I will just add though that my opinion is that in the future graphs will tell everything (not talking solely about an FR graph) because people seriously underestimate our hardware technology and at the end of the day, IEMs and even audiophile hardware is such a niche hobby that desperately needs technological testing advancement.
But right now itâs too easy to refute frequency response being âeverythingâ as all one needs to do is EQ one IEM to another and listen to the same song. Heck, you can even listen to a song with low DR through a powerful desktop amp if you believe distortion at over 100 dB to contribute to anything of value.
not really when you see a mainstream galaxy buds from samsung has harman adjusted tuning and graphs better compared to 95% of ânicheâ iems.
if they were manufactured by the chinese, they would charge you 10k a pair because it works âmagically wirelesslyâ and has a âaudiophileâ tier graph and rich would buy it and praise its clarity and magic and you had to stay in line for 1 year to get a pair but they get mass produced in millions so you can have it as cheap as 200$ and they have active noise cancelling, transparency modes and touch controls on top of comparable sound quality to top tier chinese iems.
no, i think everything shows in graphs, but not only fr but in in magnitude response graphs, frequency response graphs, and total harmonic distortion measurements, and polarity tests at least after my experience with the 600$ iem i feel that way.
I tested EQing a planar to a hybrid or DD FR I own, and the results on my part were veeeeery different from the real thing.
I think that eqing can bring a huge improvements and is real fun, but I canât trust it completely.
To me, AutoEQ as you did it canât be trusted fully, because:
you donât know the real FR of YOUR set of samsung buds
you donât know the result the EQ has on your buds
I beleive you obtained a sound that is close to the Oracle MKII, and I believe you enjoy it very much; but I canât follow you further than that: the deductions you make about FR from this experiment are only assumptions at this point.
The thing is though, you make me want to play with autoEq again
I am curous about transient response being affected by normal eq as Ive never heard changing frequency on a static all encompassing basis actually affect slam and decay meanfully.
Sure there are time domain dynamic eq to say cut the subbass off early duing drum hits to give the illusion of âfasterâ transients but say the moondrop SSR with its heavy sustain before decay no matter how you tweek it it wont get the speed of the final A4000 and even then you still loose alot of âdetailâ the software is actively cutting out the subbass data which on the A4000 is interpreted by the brain as the after hit reverb of the skin.
So yeah even with dynamic EQ I find that its much better to add data to the song and make it wetter with a fast iem then try to get a slow iem to sound fast.
Then there is SLAM which cant be EQed in. If somehow you are able to defy nature and have the magnet magically change in strength along with the diaphragm become lighter/heavier as needed Iâll be impressed.
I take offence with Sun//Eater sounding mushy and low-fi on single DD iems. Even something as âcheapâ as the moondrop Lan is able to handle the speed and texture. Using the Tri Starshine and Triangle Comete as references.
Well although I wonder how much is due to the source being able to grip the DD.
Iâm just ready for the nuralink to beam the audio data directly to your brain so it is a perfect signal and then its just down to your brain misfiring not interpreting the data correctly. Lol I kid as that is nightmare fuel on the other implications, but at least will help you think of how it will work. Until we get there this seems more on the petty side. Make sound go good just dont stress on it.
iems have slight variance though i saw thieaudio had good channel matching and minimal unit variation unlike kz or other cheaper brands
but i think you can get close to it if you have 2 iems with yourself and a/b back and forth to have close EQ results or measure them both and eq one to other thats unrealistic because why eq one to other if you have both?
if you donât have it then you expect to get 80% to 90% close to it and its just depends on you luck.
you can see it on the fr
if you play with the 20 to 200hz area
or 200 to 1k
or 1k to 3k
or 3k to 6k
and 6k to 20k
you get various transient speed, attack, decay.
you can get the drum snares to sound boomy and full that has the impression of reverb and full ( boosted midbass)
or get the drums sound cut of or plastick( no midbass and boosted upper midtange)
or add that sharp edge to them to have them feel faster and crisp hitting by boosting higher frequencies and taming lower fequencies
or you can get them dull sounding by cutting off both ends
from the graph, if you play the same snare sound file on these 2 iems
the ssr would sound plasticky, hollow, bright and slightly muted in the lower freuencies
on the other hand you get a full, bity snare from the final audio but at the cost of fast songs becoming muddy and loss of resolution
you can reverb the snare if you have a boosted subbass and midbass in my experience
so my guess is that the ssri has high distortion levels so by boosting that area, you wonât get the ideal replay you want since you have to boost the subbass quite substantially to match the a4000 and thats alot of extra power the driver has to handle.
Interesting how you can assume so wrongly bassed off graphs,
SSR is warm with thicc midbass pressence slightly slow with a fun lower mids focused but darkish treble because of the boosted mids and simply isnt detailed at all and esp if you reduce the the 2k to 3k area to make it less mid forward you get to hear the smeary treble in all its gorey. No amount of snake oil dac/amplifier can make the SSR sound detailed but thats part of the fun of it because the midbass hits like a one note dumptruck and I would say its more of a party/edm type of iem. The last thing I would call it is plasticly, hollow and bright. Infact I would say SSR is darkish.
A4000 on the other hand dispite having that level of boosted bass because eveything dcays so fast along with the boosted high treble 8k onwards tends to sound brighted and very dry. Personally I eqed the A4000 to SSR because I understand the driver power handling charactoristics on both and that A4000 is able to take more abuse without distorting which while making it sound slightly warmer doesnt take away from the A4000 still being able to handle songs like Sun//Eater with no difficulty.
If plasticy means dry then yes A4000 is plasticy but considering I listen to speedcore on the A4000 its hard to imagne the A4000 being muddy. Although I will agree with the loss of resolution but thats because Im anal and am comparing it to the Tri Starshine and Effect Gaea which both are able to handle dynamic range well and reproduce low level sounds well while the A4000 cannot due to driver limitations.
there is no balance here, any edm song will literally pierce your brain. this tuning is a clarity based and meant for acoustic songs mainly strings imo.
And no, the treble doesnt look dark imo. Its boosted because the bass shelf rises pretty early and is mid-bass focused, so if it didnt have that treble gain, it is likely to sound quite bloated.
so i got some free time and decided to actually try to see how ssr will likely sound like. i got the songs you posted and tested it for about an hour comparing it with other sound signatures, and oh boy i was wrong before to be honest.
the results were interesting, the boost in the whole midrange area kills the whole clarity of the sound, so as @Rikudou_Goku mentioned above, the only way to get out of the mud is to boost the upper mids and treble but that just adds to the problem of a sound that is closed in, so they could boost after 8k to maybe help with the dynamics and resolution but they didnât like most single dd iems. this makes the sound unclear, lacking in any excitement yet the the upper midrange and lower treble are still boosted without the air to back it up so it gives the unrealistic plasticky feel on top of the muddy midrange, the total opposite of what i assumed.
tldr, a sound thats not open feeling at all, lacks dynamics due to the boosed midrange and subbass missing. it sounds heady due to the excess ear gain and lower treble area without having actual upper treble energy from 8k to 15k to save slightly it from that closed in feeling in your head and giving it actual resolution.
I still feel like soundstage is more than just the frequency response or at least I personally donât know how to specifically increase it with EQ. And the differences in soundstage between IEMs are very stark to me. Maybe itâs a function of driver distance and angle like with headphones and how it intereacts with the ear canal, no idea. Or maybe the frequencies that give the spatial qualities are high enough that their measurements are unreliable.
But yeah I donât have much faith in immeasurable âtechnicalitiesâ. Either it shows up on graphs(not just FR but also distortion and likely group delay) or youâre imagining it. Itâs confounded by the fact that until recently competently tuned IEMs werenât all that common. But hey, human mind is powerful, if spending $2000 on a pair of IEMs makes you feel that they sound better, they WILL sound better to you.
has harman adjusted tuning and graphs better compared to 95% of ânicheâ iems.
