Is EQ BAD for your headphones?

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[illustrious]

If eq or in general dsp affect your headphone (especially in a bad way), then nearly all music will affect yout headphone because they will use dsp and more specifically eq in the process of making and mastering the music 😑
Just remember not to clip anything in the process and you will be fine

[kingstoler]

I like using Roon's PEQ and EqualizerAPO depending on the headphones/ music, and it's usually an improvement even with minimal EQ.

[gjermundification]

Not all records can be Dark Side of the Moon.

[iknowyounot]

Focal Clears come to mind for me. You try to touch the eq at all and you lose so much volume capabilities and introduce what most people call mechanical clipping. Very limited.

[daysofgrace]

Best I have come across is Equalizer APO on Windows. I have Wiim Pro+ streamer/PEQ/DAC, best reading watching reviews to see how the headphones measure and take EQ. I just PEQ to Harman target...

[saurangowallah]

From a mastering perspective, EQ’ing is a slippery slope and all digital EQ’s are far from equal. We use MAAT EQ’s which are by far the cleanest with accurate phase. Sadly DSP eq is often a standard code.
I copied Sonarworks EQ settings to the MAAT EQ Orange, it was like night and day. I would never go back…
Love these discussions by the way. Thank you for the content :-)

[Synthematix]

Im looking for a passive inline headphone equalizer, do they exist?

[DarbyCDoll]

Wish you guys spent a little more time talking about EQ hardware. I got the Schiit Lokius and dig how I can tweak levels. Good or bad, reminds me of old skool EQ back in the 70s-80s and way better than software EQ IMHO.

[dangerzone]

Most people who don't like EQ don't know how to use it. I've used it so many times to get amazing results from budget headphones.

[harackmw]

The other argument I have heard is that eq introduces distortion, but the question there is whether you can even hear it?

[johngalt]

Different headphones certainly respond differently to EQ as well. My admittedly budget daily driver setup is an Audeze LCD-X with a Topping E50/L50 combo powering it, and on some types of music, a bit of bass boost does wonders for it. For video games, the bass boost needs to be turned off. I'm pretty happy with Equalizer APO software and Peace interface for this purpose.

[adrianmorrish]

So many approaches, the normal software eq's of various types, schitt loki approach using dedicated hardware, ifi analogue only "eq", mojo 2 "losless " eq, where I have a problem is when people spend a pile on high end headphones and eq the he k out of them, maybe they bought the wrong headphones, accepting the very valid point of older rock etc tracks never meant for Digital with the various harmonics etc lost. Good discussion as always, thanks guys.

[ara]

Amazes me what on earth some mastering engineers hear when the are producing artist music. There is good and bad in all formats. So EQ when used in the right areas makes these bad albums sound a bit better.

[AmazonasBiotop]

For 2ch DSP on TT is no brainer. 🎉
Even if we take a poor DSP device going from analog -> digital -> analog. Done that and talk from first hand experience.

Why.

It is simple that inaudioble conversion analog -> digital -> analog is more than coverd for the room correction that the DSP does. (Plus so much MORE!)

When ~50% of what you hear at sweet spot is the listening room.😢

So "purists" are missing out big time and are just a word for a dinusar that dont want/cant not bothered to learn new tech in my opinion.😅

[vancybergoth]

It's a pity that you guys weren't there in person in Munich. I tested the Abyss & and Feliks Audio combo yesterday.

[gaborozorai]

EQ-ing has been a no-no for a long time with the audiophile crowd as regards speaker based systems (you like to call them 2 channel but that should be used to distinguish them from multi-channel HT setups, not from headphones which are obviously also 2 channel.) It's a no-no albeit it is exactly with these systems that some correction for room effects could make sense. Conversely, many headphone users seem to be using EQ as a matter of course, essentially altering the tuning that the engineer had worked on. Just makes no sense to me.

[nashsanadiki]

Eq to headphones would be like trying to edit a Raw images…. there are limites