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JohnVo
JohnVo
Inspiring
December 23, 2016
Question

EQ my headphone before work with audition ,help

  • December 23, 2016
  • 1 reply
  • 1045 views

hi

i have a problem to work with audition when i plug grado headphone

but i found these settings makes grado headphone sounds almost neautral

31hz ~ 12.0dB

62hz ~ -2.1dB

125hz ~ -7.3dB

250hz ~ -5.0dB

500hz ~ -5.0dB

1k ~ -4.4dB

2k ~ -4.4dB

4k ~ -5.3dB

8k ~ 4.3dB

16k ~ 2.9dB

and

preamp @ 0.0dB

parametric equalizer settings:

low cutoff ~ unused

mid center 1 ~ 3000.0hz @ -11.2dB (0.50 Q)

mid center 2 ~ 4310.0hz @ 18dB (0.23 Q)

high cutoff ~ 5260.0hz @ -18dB

well i work on several machine ,which have different hardware , most of the time audio card drivers doesn't give me the option to set up the EQ like i want

what can i do?

is there a program free that can i use?

thanks

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

Bob Howes
Bob Howes
Inspiring
December 23, 2016

Equalising for headphones--or even the best monitor speakers for that matter--is rarely a good idea and rarely works well.

May I suggest an alternative approach that you probably won't like but which DOES work.

First make a recording--it doesn't matter what but it's best if it's typical of the sort of material you'll be working on.

Edit and mix your recording, adding EQ, reverb, etc. etc. until it's exactly the sound you want when listened to on your headphones.

Then make a bunch of copies and listen to to your mix on as many different playback systems as you can--CD i your car, on your phone, on the music system in your front room, on your silly audiophile friend's expensive hifi--basically anything you can find.  As you listen, keep careful note of things that sound wrong:  too much or two little base, how the voice sounds,  too much emphasis on highs, etc, etc. 

Then, bearing all your listening tests in mind, do another mix on your headphones and repeat all the listening tests.  It won't take much of this before you get the idea of what things need to sound like on your headphones to sound okay on a wide variety of playback devices.  As I say, even you buy expensive monitors and acoustically treat your room, you still need to "learn" the sound.  (That's why I'm using the same monitors I got in 1983...I'm too lazy to change.)

I know it's not the answer you want but hope it helps.

JohnVo
JohnVoAuthor
Inspiring
December 23, 2016

hi

thanks

but for example with foobar and graphic equalizer dsp i can get a great sound

you suggest to make some tests , edit my cd with grado and after listen them and trust of my ears ? i did not get it

i use mostly sennheiser they are better bilaciate

in short sometime i have to use  sennheiser and sometime grado

i don't if you use grado , but if you can try foobar + the dsp

thanks

SteveG_AudioMasters_
Community Expert
SteveG_AudioMasters_Community Expert
Community Expert
December 23, 2016

Giovannivolontè wrote:

you suggest to make some tests , edit my cd with grado and after listen them and trust of my ears ? i did not get it

No, I don't think you did.

There are several things at work here. One is that with the best will in the world, EQing things in the monitoring chain is trying to make an unnatural fix to something that's naturally broken. And when you do that, your 'fix' always puts compromises - often in the form of phase errors - into it. That's why, even on expensive monitors, the 'room EQ' adjustments available are minimal, and ideally you don't use them; you fix the room. The trouble with headphones is that you can't 'fix' the listening space, but your perceived 'error correction' is still introducing those errors, just the same as they would with speakers.

What you have to do is to accept that the direct driven sound (no dodgy EQ) is technically the best way to monitor what you are doing. And that's the thing; you are monitoring, not listening. They aren't the same thing. What you are having to learn is what, in the monitoring, you are having to compromise in order for your sound to be good on a variety of other systems. IOW it doesn't have to sound 'good' whilst you are mixing it - you only need to know what you have to do with that particular monitoring to make your mix sound good on other systems.

There are various ways of doing this - Bob's only suggested one. What they all involve though is training your ears. The normal one is to find a variety of tracks (not necessarily yours - commercial ones are preferred) that sound good on other systems, and listen to them a lot with your headphone system until you've got used to what they sound like with it. Then, if you can produce mixes that sound similar (even though you think that at the time they sound compromised), they will also sound good elsewhere. Yes you may have to fine-tune this process a bit, but that's always going to be necessary; no two pieces will ever sound exactly the same.

It's not a quick process, I'm afraid. I made the momentous decision to change my monitoring system 6 months ago, and I'm just about getting used to it. And this is an expensive system which I'm probably never going to change again all the time I'm working. It's in an acoustically treated room, and putting on a pair of decent open-backed Sennheiser headphones produces virtually no difference in the sound, even though the spatial response is completely different.

And that's the other thing about headphone monitoring - that inevitable spatial difference alters the way you perceive sounds anyway - especially the bass, It's really difficult to get bass response correct using headphones; they react completely differently from speakers.

So I'm afraid that it's a case of no pain, no gain...

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