> As well as that, a driver is tuned to sound a specific way

You can change tuning pretty easily, though some drivers distort more than others when you boost certain frequencies. Some though, are basically a blank canvas to tune however you want.

The Raal CA1A was actually designed to have 'as capable drivers as possible,' with the intention that you'll EQ them to sound generally how you want.

Looking forward to it! My headband is getting a little old, so it'd be really awesome to have something cute and durable to replace it with.

Got anything for the Hifiman egg cups? I'd love to replace my Ananda headband with something that has ears, haha.

Beyer's people would, people unironically listen to the Death Treble 990's. Hearing-damage level hills of treble, lol

For the same price, try the HE400SE. Headphones.com is reputable and will honor returns for a full year. They're a really damn good headphone and sound great. EQ makes them sing.

M50X is pretty not great in terms of sound, yeah. Sharp treble, recessed mids, muddy bass. Not a good sound.

But even aside from that, those things when I had them used to blister my fucking ears, lol. They have so little cushioning.

Absolutely, definitely do not mix on those things. Mixing/mastering on headphones is generally a bad idea, but anything as incredibly biased tonally as the M50X is just asking for your mixes to sound like dogwater.

> Driver types don't matter. What matters is FR at the ear drum.

While this is technically true, planar drivers by design are able to deliver a more linear response than dynamic drivers are able to. Driver types AFFECT FR at the eardrum.

That is why dynamic drivers have roll-off in the treble and bass, and why good speakers have multiple drivers to cover different parts of the response. Trying to get all of them to cover 20 hz to 20 khz has its drawbacks, and we can see that in most dynamic driver FR graphs.

> I believe your "low res" experience is due to marketing telling you that planars are "better" and "more advanced" making confirmation bias kick in

Definitely not, I am not subjectivist by any stretch of the word, I argue with audio magic believers all the time, just check my comment history, lol. I'm a recording engineer. I know how this stuff works, it's my job to understand it.

In this case, FR at the eardrum is different in every headphone, they even change based on how the cups are positioned on your head, and FR measurements that we have of them are only accurate up to 10 khz, and even then, they're still smoothed over. There's tiny little differences in the response that account for a driver's properties, which is why with current tech, we can't EQ KSC75 to sound like Susvara.

Then, you start getting into the fact that some drivers, measurably, objectively, distort the more you mess with them, compared to others. Planars TEND to distort less, but there are plenty of dynamic drivers that are fine too.

In my experience, the HD6X0 series is not a driver type that handles EQ well, at least below about 400 hz. Treble/Mid EQ works just fine on it, which is why you can fix the recessed treble the 6XX has without issue.

But the bass... good god. It becomes a mud canon with only a little bit of a boost... Then again, it's a mud cannon at stock too, it's just bloated and has no definition whatsoever. HD600 handles this far far better, though the bass overall is reduced.

No, the reason why it sounds that way to me on some headphones is because a lot of driver adjustments are done with dampening, and the 6XX (my main dynamic drivers I personally own) are over-dampened, and it's very obvious when you listen to them.

Like you said, all that really matters is FR at the eardrum. My Ananda are heavily EQ'd, and even when using the same exact setup, measurements, target, etc etc, the Ananda do not have any of the negative qualities I'm used to hearing from the 6XX.

And I know it isn't in my head, because I have level-matched tests (done within 0.1 dB with an SPL meter) with them for people who have ZERO idea about how anything audio-related works, not told them what's what, and they report to me the exact same thing I hear. As in, my fucking mom noticed what I said without me asking or prompting anything related to the sound, and she barely understands how to open files on a computer.

I listen at 75-80 dB at most, it's not that loud. It's very specific to the 6X0 series, is the thing. I usually don't have this problem with other drivers.

Then again, I listen almost entirely to planars. There is something about that driver that just works better to my ears. Dynamics always have some quality to them that sounds... I hate to use this term for audio because it's stupid, but low-res. Details are meh, separation is meh. It's like the sound is blurry. Even the best of the best, it has this quality.

Except for speakers, but that's a whole different can of worms.

> A 600 series with Oratory EQ does the job just as well

It really doesn't do it even close to as well. I've toyed around with the 6XX for a long time, I still do. EQ is like, my personal magic bullet for SO MUCH SHIT in headphones, I love it.

No amount of EQ makes the bass sound like anything but a mud cannon with zero definition, nothing makes them feel larger or more clear with good separation, nothing fixes the three blob imaging. They have timbre and mids, two things you CAN fix with EQ, and... that's it. Everything else is pretty damn bad. And I've fixed tons of headphones with similar issues, and none of them have this problem...

The drivers on them are over-dampened to hell and it's unbelievably audible.

HD600 are much better in my experience, but that bass roll-off isn't really fixed by EQ either, because it distorts the whole damn thing when you do it. Those drivers are very dated and it shows, when it comes to boosting frequencies in EQ.

That's kinda why I don't like them, they have like two strengths and the rest is very meh.

Three blob, very little separation, very narrow and closed sounding, everything kinda smears together and sounds hollow. Mids sound good, timbre is decent, but it lacks on everything else.

It's just far, far too little for me. I can get good mids and timbre with some EQ, I can't really get the rest without absurd measurements that we don't have an a convolution filter.

> I've created a dragon in my head

In a way, yes. The reason this happens is because human minds are always, always trying to equalize with their environment. So if you get used to something, your brain will basically invent things it wishes it had because it got used to what it heard.

Best way to fix that; listen to worse gear for a bit, then wow yourself all over again.

I keep a pair of 6XX specifically so I can go back to my Ananda and go, "Man, literally everything is better, damn these things sound so fuckin' good."

Keeps me sane.

I have, mine have lasted years. If anything sounded better I'd probably buy them, but to this date I have yet to hear anything that comes close.

If someone delivers Hifiman sound with better QC/build, I will switch to them.

> Equalizing for headphones is corrupting the source to compensate for junk equipment

It's not corrupting anything, modern digital linear equalization is transparent to the source aside from the adjustment to the frequencies, which you are intentionally changing. This is not corruption.

> And listening from a PC is evidence that one is decidedly not an audiophile

Oh okay, so you get to gatekeep what an audiophile is now, as opposed to someone who just enjoys good sound? Grow up.

> notice the absence of any mention of PC peripherals in material targeted at actual audiophiles like Stereophile and Absolute Sound

More gatekeeping garbage, irrelevant.

> The only place a PC fits in an audiophile’s world is as a Roon endpoint from which to feed actually good audio equipment

Yeah, most of the time PC parts feed into a DAC of some kind that is external to the device. This is braindead obvious, and no one disputed that. Maybe reading comprehension is your issue, considering your initial response was a reply to a question nobody even asked.

> none of which has any facility for EQing headphones because there is no market for that among people spending real money on audio equipment … including fine headphones.

Several devices come with in-built parametric EQ, if you spend enough for it. And guess what, there is NO SUCH THING as a perfect transducer, it doesn't exist anywhere. That's why EQ is a thing, to adjust the parts that we either do not like, or have issues. There's a reason why recording engineers like myself USE EQ in our mastering process, because perfection literally doesn't exist. And no, there really is no difference between doing it in the master and doing it for your audio system, the result is EXACTLY the same when it reaches the analog portions of what you're using.

Thank you for confirming you're clueless, though.

Because nothing you said has anything to do with whether or not EQ can damage a headphone, for one. But even if we answered the question that no one was asking "Should you EQ," nothing you said, once again, is a reason to not use EQ. You even mentioned Dirac room correction, which is a form of EQ, so... You pretty much just shot yourself in the foot there.

> EQ is viable when the source is a PC, Mac or Android phone, or an iOS device

This is also ridiculous. You just described 99% of what audiophiles listen on, which means yes, it's definitely viable. The extreme majority of people are not sitting around near a turn-table or old CD/Cassette player.

Also, something being massively expensive has nothing to do with whether or not something is viable. I've seen million dollar cars lack pretty basic features, doesn't mean those features aren't worthwhile. It's a nonsense argument.

I hope that explanation makes sense.

This is a whole lot of words to say you know nothing about audio or the technology behind it, lmao.

Seems like fairly pointless speculation, like making up a bad thing about someone that they MIGHT do specifically to dislike them. I recommend not doing that about people, gets toxic real fast.

I was responding to the last sentence, the rest is valid.

As a recording engineer, everything about this comment is factually wrong.

EQ absolutely can improve the sound. That's why we use it in our mixes, and if your listening gear has odd tonality, then of course adjusting that can improve the sound. It's not debatable.

And we use studio monitors EQ'd (gasp) to flat at the placement of our heads when mixing and mastering, then listen to it on various common devices to ensure there's nothing horribly wrong on any of them.

Please don't spread misinformation.

That is entirely untrue. Several of my favorite headphones needed EQ, and were magical once I did. Without them they were decent at best, like the Ananda. Most headphones to my ears literally require it to not sound like hot garbage.

I have never liked a headphone without EQ, and I have tried dozens upon dozens... Well, except the Warwick Bravura, that thing actually just sounded good without anything done to them at all, but I don't have thousands to spend.

And if EQ spares me thousands of dollars, then why on earth would I not spend a few minutes setting it up? I'm not THAT lazy.

> the headphones themselves were probably the wrong starting point for you

While I do agree with this in a vacuum, the sad thing is that I have literally never heard a headphone that was "the correct starting point" that was anything resembling affordable. As in, Summit-Fi stuff fits this bill, and anything lower always has a ton of tonal issues that I can't stand.

EQ was the only way for me to afford really good sound, haha. Though of course this is true if you do not have this problem, which I hope other people don't.

Oh for sure, those things are probably Sennheiser's best, imo. At least in terms of tonality.

Enjoy them, they tend to last forever as well.

HD600 is a much, much better headphone than the 650/6XX. It's basically the same driver as the 650, except it isn't over-dampened. Its only real downside is the bass roll-off, but everything else about it IS good, and you can EQ the 'boring' parts of it to be more lively without much issue.

It's kind of like a much, much better version of the KSC75, which to my ears, still sounds better than the 6XX/650, lol

Timbre is a reflection of frequency response, though. Which can be changed.

And no, I'm not saying that frequency response is literally everything, but timbre is a property of instruments, and its essentially the properties of an instrument that make it sound like... well, itself.

So for good timbre to be correct, that means that the tonality of the headphone has to be accurate to your ears in that respect, which is, again, frequency response.

That's why I don't put much importance on a headphone's timbre, because if I have issues with that specific property of the headphone, I can just fix it with EQ.

With the 6XX, it has recessed treble (EQ thankfully helps), really muddy bass with no texture or definition (EQ hasn't helped this, have tried for a while), and all the frequencies smear together compared to other headphones because the driver is over-dampened. Yeah, the mids and timbre are good, but the rest of the sound suffers as a result. I'd rather just get a headphone without these issues, and tune the mids to be similar to the 650/6XX, so I can get its benefits and the rest of them as well.

That's why I disagree so heavily with the recommendation. It's way too expensive for what you get, there's better-sounding (I know, subjective, but at least in terms of the rest of the frequency range), options both more expensive and less expensive.

I still have my 6XX, right next to me. Sometimes I'll put them on, give them a listen to see if there's anything I'm actually missing about them, but all it ends up doing is make me appreciate how much better almost everything else is.

I'm fairly used to it, lol. No one likes hearing that their favorite might not be as good as they think it is.

People can like what they like, no debating that. But when people say that there's nothing beyond this, I'm like, "Buddy, you're using a headphone that's good at like two things out of eight. Don't even go there."

But that's okay, Reddit is free to Reddit all it wants. I don't expect the hivemind to change course.