Obviously keep giving good pointers and advice regarding hardware and the pitfalls which may arise from one setup vs another (like your earlier comment about powered vs passive speakers). I am very grateful for your advice in these areas 
As for my relationship with my wife, I’ll handle it as I feel appropriate 
well you should did up a frequency response curve for the headphones you ordered as you will want it to make any eq fixes for any sort of sound flaws you might find with them. I had to take an ax to one of the treble peaks on my 400i, i also boosted the bass a bit.
So I don’t really know how to do that, when I get the headphones in and start listening I’ll make a post about it if there is something specific I don’t like to get some assistance with that process. I didn’t even think of eq being a useful tool for that kind of things, but makes sense
i mean that’s what eq was meant for. I do know some monkeys like to try and change there headphones identity with it.
So you’re saying eq is best suited to making small changes and a different set of headphones would be a better choice if you dislike a whole lot of things about it?
yes. the reason being is that over eq’ing either more or lower db will lead to distortion and a bad time
How much does eq “bleed over” into other frequencies? Like let’s say there was a high frequency peak you didn’t like. If you adjusted the eq response in that area down, how likely would it be that that change would push down the surrounding frequencies more than desired?
that’s a question for the audio technical literate. But also that’s not the distortion i’m talking about. When a headphone is engineered its designed to sound a certain way and when you eq it you are forcing the driver to behave in a way it was not built to do so that the audio that your ears hear is more to your licking.
Next question…how do I evaluate whether what I’ve done in eq has accomplished what I was trying to do? Is it just a trial and error process til it sounds how I want? I don’t think I know enough to be really messing with any of this stuff…I would probably have better luck buying and returning headphones lol
There is a lot of religious zealotry around not EQing.
It’s all about getting a sound you enjoy, if EQ gets you there use it.
I personally don’t generally use it, but I enjoy a pretty broad range of sounds for what they are.
Hardware EQ will boost pretty broad ranges of frequencies centered around the band.
Software can be a bit more directed, but if the bands are really tight, they can introduce other artifacts.
its trial and error. basically you just use them. and if you ever think they are lacking or tiring try to identify what sound it is that’s causing that and then dig out the FR curve and make a small adjustment at the spot that is giving you trouble. repeat until happy or you think a different headphone is a better option.
Ok, maybe not as hard as it sounds… As far as software vs hardware eq, does the hardware I’ve chosen have that functionality? (Atom, d10, 58x) Does the hardware I’ve chosen have an associated software program? If so is it any good? If not do you have a preferred or recommended software eq program?
no the hardware you chose cannot do those things. but you can use a combination of equalizer APO and PEACE to make the changes. there are loads of tutorials on how to use that software on youtube
Ok I’ll look into it. Thanks for the info
As an unrelated side note, I recall enjoying the book I assume you chose your name from very much when I was younger.
By the way I got HD58Xs. I love these. Someone suggested they sound like that first graph. They can go from that, to the second graph, depending on how tight they are on your head.
Two differents graphs for the same pair of headphones.
DYI Audio Heaven (where the second graph is from) doesn’t use the harman target that’s why the bass seems more boosted, while Rtings uses a modified variant of harman, also yes seal will impact bass, but less so on open headphones, more on closed ones, and the 58X clamp pretty damn tight so that won’t be an issue.
Also you don’t have to EQ the 58X they are pretty perfect besides the bass rolloff
Actually it’s the opposite, the only “compensation” (vs harman target) DIY Audio Heaven uses is this (image below), so following the harman curve HD58X would be even more bassy according to his measurements.
This means that when a headphone measures as ‘flat’ line in the plots on this website the actual measured response had about 4dB more bass.
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So it would be a bit like this.
#leet-photoshop-skillz 
(I could do a better job but it doesn’t matter much lol).
Therefore the DIY Audio Heaven measurements are a nice middle-ground between the rtings (way too low bass) measurements and the Harman curve (this cursed image).
interesting
I gotta get my hands on a pair of 58X so I can judge the bass for myself, to see which one’s more true to life
What’s interesting is that the raw of the 58X from Rtings measures similarly in the bass to the DYI Audioheaven measurement
It only depends on the placement and how tight they are on your head. Like, they’re versatile, lol.
When you get em, if you have a small head, it’s like the rtings graph. If you have a big head, it’s more like the DIY Audio Heaven’s graph.