I feel the same way, but I think it is because it took me five plus years to learn what l like. After 20 pairs I have finally gotten to where I want to be. Now with the Beyer’s on the way out, the EQ (Loki) is pretty much just commited to the Koss ESP/E95X system
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I tip roll for that, flatten treble peaks… Go with the spirals…need DAT bass…go with the Final Audio E tips. Need tube weirdness and warmth…go with the horns 
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yeah i’ve only eq’ed like 3 decibels down tops in certain treble areas
Metal used to do my head in, he’d eq everything to match the Harman curve…really don’t get that?
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So typically small eq tweaks are a ok, but when you start doing large eq tweaks like that you typically do see a drop in fidelity, I personally wouldn’t recommend doing that, just get a different headphone instead at that point
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Just like a segment of enthusiasts are currently under the hallucinatory spell of ASR numbers, so another segment has bought into Harman target = FR panacea. In particular, Metal was a serious Tyll Herstens devotee and Tyll was infatuated with the Harman thing before he retired.
May as well respond to your question in the Currawong thread:
Lol. Even that would be better imo than the wild west free-for-all currently happening. And I vote we re-name the Harman Over-ear Headphone Frequency Response Target to the Harman Whatchamacallit.
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I’m so tired of hearing the Harman Respon…Blah, blah LOL.
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I would highly recommend exploring eq with things like peace apo. i use a bunch of settings created by oratory1990 to help bring them closer to the harmon curve and they just work for me. only so much the factory can do with materials and padding. sometimes you just need those subtle tweaks to bring out the real magic
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I think tools like EQ and DSP are more appropriate for speakers than headphones where they can be an important part of room set up.
I had a pair of AKG N90Q headphones with various tricks built in, they were good headphones and I liked the cross feed function but cross feed is something different.
For headphones I tend to leave them with the stock tuning and quite like the fact that different models have different tuning.
I am not a fan of the Harman curve hype. Don’t get me wrong, if it works for you then great, however it is just based on statistical analysis of listener preference. Some present it as if headphones not following that curve are badly designed and there is something wrong with them. No, they’re tuned differently and a preference is just that. People who prefer a different tuning are no more right or wrong than those who like the Harman curve.
There is a sense on some websites that scientific method and analysis is a uniquely Harman innovation which is nonsense. I remember someone dismissing Etymotic for being unscientific and wrong because they don’t follow the Harman curve, right so because Etymotic have done their own work which is different from Harman they must be wrong.
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I mean some of my technically “best” headphones I own are dsp based (warwick aperio system), and they sound excellent. DSP isn’t a bad thing if it is done well whatsoever imo
Same lol
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The Harman curve’s popularity is literally the audio equivalent of the focus tested hamoginouse AAA trash video games that no one actually loves but everyone buys and plays because “everyone else is playing it” and it’s overall inoffensive to most people.
Of course there is nothing wrong with liking the Harman curve just like there is nothing wrong with liking CoD or Fortnight. But self important snobs like myself will still feel superior to you and look down on you like the peasants you are (this is sarcasm… mostly).
To stay on topic a bit, I’ve never been a fan of eq because it feels like a bit if a cop out for poor design. I know it’s not and it has a place in this hobby but it just feels dirty to me, like cheating. But for those who can’t afford dozens of headphones to cover every sound signature they could possibly want, eq is a great way to fudge the sound of the headphones you have to better fit what you want or to fix a SMALL problem you may have. If you find yourself tweaking basically every frequency band by like 6db on average then you probably just don’t like that headphone. Return or sell that one and find a better one.
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Exactly! The way to make your peace with the Harman target is to realize the purpose it exists for. In the consumer market there are endless headphones that give consumers the huge bass boost that rocks their boats. (Optionally, there may be some elevated treble as well.) But the technically easy solution to boosting bass is to jack up the entire bass region, then gradually taper off through the low and middle midrange. This tuning plays havoc with the naturalness of vocal and instrumental sounds, because these live and die in the midrange.
The Harman target shows how to elevate the bass then taper it off before reaching the midrange. Effectively, it’s a mass market compromise between the contrary demands of the gimme-bass crowd and the vocals-matter crowd. It makes sense when your goal is to produce one model of passive headphone that will appeal to the greatest percentage of the consumer market.
The problem is that here in the headphone enthusiast microcosm it’s still being interpreted as an attempt at defining true FR neutrality. In fact, the Harman team did start their research with just such a hypothetically neutral FR curve. Their original 2013 AES paper demonstrated that a reasonable sample of people preferred that neutral-ish tuning over several alternatives, notably Beats by Dre, Audeze LCD2r2 and the HD-800. But since then, as Brad358 points out, they’ve been progressively honing in on mass market appeal, not some hypothetical neutrality.
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In simpler terms: It is a mostly meaningless line because nobody bothered to give context.
Also: From a physics stand point, the test using frequency sweeps is flawed. You would want needle pulses.
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Or white noise, or multiple overlapping frequencies.
A frequency sweep tells you very little about a driver
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That is the 2nd best option, all other approaches are garbage-tier in terms of results.
What if I actually love Harman just like I love AAA fps games. I guess it a good time to be with my taste
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To each their own I suppose.
I really like that k371 so I guess I like harman too 