must work harder to process higher resolutions, compromising performance.
Does anyone here know of other repositories where I might find more filters to try? I am especially interested in 88kHz and 96kHz files for my Oppo PM-2. Thanks.
Hi to all!
I am bringing this topic up again to ask two things!
At the end are convolution filters better for headphones or PEQ is fine?
They for sure have the limitation of their sample rate! If one wants to be accurate should change the resolution of the filter according to the resolution of the files that are played … is this right?
If yes this is quite inconvenient i think!
Preamp: -6.4 dB
Filter 1: ON LS Fc 105 Hz Gain 3.8 dB Q 0.70
Filter 2: ON PK Fc 127 Hz Gain -2.4 dB Q 0.70
Filter 3: ON PK Fc 7991 Hz Gain 2.3 dB Q 1.01
Filter 4: ON PK Fc 21 Hz Gain 1.9 dB Q 4.91
Filter 5: ON PK Fc 30 Hz Gain 2.6 dB Q 2.23
Filter 6: ON HS Fc 10000 Hz Gain -3.6 dB Q 0.70
Filter 7: ON PK Fc 3255 Hz Gain -2.0 dB Q 3.44
Filter 8: ON PK Fc 709 Hz Gain 0.7 dB Q 1.11
Filter 9: ON PK Fc 1250 Hz Gain -1.1 dB Q 2.29
Filter 10: ON PK Fc 4271 Hz Gain 2.4 dB Q 5.48
No. The settings in the jaakkopasanen/AutoEq Github repo are generated using the AutoEq software. AutoEq uses measurements by Oratory1990, Crinacle, Headphones.com, etc, but the presets are created by software. If you install the AutoEq software you can create your own presets using the same measurements but different parameters such as the target you wish to achieve.
The Oratory1990 presets are based on his measurements and are created by him. He is not affiliated with the AutoEq project. He uses the Harman Target unless otherwise noted. In general I find these presets to be much better than AutoEq. YMMV. I have since moved on to creating my own presets.
That’s interesting. Oratory1990 has said the results will be the same for headphones. Convolution filters are really for room correction with speakers. I have briefly compared the two in Roon and I could not hear any difference.
Also minimum phase rather than linear phase PEQ filters are preferred for headphones since you want to correct both FR and phase. If your EQ software doesn’t have a setting for this, don’t worry about it though.
AutoEq is just Python source code. You can run it on just about anything if you can get it installed correctly (not that easy).
Thanks for mentioning this… I have seen it elsewhere but forgot to check it in my setup.
I use minimum phase filters.
Easy Effects is a quite powerful piece of software. It needs Pipewire. There is the equivalent for Pulse audio though! Jaako is refering to it in his documentation on his github page.
If you are in to Linux you might like to give it a try.
PulseEffects / EasyEffects is a Linux module with wide variety of signal processing tools including convolution and parametric equalizers.
From version 4.7.2 onwards PulseEffects added support for convolution FIR filters. This is the recommended way to apply AutoEq presets. Navigate to the plugins tab and add the convolver plugin, then click the waveform button above the stereo width controls (or just the ‘Impulses’ button as of 6.1.x), click “Import impulse” and select the AutoEq generated WAV file. You may also need to manually click ‘load’ in the Impulses menu for the filter to be fully loaded. PulseEffects’ convolver requires you to set the input gain to prevent clipping. The gain required by parametric eq should be sufficient, maybe 0.5 dB of negative gain more. Depending on the version, you may need to rename the .wav file as .irs.
To use parametric eq, from version 6.0.0 onwards, first select the plugins tab at the bottom of the screen, add the equalizer plugin, and load APO settings by clicking “Load APO Preset” and selecting the ParametricEQ.txt file. For EasyEffects <= 6.1.3, Pre-amp can be adjusted with the input slider. Later versions support reading this from ParametricEQ.txt.
From version 5.0.0 onwards, PulseEffects was renamed to EasyEffects and uses PipeWire instead of PulseAudio as backend. Load eq settings by clicking the top center cog & clicking Import ACO Presets button and select the ParametricEQ.txt file. Pre-amp can be adjusted with the input slider.
Here is some info regarding minimum and linear phase eq.
These are in the context of music creation and production, so would apply to adjusting the sound of a track to your liking (increasing bass or vocals).
See @AudioTool’s post below regarding correcting the sound of a headphone.
I never thought about it but you’re right! I usually just use a graphic EQ for that. I wish Roon had the ability to apply a custom EQ per track for this type of thing.
Hey, @AudioTool - I’d like to download the Oratory1990 based convolution
filters that are NOT from the AutoEQ project. I followed your link to Oratory1990 on Reddit,
and get to a long list, in which there is a link for each measured headphone. If I click on that link, I get some pretty graphs. ALL PDF files.
At the top of the page is a download link which wants to download something to Dropbox. I don’t use Dropbox, and I have no Reddit account. Again, it appears to be linked to PDF, not zip files with WAV
Where can I find - and how can I get - the proper convolution filter zip file?
Oratory1990 doesn’t supply convolution filter zip files. What you do is enter the values in the table in the lower left portion of the pdf into the Roon parametric equalizer (or other PEQ implementation).
According to Oratory, there is no sonic advantage to convolution filters over parametric eq. They’re just two different paths to the same digital data if implemented properly.
