How to improve something good? (Patreon)

I must confess I am pretty exicted and I think you should be as well, at least those who are looking forward to the Free Pro 2 adjustments. I think I managed to finalise my basic tuning now with big help of Douwe who always gave me his feedback on any setting I changed. It was actually very enlightening to hear competent comments on all of my steps and funnily we both seemed to perceive the changes in a similar way every time. When I thought it improved, it improved for him as well, which of course encouraged me to try even harder and I think together we somehow managed something outstanding. 

At first I was in high doubt if the Free Pro 2 could sound any decent at all due to the horrid raw response, everyone who tried listening to the Free Pro 2 with an empty EQ-index probably knows what I am talking about, but it would seem as if this became a great base for further adjustment and I perceive the current tuning as by far the best I managed until today. It may appear ridiculous, how can something be improved even more every time... my wife was already laughing at me every time when I approached here claiming that I have finally found the ultimate sound to find an even better one the next day. She was wondering when this madness will finally come to an end, but for me the journey actually only started right now. 

I want the Free Pro 2 to become my main working base (or let’s call it sound canvas) for any further adjustments. It won't remain the single tuning I created now, but I will try to work on further "flavors", maybe tunings that follow Harman way more strictly, although the initial feedback on my Harman tuning was rather mixed and made me readjust it again not caring that much about some lines and curves although in the end it was very helpful to also see a measurement of the current adjustments I just did, to know in which direction it is going, by adjusting the bass filter you basically change the overall balance, one complained about too little body from the sound with my initial setting which was the result of following the Harman curve too strictly within the lower registers, especially mids and bass sound rather off when tuned towards Harman's latest IEM 2019 target. I have the plan to create additional tunings simulating other headphones like the already mentioned HD800S. Many love that kind of sound although it is heavily treble boosted after some time it grows on you and I want to offer you a kind of affordable HD800S.  I am not sure where the improved sound stage comes from, but I can definitely hear a huge improvement with the Free Pro 2 over the Free Pro, may it be a different hardware, or just another tuning, but I really perceive the Free Pro 2 as way more spacious and also 3d-like sounding it reminds me in fact of the HD800S a little bit. I assume it has to do with the ratio of different frequencies especially with the upper mids and treble region, some frequency ratios will give you rather some kind of "beside you" effect, while others more to the front, some even from behind. When listening to uncorrelated pink noise I perceive pink noise really as broader with frequencies coming from behind than what I hear from the HD600, this effect may of course change again if the frequency ratios change with some further adjustment, but the effect most seem to perceive as "sound stage" is IMO just a result of particlar colorations in the frequency response that mimic your own HRTFs somehow, this can enhance or give the illusion of hearing instruments right in front of you or even above you...

So what to expect from the Free Pro 2 sound wise? First of all I think it won't sound that different from the current Free Pro tuning, they still sound quite alike the most difference is treble quality I would say, treble appears way more precise now, I also went for slightly more air than usual it's actually shocking how crystal clear everything got without any introduced harshness. Pink noise still appears butter smooth with no obvious peaks, there are just some slight biases towards particular frequencies.  I had to depart a bit from my initial Harman like curve, although it sounded great above 1khz, upper mids sounded slightly too shouty to me, compared to a flat equalised HD600 I perceived that tuning too harsh and too far away from what I usually had in mind, I wanted something more natural sounding, similar to my previous tuning for the Free Pro just better, and I think I succeeded to some degree, both me and Douwe are somehow impressed by the result, it is particular, it is amazing, it is something I have not heard from another headphone yet although I already claimed this nearly one year ago when I worked on the Free Pro Oluv's edition. Thus take my claims with a grain of salt as usual. But the more I deal with sound, filtering, tuning, the more I understand what I am actually doing. It is still very challenging for me and it takes time, my first tuning approach started 1 week ago, thus I needed 1 week of adjustments, hours of listening and 3 hour of sleep during night as I couldn't stop tweaking until I finally approached the "optimum" let's say. I see this whole process similar to some kind of "painting", you start with the rough basic coloration and then get finer and finer and start to work on all the details and maybe have to refine those as well or get back to a previous state if the new tweaks were not successful, sometimes a mix of an older setting with a newer setting appears to lead to the right direction, and the "image" becomes clearer and clearer at a certain point, if you are a good painter the final image will be indistinguishable from a photo. This is more or less how I felt during this process, it became clearer and clearer, sometimes the colors were off but I felt the need to correct for those errors. Therefore please understand that I need time for this as I simply want it to become as good as possible within my personal capabilities. I am not an expert at this and there are more skilled audio gurus than me but with patience and passion I think you can really reach the goal if you want to.

Over the last week I have created about 50 different versions, some of them quite horrid sounding but back then it was the best result I could achieve, some of those started to evolve into something better, abandoning the others while a particular one started to stick out and became the base for all further work. If there is interest I may dig out the most important steps, create measurements from them and also prepare sound samples, just to demonstrate you how the sound evolved and why and how it started to improve with every step, I already wanted to do this with my old Free Pro OE tunings and shoot a video about it, but I think this time the progress can be followed way better. But just creating such a video will be quite an effort, therefore I may consider doing this only if there was enough interest and if everything else was finished.

Before I continue with further work on creating all other tunings for different frequencies I just want to let the tuning settle a bit more for me, I want to listen more with it if can still hear some issues in future, there is always room for improvement, the only limit is the amount of filters I have available and as I already used all of them also having made some compromises in various parts, I highly doubt that I can manage an even better result, I can make different results, but they won't be necessarily better. Right now I am waiting for my 3rd unit to arrive, when this happens I will meausure all 3 units with the current tuning to analyse how much they deviate from each other and if this deviation can cause issues. So far both my units sound quite a like with one being just a bit brighter, but I could live with any of them. I will try to adjust my setting for the best average result, so that it would sound acceptable with all of them, of course I would need even more samples to get the ultimatively valid result, but I cannot push it too far. 

As I am so confident with the current tuning, I would like to take some time and concentrate on making all of the additional tunings as great and smooth as possible, I have to adjust any of them manually by shifting the resonance frequency and readjusting my current filters to get the same response in the end, then using this setting for the next frequency shift and readjust it again. It is easier that way than having to come up with completely new values for a completely new measurement, therefore I will slowly go up from my own 6100Hz frequency and create one tuning by one, and then do the same by shifting the frequency lower. I used the same approach already for the Free Pro but it was hard to match the curve everytime perfectly because the final response curve was more complex than it is now, I hope I can get smoother and more consistent results for every frequency-based tuning this time. And I also decided to offer tunings every 100hz this time which will of course will need way more time with some particular settings maybe not being used at all by anyone but you really get the optimum result if I can match the response to to your personal resonance, on top of this you may still need to adjust some filters to your own preference.

As the entire process is so tedious I was already thinking if I should increase the level that would allow to access my tunings, but on the other hand I want everyone to have the chance to access them without having to spend a fortune. It's just unfair that companies can ask thousands of dollars for snake oil, while I have the feeling to be greedy if I ask 10€ from someone for hours of my work. This was the impression I got when I first talked about my new tuning approaches for the Earfun Free Pro some weeks ago, people started to complain and criticise why they need to pay again for something that should have been included right away.

I was hoping for even more interest from people, as this would allow me to finally get some safeness about my finances and expenses, but it would seem as if the reactions so far were rather reserved, most laugh about this old deaf guy and I am still fighting with my finances every month. I would like to dig deeper into the magic of sound and maybe try other tunings, the Free Pro 2 seems perfect for this, as the hardware is really great, I was enjoying it the last days without any issues and hardly touched my Free Pro anymore. I thought about doint other tunings, fun stuff, some tuning competitions maybe. I also had planned to let my HRTFs measure professionally by an acoustic institute in Vienna, but I got a quote for 400€ and lost my interest again. I am expecting new custom binaural microphones which cost me a fortune, but I hoped I could improve my recordings and make them even more lifelike especially now, if we all have the same "basic" sound, my recordings should sound way more correct and realistic to you as I am trying to make them all sound alike, so that they do not start sounding off. I would like to upgrade my couplers maybe even with an artificial pinna, which would allow me to measure both IEMs and headphones with the same system, this would make the process of comparing responses of an IEM an overear headphone directly even easier, as right now I rather have to do it by ear. My PC is obviously starting to die slowly, I would need something better sooner or later, but I simply cannot afford all this equipment with my current income. I am of course very thankful about any support I could get so far as this was the only way how I could continue with all this and still have fun doing it. Who knows how long I will be able to do it as my ears will become worse and worse over time. I already have a hard time to judge the response above 16khz and need to rely on someone else who still hears above that or just trust the measurements. 

I just hope I can awake some further enthusiasm for what I am doing and manage to attract a broader audience in future, but the headphone market literally died for me. I will never ever spend thousands of dollars for some new heapdhone anymore, it just doesn't make sense to me, and I hope I can also prevent others of getting fooled by clever marketing tricks and buying snake oil. There will always be a market for overpriced questionable high-end gear and some of the new tech is definitely favorable, but it's a bit unfair that those frauds are earning millions with their crap. I am not sure how my Patreon is going to evolve and if it goes into anther direction than you would like to if I need to cease it if I simply cannot maintain it due to lack of interest from others, I really don't know! But now please be patient and stay excited until I finish all tunigs for the Free Pro 2, I think you will love it as well!

Thanks again to all of you, you are the only ones who keep me alive and give some sense to what I doing here. I wouldn't be able without you!

Kisses, O.