Massdrop Focal "Elex"

[dalethorn]

18 minutes ago, GUTB said:

In all my hi-fi headphones, the negatives of EQ correction always outweighed the positives.

 

I have to agree at least in part.  The hardest jobs I tried in EQ were with the T1, T90, K812 etc.  I was never really satisfied with those.  I never did try the HD800.  The answer?  I dunno.  I'd guess the more revealing the greater the requirement for exactness.  But the EQ's I did, though I was not entirely happy with them, did make the sound somewhat better.

[dalethorn]

11 hours ago, buonassi said:

yes on this.  The laws of physics don't allow for perfectly flat (or perfectly curved to some target) response when the drivers are sitting so close to your ears.  It's the bane of the poor headphone's existence.  There are always going to be standing waves at one or more particular frequency because their wavelength is very short - this creates amplification of some frequencies and attenuation of others as the wavelengths bounce back and interact with the original one.  It's a very common phenomenon in room correction on speakers/subs, but that is usually aimed more at the lower octaves for speakers - given the length of the room.  Bass is often nice on headphones because their wavelength is MUCH longer than the distance from driver to ear and the phase response is preserved better.  

there are always going to be folks who have incorrect assertions.  But this helps the community when they are corrected publicly and it's on record for future thread viewers.  So there's still some benefit.  Geesh, I almost sound like a communist.  

 

In the end, none of that technical mumbo-jumbo matters.  And I am a VERY tech-savvy person.  What matters is 1) Making the most- needed corrections first, to reduce the worst anomalies. 2) Making the final corrections toward a natural sound.  The problem I see in your contentions, and those other very techie contentions here, is it steers users toward a reliance on elitists, and as a long-time software dev supervisor, we don't need those at the level that serves ordinary users.

[dalethorn]

10 hours ago, buonassi said:

So I do have to agree with this partly.  There is always a tradeoff when using EQ, of which I am a huge fan BTW.  The purists claim that EQ destroys the subtleties of the headphone's response, and they are not entirely wrong either.  'Destroy' seems to be blowing it way out of proportion however.  Whenever you EQ, you will alter the phase relationship of frequencies.  What you correct in the frequency domain becomes somewhat skewed in the time domain.  This is what "smearing" of transients is all about.  BUT.... I believe that EQ, despite the minuscule effect it has on phase when done properly, corrects the bigger problem - the frequency response!  To me, and many others, this is a perfectly acceptable tradeoff.  Especially if you know what you're doing, how much to EQ and where, which frequencies to treat with a linear phase EQ, and which are better suited to minimum phase processing.  It should also be noted that opponents of EQ usually haven't had experience with a top-shelf software plugin.  I tried countless very good free EQ plugins.  But when I went with Fab Filter, there was a distinct sonic quality the others didn't present.  No I am not affiliated with them nor did I buy this when it was on sale.  You can google me (Vincent Buonassi) and find out that I work in transportation.  I forked out the $179 for it like a regular schmuck.  You really get what you pay for, especially if you take the time to learn about the effects of EQ on phase.  Here's a great video that explains the basics of EQ processing mode and how phase affects frequency:

 

 

 

I do like the presentation of this post, however, at $179 (cheap for audiophiles), it's nowhere near the "app store" prices we see for Audioforge et al.  Today, phones will play at least 44-48 khz files, and can serve as a good transport with small DACs like the DF Red.  If a really smart vendor can get the average shmoe into a $6 equalizer app, which somehow automates the phase issues (at least to some improvement despite errors), that I can sell.

[dalethorn]

1 minute ago, buonassi said:

 

I wouldn't say the majority of us are here specifically with the intention of serving ordinary users.  Many of us are here because we want to take our hobby to a level that ordinary users would laugh at - and we find others who share this same affinity.  The irony in all of this...... is that through our "techie" talk, we end up educating, thus serving, the ordinary users.  

 

Still...I have to yield to you here and say you're right.  At least for this topic.  This is supposed to be about the Focal Elex, not standing wavs and physics.  For that, I apologize to the OP @crenca, sorry about that.  

 

You missed the point, maybe.  It's not that we can't have a high-tech thread on EQ, it's the tone of many of these posts that say "you can't" this or that, or "that won't work" for whatever reason.  If there were a way to label such a thread to warn non-technical types away, then that might ease some of the contention.