I like to EQ my headphones to the Harman Target Response Curve. Every headphone I EQ’d w/ that via oratory1990’s settings made them sound better. Those headphones were Ananda, Arya, & Focal Clears.
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I agree with @Towa here; no. I will again plug Audirvana. It supports software EQ via VST plugins. A quick Googling makes it look like Audeze offers their Reveal equalizations via VST. I would recommend starting there.
I will also echo @Towa though that the more you have to EQ a headphone, the more likely it is it’s not the headphone for you. There are headphones out there that do tune pretty close to the various Harman curves as their stock tuning.
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to each their own i suppose… I just don’t see the point in EQing everything to sound the same i guess.
if that’s the case then you pretty much have two choices, go with the adi2 or something similar and lose out on performance and SQ but enjoy exclusive mode+EQ or go with a different DAC that is higher performing and better SQ but have to deal without exclusive to use EQ.
I can assure you that EQing the 3 headphones I mentioned above + LCD-X w/ the Harman Curve does NOT make them sound the same. Each headphone has their own characteristics which is why I picked the X out of the bunch.
How am I losing out on performance with going w/ ADI2?
I’ll try it out - thanks for the recommendation.
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I’d say a good chunk of the cost on the adi 2 is the features, all the bells and whistles. when you strip all that stuff away what you really have is a 4-500 dollar dac performance wise. That’s why I said you could get a lot more performance and SQ out of $1200 if you don’t have to have the EQ functionality. Even something like the Bifrost 2 is higher performing for only $700.
full disclosure; I have not heard a Adi2 firsthand, but there are people on this forum that have and can back this up.
all in all I just want to make sure you know what you are getting for your money.
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Ahh, I gotcha. Makes sense - thanks for explaining!
@WaveTheory In Audirvana, I see on the left side w/ 24/44.1 kHz and the right side 32/88.2kHz. My DAC is showing 88.2 so why are they showing differently? Is the left side before MQA unfold?
See here: Imgur: The magic of the Internet
looks like 24/44.1 is what Tidal is pushing and 32/88.2 is what your source is outputting. is this exclusive mode? what is windows bitrate set to?
Yeah, I’m running ASIO Exclusive w/ Audirvana. Windows is set to 44.1, but it won’t matter in this case.
yeah maybe that is due to unfold then, I don’t really have much experience with MQA
There is known bug in Audirvana they’re working on, far as I know. If your DAC accepts 32 bit signal, it outputs that. Best I can tell it’s just adding 0s to the bits and not affecting sound. The left number is file information, the right number is output signal info.
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I understand that, but it’s going from 44.1 to 88.2. Is that due to the MQA first unfold?
Hmmm, that I haven’t seen unless some type of conversion is happening - like dsd to pcm. That could be a MQA unfold, yes.
Also, Audirvana seems really buggy… the settings sometimes doesn’t let me click things. Driving me crazy 
I have to restart the application for it to let me. Very strange. I got the Audeze Reveal Plugin in there though! LCD-X sounds better w/ it, for sure.
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Some settings it won’t let you change while music is playing or even paused. You have to hit stop. It can be a tad sluggish at times.
Ah… bingo. I had to hit stop. Thanks!
Audirvana keeps setting my ASIO buffer size to 2048. Any idea about that?
Nah. I never mess with that unless there’s a problem.
Where you trying to achieve more bass on these particular headphones? What are the characteristics of each of these that you like/stand out?
Not more bass no, just the overall sound. To speak on the characteristics of each headphone is not a conversation I want to get into as it would be a long post, but I just preferred the overall sound of LCD-X the most.
I’ve decided to just be happy w/ my current setup and not worry about exclusive mode. 16-bit 44.1kHz is high enough quality for me and I get to have my EQ system-wide and be able to have multiple audio sources at the same time (gaming, youtube, music, etc). Plus, it’ll save me $$ since I’m not buying something like the RME ADI-2 just for hardware EQ 
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I give it a month tops. Then we’ll see a pic of an ADI2 in the “What did you buy today” thread 
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