Earfun Free Pro 2 - Oluv’s neutral target WIP (Patreon)

Like mentioned before I created this setting quickly before leaving for holidays to have some listening solution on the go. It was just a rough first adjustment to achieve a sound which was closer to the target I managed for the HD58X. As for an IEM the ear canal is the only sound forming factor, the final frequency response needs to have the effects of the individual concha somehow included. I used my own concha for this therefore I am not sure how others with strongly deviating conchas from mine may perceive the sound. With over-ears this effect is to some degree recreated on its own, therefore even 2 different concha shapes should still perceive a similar final sound, I demonstrated in my target video how much the final response can vary just by bending my ears. With IEMs this can only work through some rough generalisation and averaging which of course will never offer the same precision and a tuning which sounds perfectly fine to me can sound way off to someone else despite both having the same ear canal resonance the brain simply regards 2 different responses as “natural” in both cases.

To recreate a perfectly neutral sound through an IEM one would need to have his personal HRTFs to be included into the response. I am not a technician therefore I cannot realise such solutions on my own but technically this should be easily doable with the current technology and research and I wonder why no company opted for such a product.

This setting works of course only for my own ear canal resonance which is about 6000hz. It won’t sound good with anything much higher or lower. Also keep in mind that the Free Pro 2 has quite a strong sample variation. I requested 3 brand new units from Earfun to have some stronger variance and maybe adjust the final response for a better average.

The biggest difference to my old reference tuning is that this here has way less body to the sound. The overall bass is reduced to achieve a more neutral ratio between mids and bass. I also adjusted lower treble a bit to simulate the dip I am hearing around 7-8khz which formerly I didn’t do. Thanks to that dip the frequency response should appear more realistic and speaker like in that region. Overall bass is still slightly higher than my neutral target dor the HD58X and more inline with the in-room response I tried to simulate though the additional 2 filters.

After my return from holidays I would like to optimise this setting to achieve an as close as possible response I achieved for the HD58X and get the overall balance even better. As Earfun is going to release the Free Pro 3 soon I am not sure how much sense it will really make to still invest time into the Free Pro 2, but depending on the demand I may recreate this setting for other resonance frequencies as well, if there are still people who request this which will be a lot of work though. Therefore it will come down to which frequencies in particular I will need to cover and how many would want one. But first I want to hear some feedback from others with the same ear canal resonance what they think about this setting.

Any feedback highly appreciated.