This is a good point. Like, I don’t like EQ for headphones because it kinda kills the charm of individual headphones. (If you only have one, then go ahead and EQ)
But I’ve found through owning neutral and bright headphones that I was some sub-bass THUMP sometimes. I love mids and highs, but I gotta have that THUMP.
The only EQ I do set is for speakers on the amp. Speakers are never going to be perfect in terms of room correction and usage scenario, might as well tweak it. My nearfields on my desk are set to have more bass, less treble so they’re comfy to listen to for everything from music to videos. Headphones create their own listening situation so they remove those variables.
I hate EQ, but it’s a necessary evil if I want to get frequency response anything like my IEMs with my headphones. If I have to EQ an IEM to enjoy it, it goes back. I have so many great sounding IEMs, there’s no excuse for needing to EQ an IEM. You should be buying IEMs for their tuning. Headphones unfortunately are a different story.
I prefer IEMs to anything else. but everything has pluses and minuses. I get tired of having IEMs stuck in my ears for long periods of times. I also find that either my inner ear canal will open up or dry out with a lot of IEM use and I have to change tips to get a proper seal again. So I have to take a break from IEMs from time to time.
I’ve learned that you don’t always need the ‘best’ (that argument has been covered above) equipment to enjoy music, trying to chase that dragon is a fruitless excercise. Now instead I try and get a variety of different signatures for different moods.
You can be perfectly content with cheaper gear or gear that doesn’t measure well so long as it makes you enjoy your music.
I say that as I have a few things waiting to be delivered, so maybe in the end I didn’t learn anything
Honestly I think it’s best to really enjoy the music through gear that you can afford with reasonable expectations . As thinking about how expensive a piece of gear is is just distracting and takes away from the experience of listening to the music. Setting reasonable expectations of the gear comes from experience. And knowing how laws of finishing returns really affect this hobby and what other gear sounds like in particular budgets.
The other thing that I’ve learned is to have headphones/IEMs with different sound signatures to prevent GAS. Usually what I’ve found was that I didn’t actually want a new headphone or IEM, but just something different. Having a different sounding chain or set of amp/DAC also helps a lot with preventing GAS.
If we’re going back to IEMs for this thread, I agree with this BIG TIME.
I HATE it when reviewers are like, “I didn’t use the eartips that came with these, I used my normal tips and I didn’t like these headphones.” Zeos is super guilty of this.
It’s like… different tips matter for different IEMs. The difference with one tip versus another can be night and day difference for an IEM, and even different sizes of the same tip for different IEMs. Foam/silicon, wide/small bore, ect…
I get people deciding their preferences, but for reviewers who people rely on just don’t bother tip-rolling to find what works best and complains that an IEM didn’t sound good… come on, man. It’s like taking a full-size headphone and only putting a specific brand of velour pads on them.
Ultimate discovery is that there is no perfect sound like there are no ppl with perfect ears for hearing. Find some stuff that makes you happy and stick with it. Just remember that its just stuff and you need only your hands and voice to enjoy music
Additional: if you like the stuff then feel free to give back to the community and share in our mutual love and downfall at the hands of audio gear…
If we’re dragging philosophy into the mix, I like the line from Bhagavad Gita: “Detachment is not that you own nothing, but that nothing owns you.”
Fight Club speaks to that in a very masculine fashion, the extreme nihilism ideology to show differences in extremes to allow the reader/viewer to extrapolate their own middle ground from it.
I think it’s totally fine to own $1000 IEMs so long as you’re willing to understand that if they burn while your house is on fire, you wouldn’t feel at a loss or the wish to dive into the fire to save them. Our stuff doesn’t own us; we own it.
You’re looking for different sounds, or interpretations of sounds. If you listen to something with muddy bass, poor soundstage, and harsh highs but you lean back and think “hell yeah i love how this song sounds right now” you’re good!
I’ve had pricey headphones that made me happy, i’ve had trash tier stuff that made me happy. The best cans/amps/dacs in the world are the ones that sound nice to you. I’ve also learned that what that “perfect” combination of gear is can change with your mood that day, the music, and even shift over time to totally different sound signatures then what you used to find appealing.
it doesn’t cost a fortune to get good sound. it does cost some money, and you can’t quite call it cheap, but you can consider it inexpensive when you look at how much it could cost…but especially so if you commoditize and give value to just how much you are enjoying your sound and the positive effects / benefits having that gives you.
like that experience I shared earlier with the Stellia on an ifi Pro iDSD. I was almost brought to tears. there was a level of ecstasy that you really can’t put a dollar figure on as it was priceless. I will never forget that experience and will reminisce about that moment for the rest of my life, getting to share it’s intensity with others who can only try to imagine how glorious that moment was!
TLDR; $500 will get you mind blowing sound, but so will $5000. get what you can afford and enjoy!
edit - oh, one other word of advise. yes, saving for that extra month or two is worth it. and the exercise in patience is good for you.
Funny we bring up money. I’ve been interested in Ikko OH10 for everything folks have been talking about it. $200 is my upper-end for gear, that price for IEMs makes me question things a little.
Last night was I mindlessly going through Crinacle’s site, and saw Samsung… K. Well, Samsung x AKG EO-IG955 are the stock IEMs that came with my S9. The sound signature is very close to OH10s, so I dragged them out and did some tip rolling. Found Spinfits 100s to work best.
HOLY SHIT. The tonal balance with the proper tips is fantastic! Great vocals, nice sub-bass rumble. Granted, details are grainy and soundstage is iffy (good imaging), bass is a touch bloated. But man I was jamming out with these for hours last night. I swapped to my Blon 03s and kinda preferred the Samsung/AKG more.
If Ikko OH10s can do the same tonal balance, take some bass bloat away and give me soundstage: WINNER.
Oh-so-pleasantly surprised that you don’t need, at all, to spend a lot, to enjoy music a lot.
I started this journey… two years ago? Not knowing what soundstage was. Or planar bass drum/kick slam. A 100$ Sanskrit 10th V2, a 100$ JDS Atom amp, 150$ Fostex T50RPs with 15$ pads, or 100$, refurbished, Nad HP50s with 10$ no-name angled pads added, often makes me feel like I’m in the studio with the artists. Who’d have thought 320kbps mp3s could sound like that, could contain so much information (don’t worry, I buy CDs too).
I started this journey thinking I’d spend 700$+ on headphones one day to achieve “perfection”. I got the total “signal chain” for more or less 500$ and I often think it’s enough.
oh I should contribute, I personally learned that helping others has it’s rewards and I could get very nice audio and not feel bad by adding what I do best to my audio endeavors; which is business.
once you are happy with the sound, move on, stop searching and enjoy.
power matters. I mean, clean power from power socket. One of biggest steps in improving sound of my system, was to buy new refrigerator, as old was doing things to voltage (and level of background noise).
