[Question] Bones the Budding audiophile journey to audio nirvana.

PatrThom

PatrThom

As a listener, you will mainly use an equalizer for two things:
-To tailor the sound you are listening to more to your personal preferences.
-To compensate for any deficiencies of your listening equipment.

If it’s for the first reason, then no big deal. Just buy an EQ and tweak to your hearts desire.
But If it’s for the second reason, then you are going to need more equipment. Because you can’t compensate for deficiencies without first determining what those deficiencies are.

—Patrick
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Bones said:
I've been looking with no luck. Anyone have any leads on a primer or guide to a first time user of an equalizer? I understand it controls different frequencies but I'd love to learn how to tune them beyond the fiddle fiddle till you get it right.
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Absolutely. I do this for a living.

Here's the basic idea -

Play pink noise (PINK not white) and then tune the frequency spectrum as flat as you can. That's it. Proper tuning of a speaker (or headphone) is to equalize the frequency response from as low as possible to as high as possible (though you don't need to worry about anything above 20khz).

I'm not sure how well this will work for headphones, but you can try - I use an app called "sound analyzer" on my phone to get a frequency spectrum analyzer. Using it will look something like this:

1637025466400.png


Your goal is to get the curve of these bars as flat as possible - doesn't matter how loud or soft, you want pink noise to be a straight line across all these bars. If your equalizer lets you select frequency and bandwidth, so much the better. That will let you hand pick the frequencies that are sticking up or down too high on the graph, and tune them up or down.
 
Tinwhistler

Tinwhistler

Bones said:
HOW I MAKE IMAGE SMALL!?
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After pasting in the body of the post, you can grab the handle at the lower right hand corner of the image and resize. This won't change the file size, but will change how it displays in the post body.

Alternately, you can do what I do for large images from my phone and such--paste them into Paint and resize them to something around 1024x768. Dave's mentioned in the past the shrinking drive space for the forum.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Bones said:
THE STACK GROWS!!!!
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Ooo, a wild 4-band EQ appears!
Tinwhistler said:
paste them into Paint and resize them to something around 1024x768.
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The Imagemagick (or whatever) board plug-in is set to reduce all posted images so that their longest dimension cannot be more than 1000px in either direction. If you try to post a 1024x768 image, it will automatically be resized to 1000x750. So if you want to preserve an image’s quality, crop the important part to be <= 1000px in height/width/both.

—Patrick
 
Tinwhistler

Tinwhistler

PatrThom said:
Ooo, a wild 4-band EQ appears!

The Imagemagick (or whatever) board plug-in is set to reduce all posted images so that their longest dimension cannot be more than 1000px in either direction. If you try to post a 1024x768 image, it will automatically be resized to 1000x750. So if you want to preserve an image’s quality, crop the important part to be <= 1000px in height/width/both.

—Patrick
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I havent tested lately, but I do remember at one time, if I posted huge images, they'd scale down in the post body, but if you clicked them, they'd be original size in the lightbox.
Edit: test: 3024x4032 image
07-12-2020 cthulhu.jpg
Well, I'll be damned...it works. I can now stop that one step.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Dave said:
This is no longer an issue. Well, unless Gas does another image and video heavy Halforums House in the Sims, which is what caused the issue.
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Wellll more like took it from 80% to 90% capacity :p

But yeah, kinda a fair cop.
 
Bones

Bones

so kind of trying to decided on new cans, im torn between Sennheiser 800s or hifiman arya... both are highly recommended and I am at the "buy once, cry once" stage of upgrading my cans. I am currently debating the need for going to heavier duty gear on the desk just because of how hot these little guys run. I know nothing so I turn to you guys for advice on my plans in this new hobby.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Alas, I do not know anything about hifiman, and while I have heard of Sennheiser (and generally heard good things) I haven't experienced them for myself. I'm mostly an Audio-Technica guy.
 
Bones

Bones

shockingly pound for pound Gas the M50X is considered the overall best closed back headphone by multiple sites. there is talk of the M70X being technically better but being to "sterile".
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Bones said:
shockingly pound for pound Gas the M50X is considered the overall best closed back headphone by multiple sites. there is talk of the M70X being technically better but being to "sterile".
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Right now I'm using a pair of A30X, which is fairly decent. But I really miss my ATH-A700. Those were the cans that reminded me that sound quality could make me weep and were really, really comfortable because they used spring-loaded headpads instead of a regular headband type arch. Pity they're long discontinued, so they can't be had for reasonable cost anymore.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

While I can't speak for the hifiman, I have worn Sennheiser 800s before and they were great. I'm no real audiophile, but all Sennheiser headphones and sound systems I've used have been good to great.
 
Bones

Bones

PatrThom said:
Argh at work unable to type long headphone post

—Patrick
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I'll be home eventually tonight if you have time to discuss with me pat. You all have been so kind and understanding with me as I learn more. Your and gas's advice on the eq has meant i keep getting closer and closer to the sound I want.
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
Please don't go as far down the audiophile road as this person,

If you listen your music with hearphones then DAC is irrelevant given audio quality is low.

I don't know what Apple marketing is telling (I'm a FreeBSD/Windows/linux user) but there can be no Hi-Fi quality in hearphones. It's physics.

Just as a 20cm x 20cm x 20cm cube cannot reproduce music as well a full stand speaker.
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That's from a comment on the Steam Deck subreddit, asking if the built-in audio on the Steam Deck will be decent, if it can drive high impedance headphones, and what Bluetooth codecs are supported.

"It's physics" says the guy listening to audio with an eardrum not even 5mm in diameter. The fool, the absolute fool! You can't truly appreciate audio until you've had your eardrums surgically removed and replaced with external macrophones.

And spare me the arguments about how headphones are "technically not stereo". Yeah, I get it, sound mixed for stereo speakers won't sound the same coming through headphones. This is talking about game audio though, and that can be mixed specifically for headphones, and I imagine that a lot of modern musicians mix their audio with the expectation of headphones anyway.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

figmentPez said:
"It's physics" says the guy listening to audio with an eardrum not even 5mm in diameter.
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r/murderedbywords would love to have this, I'm sure.

Yes, some of the magic of a live performance is the physics of the sounds' action upon the listener's skeleton, sinuses, lungs, and organs, as well as the environment, but you're never going to reproduce that experience with hearphones [sic], no matter HOW much you spend.

Also, why the Apple callout, other than to immediately follow it with the "I'll use anything, so long as it isn't Apple <scoff>" brag? Apple changed the audio hardware to be able to supply more voltage. Higher-end headphones will no longer be so quiet when connected directly to the built-in audio as they were before. That's it. That's the big change. Woo.

--Patrick
 
Bones

Bones

I am offended that you would think I'm a slave to anything other than my unquenchable thirst for audio nirvana! :3
 
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