Back to Life (Patreon)

I'm back, finally... I haven't responded to any of your private messages for longer, as I simply didn't have a clear mind recently and needed to get some distance before starting everything again which I had already started to question a lot in the meantime if it made any sense to continue with what I was doing and took this time to sort all my things and finally also present you some good news. I spent the entire last week to optimise my headphone target and started with a completely new setup. A video demonstrating my approach will be posted within the next couple of days showing off the result I achieved. I think I managed a really decent representation of what "neutral" sounds through a headphone, which I approached for the HD58X as for now. It should be a significant improvement over my last version that I had posted a couple of weeks back. Meanwhile I also let my HD58X unit measure by Oratory1900 and can use this data to demonstrate my achieved final target curve on a standardised measuring rig and how much it differs from all other common targets. I also performed some additional experiments modifying my ears and comparing all measured responses to each other and can finaly prove that even different ear conchas than mine should still perceive my target as way more neutral and natural sounding than with the HD58X unequalised, because the overall change in response between all ear-mods measured for the speakers translates in a simiar way over to the measured headphone response. It may be just not as smooth and faithful sounding as it does for me, but it should definitely be a big improvement over stock HD58X. All this took lots of time and stretched the patience of my wife again who now expects some final success from all this nonsense I was wasting my time with during the last years. Thankfully with all this effort I think I finally managed a very nice result which I am pretty satisfied with. I made lots of breaks between different listening sessions to reset my brain to some degree and start hearing different nuances every time. The improvements may not appear big and they are in fact just some minor adjustments to some filters compared to my previous setting, but once a particular level is achieved it’s getting harder and harder to improve it and I am still not really understanding every detail of it and why it is so hard to approximate the response of a speaker by a headphone. Also keep in mind that since I started my “work” on the HD58X the pads already got worn slightly which managed to alter the initial response I measured at the very beginning. This means all this is not an exact science because every single measurement will look different and is influenced by so many factors which I simply have no control of.

I will soon post more detailed measurements explaining my method how I approached this target and will also immediately post my final HD58X EQ settings which I am currently still optimising for the Qudelix 5K.

I also let Oratory1990 measure my Earfun Free Pro 2 unit and I think we managed to approach my own resonance frequency of 6000Hz pretty well on his GRAS system, so that I can finally try to approximate the same target or let's call it kind of response achieved for the HD58X also for an IEM or in my case the Free Pro 2 which I would like to continue using as long as I haven’t found a better fully customisable IEM alternative. There is some vague possibility for another collaboration with Earfun for the Free Pro 3 which should be released within the next months. I think they are planning to release an own Oluv’s edition again along their regular units but we will need to dicuss the formalities first as my demands are a bit higher this time with ideas to implement different targets for all kinds of ear canal resonances with additional options for controlling the sound through the app, which they probably won't agree, but I cannot offer any half hearted approach with a single tuning only which may only work for a small percentage of people...

Unfortunately I am still quite in a hurry because we will be leaving for holidays to Italy again this weekend and I still need to edit the upcoming videos and prepare all the measurement data before not to mention having to pack everything...

Sorry for all the silence recently, but I needed to rethink my approach at what I am doing and will try to get back to all of you when I am finally sitting bored at the beach with my mind again free enough to answer all your inquiries. Please have some patience with me, but I can only slowly come back into my routine again after this weird and stressful period I had. 

I can hopefully attract some more prospective supporters in future so that I can concentrate on all this in good concience not having to worry about how to survive the next month.

A big thanks especially to all those who continously supported me through the very beginning not arguing for a 5$ refund because of this or that.