It’s too early for me to decide whether this thing is any good, but here’s some data, uncompensated with psychoacoustic smoothing applied.
A few observations:
-
This makes the HD58X look warmer, slightly bassier and darker than the HE4XX, all of which agrees with my hearing.
-
The HE4XX has noticeably more 8.5 KHz than the HD58X, which agrees with other measurements I’ve seen
-
There’s no weird 4 Khz dip like on my MiniDSP E.A.R.S.
-
You don’t see the boosted 1-5 KHz region that you see on HATS, I think because that’s mostly ear canal gain which doesn’t come into play here.
-
There’s a big dip at 6700 KHz, which is the center point of concha gain. The mic sits in my concha, so it makes sense that I’m not benefiting from concha gain, but this is even worse because it’s dipped. Adding some EQ boost at 6700 KHz does (tentatively) seem to make stuff sound clearer/less grainy for me, so perhaps part of this feature is actually my own ear shape. I’ll have to do some more experimentation with my other ear and maybe my wife if she’ll play ball to see how much of this feature is me and how much of it is the mic.
-
Both headphones look even more severely rolled off in the bass than what my E.A.R.S. and other people’s measurements show. I took these measurements wearing rather thick glasses and, unlike the E.A.R.S., I’ve got hair, so the roll off seems plausible.