Can You EQ Cheap Headphones to Sound Like $$$$ Headphones?

So a lot of people have been asking me, hey, Mr. Headphone Measurement Man, if resolution and technicalities is all just frequency response, can't I just EQ my super inexpensive headphones to sound just like thousand dollar or multi-thousand dollar headphones? And the answer here is actually no. You specifically are not able to do this. I, of course, can because I'm a special boy. No, I'm joking. Even someone like me who has access to all the measurement gear in the world is going to struggle with trying to do this. Even if in theory it is possible, given enough time and effort. And yes, this is a skill issue. But also, I don't think people quite understand the difficulties in trying to do this. And in this video, I'm going to explain why it's so hard.

Now, I'm just going to get this out of the way here. What's missing from this picture is that you should not be trying to EQ one headphone to match another. You should instead be trying to EQ them to sound better than the $1,000 ones. So if you're new to any of this, let me just once again reiterate in no uncertain terms that if you want to get the most out of your headphones, EQ is the way to do that. And I'm not talking about using EQ profiles or presets or auto EQ or anything like that. In fact, I think there are very good reasons not to do that. But rather, making things more personalized.

To your taste, to your anatomy, that kind of thing, is going to go a long way to maximizing the sound quality you get out of any pair of headphones. And if you're confused by any of this, I have a video explaining why. But now let's focus on why getting one headphone to sound exactly like another one is extremely difficult, if not impossible to do for most people. First, let's get the obvious stuff out of the way. The stuff you're all expecting me to say. Driver limitations. So yes, it is true that certain drivers are more limited in their EQ potential than others. Factor into what's possible with EQ. Adding a massive bass boost to a headphone like the FiiO FT1 Pro isn't going to go so well because it'll result in very nasty high-order distortion problems, or you might have heard of the driver clipping issues to do with some of the Focal Open-back headphones.

That's what this is. It's going to reduce the volume threshold for where it clips, making it a less suitable candidate for EQ. But in reality, for most headphones, even the inexpensive ones, the driver is not actually the reason why you can't EQ it to sound like a more expensive. In fact, even though distortion levels might be higher in a cheaper product, they're still usually low enough that they won't be audible regardless, unless of course you're using a headphone that has some of these excursion limits where that's going to be a challenge. No, there's actually another reason why getting two headphones to sound identical is nearly impossible, and it's one that you're probably not thinking about. Unless of course you've watched some of the videos that I've made on this subject already.

And speaking of which, now would be a good time to consider subscribing if you want to get all kinds of useless headphone knowledge inflicted upon you. Things that you know. Better yet, consider how it's made possible that you have learned such things. And that's right, this is a plug for our sponsor, Headphones. com, who makes all these videos possible. Headphones. com is a great place to learn about and buy headphones. The creators, Andrew and Taryn, didn't want to just make another audio store, they felt the world didn't need that. They instead wanted to create the ideal place for headphone and audio enthusiasts, and it's why they introduced things like the 365-day return policy, and why they've empowered reviewers like us here on this channel to speak our minds about the products that we cover, to say it like it is.

Critical and negative reviews from us on this platform are highly valued. If this is something that you also find valuable, keep Headphones. com in mind the next time you're looking for headphones or audio gear, as it supports what we're doing on this channel as well. Okay, back to the video. So, what's the real reason you can't get two headphones to match with EQ? The real reason is ain't nobody got time for that shit. You might be used to looking at a frequency response graph of a headphone thinking, 'hey, this is the performance of the headphone.' And if I EQ these features in this way, that's how it's going to sound to me. When in reality, that's not actually how it's going to sound to you. To the measurement rig the measurement was taken on.

That's how it would sound to that head and ears. So imagine you have a headphone, let's call it Scrunglephone 1, and it's a closeback headphone. And you say to yourself, gee, I'd like to get this to sound like a Hi-Fi Man Susvara, a $6,000 headphone. Let's look at the graphs and dig out the old EQ scalpel, or as I like to call it, the technicalities shredder. You then use one of the various EQ adjustment tools to match the Scrunglephone 1 to the Susvara based on the measurements you have of both of those headphones, making it so that the predicted measurement looks like it matches, and then you think to yourself, heaven be praised, I've done it. I've got my cheap-ass Scrunglephone to sound like a $6,000 headphone.

The thing is, No, you haven't. The main issue here is that headphone behavior varies from head to head, and the ways in which a headphone varies is unique as well. So there are a number of different factors involved here. One is, of course, positional variation, and this is a massive variable. How a headphone is worn on the head, you know, how it sits, the amount of pad compression, the varying clamp pressure, the angle at which it sits relative to the ear, all of this is going to influence the way sound propagates at the eardrum. Within your headphones, even though positional variation is less of an issue, distance from the eardrum, which is how most IEM measurements are displayed, that may not reflect your experience with the IEM just because it is being placed at a different distance compared to how it is placed in your ear.

So the insertion depth is different or the distance between the IEM and the eardrum is different. And this can have a significant impact on the sound. And essentially, it means that unless the measurement you are seeing is an exact match for the placement of the headphone or the IEM when you yourself are wearing it, that measurement almost certainly will not align with your experience. To match another is going to be an absolute nightmare because you can't know that the positioning of the measurement for either headphone is going to match how it is on your head. And additionally, the general coupling integrity, so how good the seal is around the ear, is also going to have an influence, particularly to do with the bass response, the low frequency information.

And this is especially important for closed-back headphones like the Strunglephone 1 that are particularly sensitive to leakage effects because they rely on the stiffness of a sealed air volume to produce bass. And this is what we might call high acoustic impedance. Glasses or have an imperfect seal and the measured bass response you use to match the two headphones was from getting a perfect seal with a closed-back headphone on the measurement rig, it won't sound the same as the less leak-sensitive open-back headphone, because that one is not going to be as affected by this problem. Additionally, acoustic impedance doesn't just affect the bass, and that's because the stiffness in the air of the chamber that your ear and the driver share has effects throughout the frequency response for both closed and open-back headphones, but this is definitely a bigger issue for closed-backs and IEMs.

This is one of the main reasons why some people are resistant to the idea of EQ and measurements in general. They see a graph of a headphone and it doesn't match their experience, or there's something else about their experience that the graph doesn't describe, and so they dismiss the entire metric of frequency response. They say, it doesn't tell me about the technicalities of the headphone. The key missing variable here is how acoustic impedance impacts the response when they're actually wearing the headphones. So it's not that there's any special unmeasurable thing going on here, it's that the measurement is literally different at their eardrum. Between the driver and the eardrum is influential in what the response actually is when it's being worn, particularly at low and high frequencies.

And the nature of that air pressure changes based on how that headphone is designed and the ear that it's placed on. So if you're trying to match a high acoustic impedance headphone like the Sennheiser 1, again, a closed back, to the response of a low acoustic impedance headphone, like an open back of some kind, even if they measure the same on a test fixture, when you change the acoustic impedance of the whole system, the frequency response when you are wearing the headphones will not match. Generally, people are not aware of gets interpreted as technicalities or some unmeasurable characteristic of the driver. When really, it's just a difference in the way the headphone is behaving when worn versus when it's being measured, and that isn't immediately obvious just by looking at a single measurement.

And this is also one of the reasons why advancements in measurement equipment, like what you get with the B &K 5 and 2. 8, are so interesting since they represent a more human-like acoustic impedance. It's still not going to perfectly tell you what the response is going to be or accurately reflect the response of high-acoustic-impedance devices like close-back headphones and in-ear headphones than the previous measurement systems did. And this is why it also makes sense to focus on 5/128 data for close-backs and in-ear headphones. If you want measurements for slam and dynamics or anything to do with DD bass, use the 5. 128. Lastly, the most difficult part of all of this is the ear proximity. So it seems to be the case that if you change the ear the headphone is placed on, the headphone behavior also changes.

seems here because it's actually very difficult to isolate that variable from all the other variables that are going on. Like in practice, we're dealing with all of this at once and things like positional variation and leakage effects are running wild. Like you're basically dealing with all kinds of positional variation all the time and it's not unlikely that people are dealing with leakage effects, especially if they're wearing glasses or something like that. But when using the same measurement fixture, placing a different ear into the system and then subtracting the effects of each ear's anatomy, there does still seem to be a disconnect between the results measured on two different ears, which again indicates that the ears themselves also have an impact on how the headphone itself performs.

So I guess the question is, what do we do about this? Is there a solution here? There are a couple of things a person could do in theory. Like you could use in-ear microphones or start doing some sort of manual tone generation adjustments to compare the two headphones, but that would also introduce additional variables. Like for example, the in-ear microphone placement and your own subjective listening ability or auditory memory, which is extremely unreliable. And like I said, nobody has time to do this. Like just think about how fine-grained you need to get just to get two headphones to match on a test fixture with all the various frequency response features that they both have. Then, consider what that looks like when you add all these unknowns and additional variables when placing them on your own head.

And really this idea of getting a cheap headphone to sound like an expensive one is a red herring. It's based on the assumption that the expensive headphone is what you should be shooting for, higher than that, and this is where the process itself is both easier as well as actually worth the time you'd spend doing it. So my advice for anyone getting into EQ is to first consider how much of it you're willing to do. You are far better off buying a headphone where the adjustments that you have to make are minimal or lower down in frequency, even if in theory you can do a lot more. It is a better headphone where all you end up doing with EQ is adding a bass shelf than one where you have to you know go crazy with all the fine grain stuff and the treble.

You're going to have a better time if all you end up doing is giving something a bass rather than trying to milk the spiders of fine-grained high-frequency EQ. But with that said, this topic also goes much, much deeper than this. It goes into the question of what kinds of colorations do people actually prefer? And unfortunately, there's no light at the end of that tunnel, only darkness. And with that, that's going to do it for this video. Remember to like, comment, and subscribe if you feel inclined to do so. Do all of those things. If you want to chat with me or other like-minded audio people, you can do so in a Discord, also linked below. And I'll see you guys in the next video. Bye for now.