Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

Downloads

Content

My original goal was to create a flat sounding compensation for my binaural sound samples which turned out to become a nightmare, as no  headphone could render those precisely equalised samples correctly. I  had to find a headphone target which would allow for my sound samples to  be rendered as faithfully as possible and at the same time sound  neutral on it's own, which became some kind of mission impossible. A  properly equalised headphone to render my flat equalised samples won't  sound neutral, while a neutral sounding headphone won't playback  binaural sound samples that were equalizsed to flat properly. 

In the meantime I made some changes and  decided to dump the "precise"  target I am talking about in this video to make everything more simple. I  already had to depart from strictly neutral for my sound samples to be  rendered faithfully with common headphones at all, therefore I will  simply apply the necessary compensation to my recordings so that a headphone follwoing my "neutral" target will be neutral on its own and  will also render my samples as lifelike as possible making the "precise"  target simply obsolete.  

Here you can see the delta between my neutral and precise target:

All my upcoming audio recordings will be compensated properly including this delta and  playing them back over a headphone following my "neutral target" you should get the most lifelike possible result, which should give you an  even better idea about the sound of all that audio gear out there. I am  quite baffled on my own how realistic the results turned out thanks to all the effort I invested into this.

Instead of music I included some pink noise samples which you can check if my EQ for the Sennheiser HD600 works for you. With music it's hard to judge the coloration if you don't know the recording well, therefore judging natural sounds or pink noise like in this case should give you a better idea of all the EQs demonstrated. You need to use a Sennheiser HD600 for these to check if my target will work for you. This won't work with any other headphone of course.

I am planning to create profiles for additional headphones every month, which will be available to every Patreon subscribing to the enthusiast level. These headphone profiles will be only available for this given month but can be also purchased separately afterwards. I am planning to cover most popular headphones, but I am not sure how long I can do this, as proper equalising needs endless hours of listening and tweaking, you just cannot expect great results by simple graph matching. Any support from you is welcome to also encourage me putting my entire energy into this. I am of course very curious about the results you will be getting, if my sound profiles can also give you some significant improvement, otherwise all this simply makes no sense, just like buying different headphones every month thinking the next one will be "better"....

Thanks for all the support I got from my trusty followers since the very beginning I started this!

Files

Mission impossible: finding a neutral sounding headphone!

My endless search for a neutral sounding headphone is finally over after having approximated a neutral headphone target on my own which departs a lot from all existing popular headphone targets. My original goal was to create a flat sounding compensation for my binaural sound samples which turned out to become a nightmare, as no headphone could render those precisely equalised samples correctly. I had to find a headphone target which would allow for my sound samples to be rendered as faithfully as possible and at the same time sound neutral on it's own, which became some kind of mission impossible. A properly equalised headphone to render my flat equalised samples won't sound neutral, while a neutral sounding headphone won't playback binaural sound samples that were equalizsed to flat properly. In the meantime I made some changes and decided to dump the "precise" target I am talking about in this video to make everything more simple. I already had to depart from strictly neutral for my sound samples to be rendered faithfully with common headphones at all, therefore I will simply apply the necessary compensation to my recordings so that a headphone follwoing my "neutral" target will be neutral on its own and will also render my samples as lifelike as possible making the "precise" target simply obsolete. All my upcoming audio recordings will be compensated properly and playing them back over a headphone following my "neutral target" you should get the most lifelike possible result, which should give you an even better idea about the sound of all that audio gear out there. I am quite baffled on my own how realistic the results turned out thanks to all the effort I invested into this. Check my pubblic Patreon post for more details including further sound samples: You can find my EQ for the HD600 in both EqualizerAPO and Qudelix 5K variants here: More headphone profiles will lbe coming every month, I welcome any support and feedback on your results!

Comments

markus intimidantus

Somehow I personally do like the approach from Oratory and his Optimum hifi-curve and his Usound.. Also the curves from Super Reviews I enjoy for several headphones (and IE). He ofen refers to the HD600 too... I would like to see your achievements. Keep on the good work.

oluvsgadgets

I also liked optimum Hi-Fi it a while back but in the end I wanted something better more solid and I am departing from all those targets quite a bit in some areas. I am really curious to hear others’ feedback if my adjustments work for them as well, so far it would seem so.

Douwe de Vries

It's great to see the research you are doing in regards to sound. It keeps me being really interested in following your work. I don't have the HD600 myself. Otherwise I would love to try out your EQ presets. I may look into getting one as it would be great to have something reference. Your new binaural channel is really helpful to me when it comes to tuning to dail in my EQ settings for the Free Pro 2 to get the natural sounds to sound natural. Then after listening to music it's an immediate improvement to me. I mostly used to use pink noise and music listening to tweak my EQ. Listening to the binaural sounds is another addition I now use to make more precise adjustments.

yossibm

I have just tried your universal and neutral eqs, and also Resolve's EQ. I only tried for a couple of minutes but I really like the neutral eq. the universal sounds great with stuffs like solo cello but when listening to jazz it is become more obvious that the extra stage comes with some boosted cymbals. Resolve's target is laughable, immediately sounds way off. everything so nasally. I guess everyone has cold right now, did he tried to eq towards viral infections? but it is not just that, the cymbals are very annoying and not resembles drums at all. he always says that he is a drummer, how is it that bad? can it be that our different ears/ heads affect the results so much? very weird.

oluvsgadgets

I welcome any further impressions, as I haven’t got any other feedback yet except yours. I am still fine tuning my setting through the Qudelix now and I think I can manage to improve treble even more. I will use a low pass filter instead to get rid of the 19khz peak but need to do some more precise measurements to know how to set it properly as I don’t hear much past 16khz anymore and need to ask my son or simply look at the headphone graphs how they align with my speaker measurements in that area. I hoped some more people would jump in to try out my setting, I mean I have close to 180k subscribers on YouTube but not even 0.1% joined, haha what a waste of time and energy.

oluvsgadgets

I will try to work on the 6XX next as it is not that far off in response to the 600 and it’s also cheaper, so maybe get that one. I just requested the 58x from Drop again as my unit is not stock anymore but my former contact is not at Drop anymore and the new one I got did not respond.

yossibm

note that I checked the universal eq named beta1 so it might not be the correct version. anyway, i don't have enough time to properly evaluate the sound because I am in a noisy environment and cannot use open headphones (using noise cancelling headphones). anyway, I think that these super-accurate optimization do not translate well to my ears. at least I have tried to crumple a plastic bag and compare and it sounded different. though it is possible that they are different sounding bags! anyway, I think that the errors of the audio-engineering of records are with larger errors than the corrections of the optimizations, so it makes them to be less important. I mean, i kept updating with all of your hd600 eqs and all of them sounded good to me. bad recordings sound off in all of them. the point is that i would gladly use any of your EQs for the HD600, while I think that the alternatives, such as AutoEqs, or Resolves, are just horrible. oratory's are not good either (sorry). in my opinion the way to get more subscribers is to offer alternative eq to popular headphones, that are much better than those that available now, but without trying to get something super great. just something that is not really terrible like the aforementioned eqs.

oluvsgadgets

The crumpled bag in my video was not compensated properly to translate well over to my natural target, it would have sounded correct with that “universal” target or how to call it. I will need to compensate my recordings differently in order to make them sound correct. But I think the natural target sounds more life like if comparing pink noise to that of neutral speakers. I will still need some time to fine tune everything and then it will be just a matter if my settings do really work well for others’ ears as well. But my setting gave you an improvement over stock and the other EQs from Oratory or Resolve…? I am fine with that to know that it’s already better.

yossibm

I now took 3 different crumpled plastic bags (luckily i love plastics) and all three sounds too me warmer than using any of the neutral/universal EQs. Oratory's "ohc" is much brighter and sounds the worst. regarding music, Resolve's eq is just horrible (very nasally), and Oratory's harman is not good (way too much bass). your neutral eq sounds the most natural to me, with the biggest different over oratory's ohc is the upper treble. Oratory's upper treble is just too boosted.

oluvsgadgets

I pinned the discussion I had with resolve on my YouTube video, you can have a look. He is coming with some weird arguments about user preference etc. I mean why would I care if it sounds off anyhow? Have you tried playing pink noise with my EQ? How does this sound to you?

yossibm

I read it now, I agree with everything you said. the problem is that he blindly follows whatever sean olive says because he think its """science""", but he doesn't realize that its just flawed anthropological surveys. "preference" is not the right research question. the research should be to equalize the headphones to the perceived neutral sound. its extra funny that even he doesn't "prefer" is own equalization, but he think that there are some imagined people who do. regarding pink noise, I actually dont really know how pink noise should sound. i dont have reference speakers to compare. i only have your earfun speaker, which sounds different. there is some upper treble problem in the speaker and another frequency stands out with the pink noise, so i don't know if its a good comparison. also my room is not treated.

KlarkKentThe3rd

I said it before, and I will keep saying it. It is impossible to have a """perfectly""" neutral headphone. Settle for "close enough to perfection for the price" and extend your lifespan.

oluvsgadgets

I think not even any speaker can be perfectly neutral, but finding the best compromise is the goal here

KlarkKentThe3rd

If money was not an issue, I would just get HD800s or Focal Clear, and the budget option would be a HD560s revision without the peak in the highs. For some reason Sennheiser is very slow to address that in any way. As for the time being, I somehow found a budget IEM that is actually very neutral (not just promises), and it's a model Z reviews praised, Tin Hifi T2. Add 3rd party eartips, and yo uget 60 dollar perfection.

oluvsgadgets

The T2 is horrid, I wonder why you think it’s neutral

KlarkKentThe3rd

Find a better IEM with removable cable and same level of detail at the same price.

oluvsgadgets

Actually I wouldn’t recommend a single IEM if it’s not adjusted towards a listeners ear. Everyone will hear something completely different.

KlarkKentThe3rd

That..... is not a bad position. One thing I forgot to mention is that I am using 3rd party medium size memory foam eartips form Comply, and that was the only way to ensure a perfect seal without hurting my ears. With THESE tips (everything included in the box is bad) what I hear sounds like the Crinacle measurement. Basically nothing in my vast music collection sounds overrepresented, and orchestral sounds super smooth.

KSo

The Harman tuning is derived from questioning listener which is their prefered tuning and not "does this tuning sounds most natrual". So Harman is a preference curve of a specific tuning of the majority of listerner in this study. It is not an absolute reference, nor is it right, or wrong, its just what a majority prefers/like. So why do you not like the Harman Curve? Because your preference seems to differ from this majority (obviously you prefer something which is more comparable to what you hear through your loudspeakers). Is your preference more "correct"? Only if you define the goal of listening to music with headphones. Your goal is to listen to music the way it was generated (played and recorded). Thats a fair goal. For other people their goal is maybe to enjoy the way they like it, may be this means with a phat bass or maybe with piercing heights. Is their goal more wrong than your goal? (With TVs and photograpy it's the same, some like the natural look and do a lot of calibrations and what not and others simply crank up color and contrast because they like it that way). Who is to say what is right and what is wrong in the context of listening to music as a hobby?