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Sennheiser HD600 - natural target V4X EQ
🕑 Added 2023-04-24 10:59:53 +0000 UTCThe neverending story has finally come to an end to get some final graph which for my own ear sounds close to perfect. With V4X I finally achieved my goal at least with my HD600 unit and my current pads. I will need to transform this curve onto further pads and other headphones from now on.
I adjusted mids a bit as I have discovered that my own recordings sound more real if I boost the range around 2.3khz, while lowering it at 1.5khz and instead of applying those corrections to my compensation I tried applying them onto the headphone EQ and after some further small tweaks it's even closer to the perceived spectrum I am getting from my speakers still very smooth with no harshness, but the mids are rendered more fairthfully now. It sounds more or less like the speaker now, but just better, cleaner, more detailed as if there was just nothing inbetween, ro reflecting room, just the original signal. Pink noise sounds very real to me now, extremely close to the character the speakers are giving me even a little smoother but with a very similar character, especially if you also try binaural pink noise and surround pink noise that were created by one of my Patrons and which I always include in my listenin tests as well to get some variance compared to simple uncorrelated pinkn noise. I hope the difference won't become that huge, when I get the KH80 which should arrive these days. My friend dispatched them on Satruday. My plan is to set them up close up in my living room and do again some precise measurements but also invite some people and measure their ears as well with both the speakers and headphones to get even more data and be able to create a better average maybe. My wife will be away next week and I can concentrate on optimising everyting during this period keeping the speakers stationary in my living room. Listenting to speakers in a large room placed closer to the center not too far away seems to give me the least impact from room reflections etc, therefore I want to continue like this but will keep my KH80 in my office later on.
Just for reference a final measurement of V4X compared to V3.2X in blue and stock HD600 in pink:
I departed from the given "standard" again by keepin the 1.5khz quite a bit lower than the Harman target and boosting 2.3khz instead, but this is exactly how I perceive it, this gives the sound an even stronger speaker like character. That range of course varies a lot if you move your head back and forth and is probably a side effect of interference between left and right speaker if sitting exactly inside the sweet spot of a stereo triangle, if moving more forward or back the character will change again due to shift of some frequencies against each other.
Please let me know your thoughts. I will try to create a setting for brand new pads as soon as possible as well as settings for the Qudelix, which is not that easy as the filter values differ so much from my original EqualizerAPO values.
Update: EqualizerAPO files are attached now, I also reduced 3.4khz a little bit for 4.1X which seems to correspond more to what I hear from speakers. The difference is minimal, but noticeable. Qudelix version comes later.
Just to let you know, this is my filter curve measured from EqualizerAPO in blue and with exactly the same filter values in Qudelix 5K (red):
There is a strong deviation which I have only encountered with Qudelix so far. But by applying some correcting filters re-adjusting the existing ones, I could come up with a quite similar final response which looks more similar to that of EqualizerAPO and also sounds quite close, although less smooth which maybe a result of Bluetooth compression or simply different internal processing, but I think I could enjoy listening to music like this with maybe just minor or even no further adjustments:
Here are my recent settings for the Qudelix based on 4.1X:
With these values I find a listening level of -16dB for the Qudelix and the iPhone maxxed out as quite pleasant for even longer sessions with most recordings not getting any fatigue except if the recordings are simply bad or much louder than standard. I usually do not listen to music at a much higher level. With this song and the Qudelix at -16dB you should get a sound pressure of around 75dB unweighted, I tried measuring my speakers at a comparable perceived volume and got this:
With A-weighting which ignores the low frequencies though I get values around 10dB lower.
I will listen a bit with this setting and Qudelix and then start preparing the settings for new pads.
Comments
Hey Oluv, I use your natural target V4.1 for the HD600 and I think it's the best audio quality I've ever heard from a headphone, it sound so natural, so real ! it's so pleasant, some of the recordings brought tears to my eyes ! It's a significant improvement for my ears, whereas I already liked the default configuration, thank you for your passion and hard work, be sure I'll be on the lookout for a probable update to your EQ, I've ordered new pads for the HD600.
What's the db/oct of the lowpass filter at 15500? I set my EQ using Fabfilter ProQ3, and in that you can choose from 6db/oct to 96/oct which naturally change the sound completely. I've set the normal 12db/oct for now. Picture of the graph: https://www.dropbox.com/s/dgimuz3115v4whd/HD600.jpg?dl=0
I personally use this method here: https://imgur.io/a/YDsQqoo On the Mac you "unfortunately" have to work with plug in software to get a system wide EQ. How good or bad this is I can not judge, because I have no comparison and no measurement possibilities like you. What do you actually think about my first two points above? Do you think that could give better and more stable results?
Oluv'Sone
Which EQ app for Mac would you suggest? I am not that familiar with MacOS.
Hey Oluv, first of all I would like to thank you for finally taking on the topic of headphones again. Since I own a HD6XX I'm looking forward especially next month. π€© But now to my actual concerns. I would like to make a few suggestions on how you could possibly get even closer to the goal of the perfect curve. 1. speakers in the room: First, I find your step very good that you switch to the KH80. With these, you should be able to reproduce everything above 100 hertz pretty perfectly. However, I have some concerns about listening in the room. Since your room is probably not acoustically treated, you should have massive problems here regarding long reverberation times, or what do you think? Wouldn't it therefore make more sense to monitor in a suitable room with a noticeably drier sound and then transfer to the headphones? Because apart from the frequency response, with speakers in the room you still have the aforementioned problem of reverberation time, which does not occur with headphones. Maybe that's why you had such problems to transmit it precisely? 2. ear pads: as you have already correctly recognized, these will probably lead to a different, "wrong" sound after some time. Have you considered buying aftermarket pads and using them instead? I think that would be a good solution, since these should be mostly a significantly longer time almost like new. - e.g. Dekoni 3. EQ: Here you have also again correctly recognized that many programs and devices with the same settings unfortunately do not bring the same results. Is it therefore conceivable for you to find and measure a cross-system fully parametric EQ for MAC in addition to the APO and the Qudelix? For my part, I use my headphones only via an audio interface which is connected to an Mac Pro M1 and I would very much appreciate that. Please don't take the suggestions in a bad way, I would just like to help creating the perfect headphone sound. ππ»
