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Earfun Free Pro 2 - neutral tuning 6000hz
🕑 Added 2023-08-21 13:02:43 +0000 UTCI finished a neutral tuning for the Free Pro 2 which should offer a similar spectrum to neutrally equalised speakers in a room and should sound similar to my neutral headphone target. They all do not sound exactly the same, but it was close to impossible to achieve this, also as the ear canal being the only sound forming factor for an IEM can even change during day and make the IEM appear to sound different in the morning or in the evening. After more than 2 weeks of tweaking I came up with a response which sounds really nice with my parciular Free Pro 2 unit and with my ear canal. I tried it also on some of my other units and the results were not that great with the newer units due to sample variation. Older units still sounded slightly different but close enough to be accepted.
Below you can see the final response measured with my couplers and with a GRAS in pink, overlaid with the Harman target in grey:
I think this is the only sensible way to compare it to the Harman target, if I reference them at 1khz the Harman target will appear even more off:
Nevertheless the Harman target appears nowhere close to a neutral spectrum coming from speakers. It sounds just wrong in all aspects.
Compared to my old "reference" tuning, you can see that they shouldn't sound that different overall, just that the current neutral should appear brighter with less upper bass, and slightly more lower bass:
Compared to the MH1 you can notice that both resemble each other quite well, just that the Sony MH1 has too much bass and too thin treble, despite these issues this may still explain why I always regarded the MH1 as one of my favourite IEMs:
Compared to the Etmyotic ER2SE you can see that the Etymotic has way more mids, although the overall tendency seems pretty similar, but also the lack of upper treble is visible for the Etymotic, it was always rated as 20hz-16khz only. The bass measures completely flat for the Etymotic, but is perceived differently due to the deeper insertion and probably some additional bone conducting effects:
I would also like to throw in a highly regarded IEM back then, which to me always sounded completely wrong: the Moondrop Blessing 2 together with the Harman target:
Interestingly the Moondrop mostly peaks where there should actually be a dip, I still wonder how this could ever become that popular.
As the final response will vary so much between different units and different ears, I won't delve into creating further settings for other ear canal resonances, as due to strong averaging among all the units that I own the final result may still be off to someone else and the work simply to no avail.
If there is interest I could offer on demand settings for particular resonances. The most secure would be to tune particular units towards particular resonances, this way I can ensure that you actually get what I intended. If this will sound correct to you is still unsure, as the response shown recreates the effects of my own concha to some degree. How others may perceive this despite the same ear canal resonance is unpredictable.
I am still keen on knowing how others may perceive this setting optimised towards their earcanal and a particular unit. I could purchase single units and create settings for these with the given ear canal resonance. I could offer such individualised units for maybe 100€ + shipping. It would cost me several hours to measure them precisely and tweak my settings towards the desired ear canal resonance. Another option would be to measure all my units and create an average out of them, and then offer settings for the desired ear canal resonances. But due to the high effort, I could do this for the hifi-level maybe. It depends a lot on what you desire.
Comments
Olivier Tahir
Starting guide: https://www.patreon.com/posts/startguide-how-2-60244725
How to apply this setting?
Oluv'Sone
Q is the bandwidth of the filter, small values mean a broad filter, big values mean narrow filters. Without having a constant reference it’s nearly impossible to come up with something reasonable, as the brain will continuously adjust to the given sound thus you may perceive something as better sounding in the current moment which in reality would sound more wrong. It’s very hard to come up with something which may sound alright to everyone as I hardly manage it for myself.
Olivier Tahir
I just received my FreePro2 and started tinkering. Unfortunately I only have one device so can't compare it to the original tuning, but I like the idea of being able to modify the sound of those devices at will. It is also a bit overwhelming though, you can quickly end up with testing good enough tunings but finding out which is best can be daunting, especially when you test different styles of music. I also have a real noob question, I found out what Filter: ON PK Fc means, but can't entirely grasp what Q represents, in effect what does a 0.1 Q Vs a 2.7 Q change to the real world perceived sound output?
Oluv'Sone
the Uboom L changes a lot in the upper mids depending on the listening distance also due to interference between both drivers. you would need to set them up in stereo sitting in an equilateral triangle, but they probably will still sound different, therefore I used the KH80 this time and equalised their response below 1khz to minimise any room influence. The Free Pro 2 sounds very close to this, maybe even closer than the HD58X, although the HD58X seems slightly smoother to me overall. Regarding the Galaxy Buds, I don't remember which models I tried as there are many out in the meantime, but I didn't like any of them, they all sounded quite off to me. I will try to create a setting for my son which so far found his resonance at around 5700hz, so this may work better for you. 5500 won't sound good with my setting, you would need to insert them way deeper to achieve the intended response.
Habs mittlerweile auch aufgegeben mit "passiven, fertigen" Kopfhörer oder Lautsprecher. Der absolut annähernd neutrale Klang geht wirklich nur durch DSPs oder Equalizer. Am besten gefällt mir tatsächlich bisher auch der Anker Soundcore Life Q30 mit dem letzten EQ; oder UBoom L mit V2 EQ (0.39?). Dachte auch erst Superlux HD672 ist okay, der hat aber wiederum komische Überbetonung im Oberbassbereich. Superlux HD 681f klingt nahezu okay, hat aber wiederum irgendwo einen spitzen metallischen Charakter manchmal; schätze ab etwa 8000 Hertz. Bleibe jetzt mal beim Superlux HD681f, und Soundcore Q30 als meine Kopfhörerreferenz. Werde mir die Free Pro 2 auch noch holen.
pokketa
Hi Oluv! Just received my Earfun free pro 2, here is my first impression on this earbuds with your EQ: I first tried the earbuds stock, surprisingly that doesn't sound too bad in my opinion, even though it sound muddy and too warm but I rather listen to this and not something that too sharp that would hurt my ears. I then tried applying the EQ, and when I listen to pink noise, I noticed that it sound very similar to hd600 with your EQ applied , they have similar spectrum in the background, but still when I listen to pink noise with my Uboom L, I just hear different spectrum, I don't know if this is just different ears or maybe due to Uboom L is not flat at the first place. But yeah, the same conclusion with the hd600's eq, sound very good, there are some area I felt like a little bit "sharp", but most of the time they are not that noticeable, my ear canal resonance is around 5500. The only thing concerning me right now is that my eq galaxy buds 2 pro looked very different to free pro 2 in the graph, I am using the tool from crinacle, it's blessing 2's frequency response looked very similar to yours, so I think maybe it is kind of reliable. here is the graph of my eq galaxy buds 2 pro: https://imgur.com/a/USSCDxS
Oluv'Sone
Could you try performing a sweep and check where it becomes louder? Actually the response gets louder and louder above 11khz and starts rolling off above 15.5khz for me. I tried to achieve a similar gain for the treble I also perceive from the speakers. But as other units may be off by several dB in particular areas I cannot guarantee the same result I intended. I may try an averaged setting over all my units at least for the most common ear canal resonances.
Sounds great, maybe a tiny bit too much upper treble. But could be my unit, too ;)
Appreciate your work on this so much
