Earfun Free Pro - my (your) personal EQ values (Patreon)

Update 2: Tony seems to have found the issue which in fact based on commas vs points, here is what he found: 

"I managed to fix it! I couldnt change to a point when i just delete the comma and try to replace it but when i put the point in front of the comma and then delete the comma the point will stay. When using only points realtime update and save will work." 

Update: Sorry to hear about the issues with the Airoha app. I had no problems with my own phone so far, and was not aware that it may be not working for some. Mine is a Chinese phone with an old Android 5.1 and English language. Maybe you need to switch the language to English as well, I was also told to try commas instead of dots, but maybe this doesn't work if the phone system is in another language than English... I am also in contact with Earfun if they could provide a custom firmware with the latest EQ settings included that would work for recent Earfun Free Pro units, because my own firmware causes bugs if it's flashed to recent devices. I hope I will come up with a solution soon. Please be patient.  

Disclaimer: Please apply at your own risk! This is not an official Earfun guide, Earfun rather advised against sharing this procedure as the app is quite buggy und could maybe even cause problems with your device, although I personally didn't have any issues so far, I won't take any responsibiliy for any possible damage.

You need the AirReps156X control app available only for Android in the Google store: AirReps156X - Airoha control app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.airoha.utapp.sdk

If the app does not work on your Android device or does not update the EQ settings, look for an older version, I had to choose one of the very first versions, because my phone is already quite old. Otherwise you could try this link for another version which may work better: https://airreps.info/files/app/current.apk

Here you can find the full version history, i use 1.0 for my old phone: https://m.apkpure.com/airreps156x-airoha-control-app/com.airoha.utapp.sdk/versions?_gl=1*1tmehwa*_ga*YW1wLV9qeGhzcUh4cl9lWHpEakluNVVIMEQ0MDc5eVpDS29LN1FreWJ1c2tnY2JfOVZkeXAzc1ZldWNfSXd0bXhpMEI

The app is actually meant for some Airpods clones by Airoha, but the same chipset is also used inside several Earfun prodcuts and one of my followers Christos discovered that you can also access the settings for the Earfun Free Pro getting an additional fully parametric internal EQ with 10 bands and with 4 user slots. 

First you need to select your Earfun Free Pro from the list (either regular or OE version): Once selected connect to it and you should see a success status.

Jump to the Equalizer page, where you get access to the user EQ. You can see and select 5 different EQ indexes. the first EQ stored inside the firmware is not accessible by the user while EQ 101 - 104 are adjustable and can be saved within the device all at once, you will just need the app again to switch between them if needed.

WARNING: Once you start fooling around and  change values etc, you will lose the original setting saved within the firmware, which means you will also lose my OE setting, but I will provide my original values from back then anyhow which you can also enter in case you don't like my new updated setting.

I would strongly advice to get a recent Earfun Free Pro from the latest batches as there were obviously some changes to the chipset with improvements to the AAC codec, I had to disable AAC for the OE version, due to bugs in the codec implementation which resulted in obvious compression artefacts with AAC (the same issue I had noticed for the Sony WF-1000XM4). Recent units should play clean through AAC and maybe offer even better streaming quality than SBC.

Here you can finally select one of the EQ slots and enter the new values, you just need to press realtime update to make the changes transfer over to the Earfun Free Pro. When finished just select "save data" and the EQ will be saved permantly within your device.

The app can sometimes behave unpredictable, it can still show you some older values or values from another EQ index, while you are working already on another EQ, please keep that in mind and always select "save data" once finished.

First my original EQ values that were also used for the Oluv's edition:

Next are my latest values with an even better and more natural response than I managed in the beginning due to time pressure and lack of experience back then. The changes in sound may appear minimal at first, but try switching between both settings directly and listen to the details in mids and upper mids. This is definitely the most natural setting I managed for the Earfun Free Pro with very little colorations left as I tried to stay as close to the IEM target as possible. The sound should become even more transparent and more open with these settings (maybe try listening to pink noise while switching between both settings to notice the exact differences). I still wanted to keep the overall balance close to before, but the additional work on small details definitely made a difference for me, as I was never 100% satisfied with the upper mids so far. 

I would also like to provide an alternate EQ which I created inbetween some week ago and tried to add some additional clarity without making the overall sound too different or too harsh. It sounds pretty good with most music and I like it more than my original setting I created for the OE, but it has more colorations than the final setting above:

Feel free to also come up with your own creations. You can also adjust my values to your own taste, make it an Earfun Free Pro Your own edition...

I will explain in a separate video what each value exactly does and what to adjust to get this or that effect.

I hope you will like the new EQ preset as much as I do, please let me know your thoughts. But this time I tried to keep it closer to the target if possible (except if it sounded off to me i simply didn’t care what the measurement showed). This way it still sounds quite similar to the original setting just with more attention put onto some smaller details which obviously managed to make a big difference. I attached a measurement visualising the differences of the new setting (black), compared to before (green) and also the raw default EQ (blue), the netural IEM target in thick grey:

Coupler resonance was adjusted to get 6.5khz in this case, as this is also exactly the frequency I hear the strong peak with the raw EQ. Many reviewers measure IEMS with 8khz resonance, which IMO is wrong as most should have the resonance below 8khz:

The measurements above illustrate the issue which I was not that aware of at the very beginning. This is the Free Pro with my latest EQ setting applied and measured at slightly varying insertion depths which should also simulate different earcanal lenghts. You can see how suddenly a peak starts appearing which completely disappears at 6.5khz, because I tuned it for exaclty this resonance which I also personally heard at this given frequency. This is the biggest problem with IEMs and the reason why the results may differ so much between each listener, depending on the given ear canal.

 Therefor I would welcome everyone to listen to the raw EQ which should make a peak immediately noticeable. Please try analysing at which frequency exactly you hear this peak. An easy way is to create a notch filter with -8dB and Q5, start with 6500hz and listen if the peak disappears, then adjust the frequency value lower or higher until the peak is not hearable anymore and tell me your frequency as I would like to have some real values from others too. I am even thinking of adjusting the sound for a given ear if your results are too different than mine. Not sure though if I can manage as I have no idea how you actually perceive the sound in real life.

I welcome any thoughts, feedback, suggestions etc.  And would like to use this level exclusively for all my upcomingg EQ creations. It is quite rare to find a product which gives access to a fully parametric EQ like we have with Earfun here. My next project will be the Earfun Air Pro 2, although I personally don't like the toothbrush design that much, I will still try to optimise the sound like I did here.