To do list… (Patreon)

Just wanted to let you know that we took some time off for easter holidays. Although I can hardly afford it it’s only a cheap all inclusive hotel in Croatia and I simply owe this to my wife after all the time I neglected here recently. I also need some rest after the busy days lately and long late night listening sessions which finally made my ears ring. It’s not healthy listening to pink noise for hours but the only way to really hear the smallest nuances and adjust the sound accordingly.

I already have some plans to accomplish after our return which I would like to share with you.to keep you interested.

It’s the first time I ever took the Sennheiser HD600 with me on a trip together with the Qudelix 5K. But I couldn’t resist as I had just finished my final tuning for it and couldn’t quite enjoy the Free Pro 2 anymore when directly compared. I usually only use this one when I am on the go but even at home. I am using it with an adjusted tuning which departs quite a bit from my back then reference tuning. I haven’t listened to that one for longer actually but it will be a big next project for me to readjust the sound properly to match it better to my new target and hopefully achieve a similar response for an inear. I already contacted Oratory1990 in order to meet and use his measurement rig to measure both my HD600 and the Free Pro 2 properly with the correct resonance to have comparable graphs which I can hopefully work on further tying to match both responses somehow and verify the result by listening. I also wonder how much my HD600 differs from the other already measured units by him and could hopefully use his data to apply some better averaging to my tuning if necessary. If measured on a profession rig I could also finally approximate a real curve for my target to demonstrate how much it differs from other common targets, although last thing I want is to finally see this implemented by some Chinese company in their upcoming headphone therefore understand that I do not want to publicly release too much precise data on it.

For the final Free Pro 2 tuning I want to include more samples this time as I got 3 new units recently I can hopefully manage a decent average over all 7 units I have in total although I am afraid they will differ too much from each other to really achieve a decent sound among all units.

I need to purchase the Neumann KH80 by all means with a 2nd attempt but this time from a friend instead of a scammer. I am still not quite sure how I shall finance this but if it works out I want to perform further tests and measurements which can make some fine adjustment of my target necessary but at least it will hopefully become even better and more valid like that.

I have ideas how to prove the influence of the pinna on my target and if it may equally work for others too, as I still haven’t got any real feedback from other trained listeners so far except some friends and my family. I want to modify my ears by stuffing in some putty into the windings and maybe also additionally bending the helix to do comparative listening tests if the speakers still sound similar to the headphone after my modifications also perform measurements of both the speakers and the headphone with my modded ears to finally measure the delta between them. If the relative difference remains somehow similar, I can be sure that my settings should also work well for other shaped ears than mine and that my achieved personal target should be indeed correct and not just some chimera. I am quite excited to try this out as soon as I manage.

My current target is based on an equitriangular speaker setup with the sound coming from 30 degrees to the left and right but I would like to perform further measurements from other angles like directly from front from 60 and 90 degrees and create filter deltas for those as well to simulate responses as if the sound would be coming more from the sides one could apply such a filter set to create additional flavours which should still sound “correct” just brighter with maybe a more expansive sound stage. Effect would be similar like the difference between my natural target and the “precise” one.

April is the month of the HD600 and maybe I can attract some others to get this classic headphone to try out my settings for it as long as i haven’t managed to achieve something similar for another headphone. I would also encourage everyone to get the Qudelix 5K if you are into headphones and equalising as I want it to become a standardised playback system also for myself.

This means I want to precisely measure the correct playback volume for speakers which in in the studio world is around 85-90dB. This is also where “neutral” is really perceived as neutral. I want to match the perceived loudness measured with with an SPL meter and achieve the same playback volume over headphones and further more match my own recordings towards this so that you can actually be sure to listen to my samples with exactly the same level I was listening in real life by knowing the exact volume level on the Qudelix 5K. This way I could also offer additional filter values for lower levels to compensate for the human loudness contours, by just adding 2 additional filters tuned accordingly for a bass and treble boost you could achieve a more or less correct sounding response. Maybe Qudelix could add a dynamic filter option automatically adjustable according to the volume level.

I still want to invest some further time into the HD600 as meanwhile I tweaked my original settings a tiny bit and did some further adjustments like adding a low pass filter to get rid off that 19khz peak in a simple way. I also want to fine tune upper treble above 13khz better which is not that easy as I formerly thought the response should be basically smooth but in reality I hear a peak at 12.7k which dips around 13 with another peak close to 15khz when listening to speakers as well. Formerly I always tried to get the response smooth in that area but I may try to pay more attention to those details for an even more realistic result. I want to explain my filter settings better and which filters to adjust for a given effect. How to hide peaks within the response and how to model lower mids by adjusting treble. I am still not 100% satisfied but those tiny adjustments are pretty hard to control and maybe not even noticeable to most therefore I want to offer all that nerdy stuff for my Hi-Fi tiers as this goes quite a bit beyond an average user who should be pretty satisfied with my current settings.

I want to expand my current Patreon levels a bit better to give them more sense and add benefits to the higher ones which otherwise nobody will be interested in taking. But the benefit of taking the Hi-Fi level will get you even deeper into the topic and give you permanent access to all my headphone tweaks, while the enthusiast tier will only get the tweaks for the given month if that makes sense.

I also want to give some further benefit to the mid level like offering my monthly give always already to these as well. I am aware that I missed the give away for March and we haven’t yet a winner for February but I will try to get everything more reliable from now on.

For May I may try to tweak both HD6XX and HD58X at once if I manage as they shouldn’t be that hard to achieve due to their similar characteristics. These headphones are very popular and could hopefully expand my reach among further listeners although I doubt there will be that much interest. But Sennheiser has usually a decent quality control with less sample variation than those cheap brand options like Superlux. I originally wanted to select the HD672 as cheap headphone to create an EQ profile for it but all 3 units I purchased sound somehow too different and I am not sure it would make sense.

You can see I have a full schedule after holidays and I hope I can attract some more supporters to actually be able to invest some more time and money into additional equipment etc. I am aware that the current crisis is hitting all us quite hard and honestly right now I hardly manage to survive financially therefore my plan B is to check for an alternative occupation. I have a contact at Neuroth in Vienna a hearing aid company and would be interested in starting a serious schooling towards a hearing aid acoustician to finally get a real profession again and not having to beg for money on Patreon. If the current trend continues, this will be the only way for me to still somehow stick to the topic I am interested in but also earn money regularly. This of course will mean the end of my Patreon sooner or later as I probably won’t have time to fool around like this anymore.