Precisely. You could probably use this to adjust for pad wear as well.
PEQ - even a 6 band, is better than a fixed freq EQ of 31 bands. I own 3 pieces of Schiit gear, and its a great outfit, but 4 or a 6 band EQ is not going to solve issues the vast majority of the time.
Take a Senn 650. Needs a bass boost (under 100 Hz) needs a mid bass cut, a mid cut, 2 cuts at/over 3k, and at least one rise around 9k
Its the difference between racing a car around an oval track vs some F1 race thru complex roads in Europe. Not up to the task.
No problem with the quality of Lokius, just its flexibility.
That’s not the point. I use PEQ when it’s appropriate. I have been working on a good PEQ for my car to use with ROON ARC as the car tone controls are just not enough, and I’m working with the same volume (spatial volume) and speaker set all the time.
I use PEQ if I have a specific headphone for which I want to make changes, or if there is a nice preset - again ROON, ROON ARC for the LCDi4 IEM.
I don’t often use PEQ if I want to just make some changes on the fly, or fix something in the recording. It’s way easier to get a decent result with a few flicks of a knob. I don’t think I would prefer a 16 or 31 band graphic equalizer to what I get from the Lokius. The Lokius is designed to tune at common sweet spots, and it just works well. Plus it is applied AFTER any PEQ OR instead, your choice.
Note that the Lokius is NOT like an old graphic equalizer. It’s not constant Q. Small adjustments are broader, larger are higher Q. Nor is the adjustment the same for each knob. Look at the specs and FAQ.
After seeing Super* Review in a recent Noise Floor livestream, I’ve been playing around with Squiglinks a bit more. And I’m finding that the Earphones Archive squiglink has some fairly powerful tools for defining both target response curves and EQ curves for 5128 measurements right in its basic FR interface (as opposed to the Equalizer tab tools, which I’ve yet to try).
It includes preset target curves like Harman Beta, Rtings, and Sound Guys. But it also allows you to define your own reference curves by combining either Oratory’s 5128 DF or HBK’s (Stock) 1/3-octave 5128 DF with a tilt or slope of your choice. And also tweaking the bass, treble, and midrange/ear gain levels on that curve, if you wish to do so. (I prefer to use the “Stock” 5128 DF, with a slope in the -1.0 to -1.5 dB/octave range. Or about -1.25 dB/octave on average. Imo, that’s pretty good up to about 15 kHz, but not above that.)
It also allows you to create an average response curve from the measurements of several different headphones, which is actually my preferred method for defining a more reliable EQ curve, especially in the upper frequencies. And you can apply whatever level of smoothing you want to the curves, to eliminate the narrower band, high Q peaks or valleys from your final EQ curve.
After you’ve defined your target, you can then show the difference between that and your headphone’s response by compensating the target curve with your headphone’s response curve. And that gives you your EQ curve. You do that with the little squiggly icon (next to the eye icon) on the righthand side of your headphone’s toolbar, beneath the FR graph.
Also, if you prefer to see your DF reference curve and other measurements in raw form with the ear gain still intact (which is often my preference), then you can do that by cycling through the different compensation options with the same squiggly icon on the righthand side of your DF curve’s toolbar.
The only downside is that the Earphones Archive squiglink is somewhat limited in terms of the number of headphone measurements it contains. And I haven’t figured out a really easy way to export either the target or EQ curves yet. I’m still a newb to the squiglink interface though. And haven’t experimented with any of the dedicated EQ features on the squiglinks Equalizer tab yet.
This is pretty fun stuff though. And its the kind of thing I’d like to see Headphones.com (and Rtings, and the Sound Guys…) implement for all its 5128 measurements as well. So kudos to Mr. Super* Review for makin somethin like this possible!
There is a Dark Mode for the squiglinks interface btw. It’s a bit harder to read, but easier on the eyes at night. And it’s the last option in the toolbar above the FR graph, if you scroll it all the way over to the right.
Export of average, target, and EQ curves is possible with the squiglink Snapshot feature, and UsyTrace. Found this on Listener’s squiglink page. (Thank you @Listener!)
There may be easier and more effective ways of exporting EQ (and other?) curves via the Squilink Equalizer tab controls. But I don’t know how to work em yet. The above method is useful though in the meantime.
It is also possible to temporarily import/upload your own target or FR curves into the Squiglink graphs using the upload buttons in the Equalizer tab, so you can compare them with other curves in the database, for example. Very handy!
Why would anyone apply EQ from a Lokius AFTER using PEQ?
Here is a PEQ I was using a few years ago with 8 settings for a HFM HE-6 SE
Hz -------- db – Q – curve
00048 Hz +2.8 1.0 Low Shelf
00080 Hz +1.8 1.0 Low Shelf
00580 Hz -1.6 2.6 Digital Bell 2
01840 Hz +3.4 1.8 "
02800 Hz +2.0 5.7 "
03800 Hz -3.4 6.8 "
09100 Hz -6.0 8.9 "
10900 Hz +4.6 7.5 "
Lokius is not going to get anywhere near those settings - period.
PEQ to EQ headphone
Lokius to EQ song or mood