Clip+ Rockbox EQ tweaks

[Hinrik]

Originally Posted by h1a8

The clip+ with rockbox is awesome. With a minor eq tweak the clip+ sounds as good as the sony.

What tweak?

[CrowdAds]

[h1a8]

Originally Posted by Hinrik

What tweak?

Not quite a tweak but rather an EQ setting. I bump the frequency at 2900Hz up .5dB with Q=1.5. From RMAA tests this is what Sony does (but at 3500Hz) to warm up their sound (make the midrange clearer and every so slightly more in your face). For some phones (like the ie7) bumping up the treble to 3-5dB makes the sound more lively and awesome.

Also a bump up at 60Hz to .5dB with Q=1.5 is also a nice touch too.

I know .5dB isn't much but trust me it's one of Sony's secrets. I've look at the RMAA graphs.

[Artmuzz]

Originally Posted by h1a8

Not quite a tweak but rather an EQ setting. I bump the frequency at 2900Hz up .5dB with Q=1.5. From RMAA tests this is what Sony does (but at 3500Hz) to warm up their sound (make the midrange clearer and every so slightly more in your face). For some phones (like the ie7) bumping up the treble to 3-5dB makes the sound more lively and awesome.

Also a bump up at 60Hz to .5dB with Q=1.5 is also a nice touch too.

I know .5dB isn't much but trust me it's one of Sony's secrets. I've look at the RMAA graphs.

You say that you tweak the EQ at 2900Hz up 0.5 with Q=1.5. Is that all for the PK1, PK2 and PK3 EQ settings?

You also say that you bump up the treble to 3-5dB. Is that for the HS setting or the actual treble settings that is outside the EQ?

Art

[h1a8]

Originally Posted by Artmuzz

You say that you tweak the EQ at 2900Hz up 0.5 with Q=1.5. Is that all for the PK1, PK2 and PK3 EQ settings?

You also say that you bump up the treble to 3-5dB. Is that for the HS setting or the actual treble settings that is outside the EQ?

Art

There's a separate treble setting not part of the graphical EQ. It's in the same menu list as Equalizer (after selecting sound settings). But I only recommend bumping up the treble if it benefits your headphones. Some headphones already have plenty of treble (like the fx-700).

[Artmuzz]

Originally Posted by h1a8

There's a separate treble setting not part of the graphical EQ. It's in the same menu list as Graphical EQ (after selecting sound settings). But I only recommend bumping up the treble if it benefits your headphones. Some headphones already have plenty of treble (like the fx-700).

I use Sennheiser CX300 headphones so the treble is quite good.

What were your settings for PK1, PK2 and PK3 on the graphic EQ for that Sony sound? and what is the setting for LS and HS?

Please advise

Cheers

Art

[h1a8]

Originally Posted by Artmuzz

I use Sennheiser CX300 headphones so the treble is quite good.

What were your settings for PK1, PK2 and PK3 on the graphic EQ for that Sony sound? and what is the setting for LS and HS?

Please advise

Cheers

Art

Look here

[Artmuzz]

By setting the LS gain on graphical equalizer to 5.0 and the cutoff to 120Hz and Q to 1.5 I can get that Sony bass sound thats similar to Clear Bass on the top of the range Sony DAPs. When i made that setting I compared it with my Sony X1060 and S639F and the similarity is very close.


Art

[lonehelmet]

Originally Posted by h1a8

Not quite a tweak but rather an EQ setting. I bump the frequency at 2900Hz up .5dB with Q=1.5.

Hi, can you tell me how/where in the sound-settings you have done this? I'm looking at the simple and advanced EQ settings but I can only see 60Hz, 200Hz, 800Hz, 4000Hz and 12000Hz. Did you alter one of the seeded frequencies (LS, PK1, PK2, PK3, HS)?

[hifreak]

I have just bought a Clip+ also and played a little with the settings in Rockbox, but I am also interested to know the same as lonehelmet.

[saratoga]

Originally Posted by hifreak

I have just bought a Clip+ also and played a little with the settings in Rockbox, but I am also interested to know the same as lonehelmet.

How to use the EQ? The manual explains it pretty well:

http://download.rockbox.org/daily/ma...l#x9-1130006.8

FWIW I would play around with a tone generator + EQ on the PC (foobar works pretty well for this) first to get an idea how the headphones sound at different frequencies first.

[Timar]

IMO it is a useless undertaking to fumble around with the EQ to simulate something which appears to be nothing but some minor (most certainly inaudible) imperfection of the Sony's frequency response.

The rockbox equalizer is a very powerfull tool, however, to improve the sound of your headphones. +-0.5db modifications, like the "Sony tweak" are fly spots compared to the gross nonlinearities even high quality headphones will introduce to the frequency response. I managed to greatly improve the sound of my Klipsch IEMs using some carefully devised EQ settings.

The best starting point (if you don't have your own artifical head measuring system ) is too look at the graphs at www.headphone.com and try to correct them for a rather flat frequency response. In theory, headphone with the same frequency response should sound the same.

In praxis there are several problems which prevent you to EQ your Koss Porta-Pro to sound like a Sennheiser HD800. What works well for over-ear headphones won't give good results for IEMs, since they have to be adjusted to another kind of HRTF (see the link above). On-ears are some kind of inbetween and are even harder to equalize.

Another problem is, of course, that headphones with rather uneven response graphs will very probably introduce large amouts of distortions if equalized, thus you'll probably never attain a flat response. Even if the graphs at headphone.com look fine, there may be invisible spikes which can completely ruin your equalization.

But the most important thing is to understand how a parametric EQ works before messing around with it. Often, people use absurd settings, because they don't understand how to correctly adjust the q-value. Best way to figure out about this is to have a parametric EQ on your PC that can visualize the response graph.

[Adub]

The most important thing when adjusting your rb EQ is how it sounds to you. It takes a lot of listening to adjust it to what sounds good but it's worth it. Always remember your sonic preference is more important than what a graph portrays as there are no theoretical best settings, only what is pleasing to your ears. Base your preset slightly on the FR graphs, but don't be strict with your settings in comparison with the graphs as those presets never sound good, as i have listened to some presets made this way by others that are horrible.

[absence]

Hi!

Ih've had my Clip+ for exactely a week today. After a few hours of use I decided to try Rockbox out, since the EQ in the OF is pretty much useless. I wanted to boost the lower frequencies to achieve more warmth (I used the good old Cowon U2 for several years and it definitely had more power and warmth in the lower end - EQ = flat, BBE = off, etc).

So, the only thing that kept me from relaxing and just enjoying my favourite music (90% Metal) was the lower-end frequencies and after some experimentation with the RB-EQ I think I found the settings that fits my preferenses:

LS: +4.0 db - 30 hz - Q: 0.7
PK1: +2.0 db - 50 hz - Q: 0.7
PK2: +2.0 db - 60 hz - Q: 0.7
HS: +2.0 db - 100 hz - Q: 0.7

Precut: -17 db

As you can see, I turned the whole equalizer into a low-end-only-equalizer. IMO, the mids and highs where good as they where and therefore = no EQing needed at those frequencies.

Questions:
Can you guys see anything strange (except for the obvious, ofc) with the settings? I never used an "advanced" equalizer before so I'm a complete noob at this.

Exactely what does the "Q-setting" do? I just read in the manual that it's recommended that you have it set to 0.7 and that it might influence frequencies around it slightly which doesn't say much if you ask me. For example: how do I know when to turn it up/down and how do I know exactely how much it should be turned up/down?

When setting up precut, I wonder the same thing as above. How am I sure I have the right value there? Right now I'm just trusting my ears.

Hope everything I just wrote is understandable, my english is rusty. Answers are appreciated.

[dfkt]

HS means high shelf - it's not a peak/notch, like the three middle bands. It means you turned *all* frequencies above 100Hz up by 2dB, right up to the Nyquist rate - basically negating the other EQ bands you tweaked.

The Q factor is the bandwidth for the middle three bands (narrow to wide), and the cutoff for the two shelves (shallow to steep).

Why would you use a precut of -17dB with those settings? That's really a lot. I guess you won't get any distortions with a precut of 4 or 5dB as well. But since you cascaded the low shelf and two bands in a very narrow 30-60Hz range (which isn't good EQing practice), the EQ might indeed give unforeseen results.

[absence]

LOL! Major misunderstandings.

Precut is set to -17 because lower values made the music distort with my old settings. It's temporary in other words.