I decided to buy my first chi-fi IEMs, the KBEAR KB01. And while they sounded decent to me, they were really shouty. Same with the MD Chu 2. I daily drive the Sennheiser HD 560S and love the sound. Obviously, autoeq won’t work as IEMs and headphones sound fundamentally different. So how do I make my IEMs less shouty, without losing vocals? EQing 4k to around -5db makes high female vocals noticeably quieter. Obviously, the HD 560S are 200€, 10 times the price of Chu 2, but I believe I can EQ them, with a bit of help. I don’t mind the loud bass, for now.
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I assume you dont know which areas you are sensitive to in which case you need to check for that first.
Try a peak filter at 3500hz, Q: 3 and gain:-3db. Then change the hz to 3000 and then to 4000 and see which area helps the most for you.
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3.5k with Q3 sound the best to me tbh, however, -3db isn’t enough to make a big difference. Barely audible. I lowered 3.5k by 10db and it sounds quite nice. However, 3k -10db is also not bad. 4k -10 is total trash.
Seems like you might be extremely sensitive to the middle pinna range (around 3k area).
You might like the Explorer.
Although this baffles me as the HD560S was very shouty to me and I kinda hated it (sold it).
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After using AutoEQ to make my Chu 2 sound like the Explorer, I found the result to be very pleasing. Obviously it’s not exactly like HD 560S, but it’s still nice. Also, I probably have weird ear canals, the HD 560S are not shouty at all to me lol.
Yes, it is very strange to me as the HD560S is a pretty bright HP.
But well now you have a better idea on what you like for iems, sadly there arent many that goes for a similar tuning like the Explorer and definitely not in the sub 50 budget range.
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Damn… Nice info to have if my next flathead/iem/headphone is a little too shouty.
Take the PR3 for example. I thought most of it was nice(bass, soundstage, separation) except for the hi-hats on almost every song. They would make a terribly sharp sound.
I’ve retired them, but I’m interested to know what you think what region that is. I always thought it was around 4k so I would decrease that a few decibels and that would help. But then the highs seemed a little too warm, not as detailed, after that.
Usually around 4-6k would be a good spot to reduce for that
Looking at the graph for the PR3 though I would cut 5k and perhaps a single high shelf that starts at 8k or a single broader peak filter at 9k and another one at 14k. This thing is extremely spicy though…
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Spicy it is. Thank you Riku. I’ll give your knowledge a shot and see if I can finally listen to these.
Much appreciated
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I am one of those people who is extremely sensitive to the 3 kHz region in the pinna gain.
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Yeah, 3k spot is also my weak spot.