Weiss Enginering Ltd.
DAC501-4ch/DAC502-4ch
4.9
The Weiss Headphone Equalizer
The Weiss Headphone EQ also pursues the aim of a
spectral compensation
like the Schwede Loudness EQ
and the Room EQ. The introduced EQ plugin of this section attempts to balance the playback when using
headphones. The specific geometries and constructions of headphones can alter the reproduction of sound.
This can create loudness variations regarding certain frequencies in such a way that some frequency bands
could be emphasized and others could be dampened.
Figure 34: Fictive example of a headphone frequency response measurement (red) and its correlated com-
pensation curve (blue).
Such an imbalance can be compensated if the frequency response of the headphone is known. Measure-
ments of a headphone’s frequency response provide information about the spectral amplifying behaviour of
the system.
Based on this knowledge it is possible to design filters which are able to compensate this unauthentic be-
haviour and counterbalance the listening experience of headphones.
In figure 34 a fictive and simplified example of such a headphone frequency response measurement is plot-
ted in red. In reality such measurements are far more complex. This exemplary headphone only creates
an amplification imbalance in two frequency bands. The first one shows a damping behaviour of the low
frequencies up to around
100
Hz
. Another peak-like damping behaviour can be observed around
3
kHz
.
In order to compensate this imbalance the
spectral behaviour
of the headphone needs to be inverted. So
the basic idea of a compensation filter designs is to invert or, in other words, mirror the measured curve on
the
0
dB
axis. The resulting compensation curve is plotted in blue in figure 34.
The Weiss Headphone EQ plugin (sec. 2.3.7) offers a selection of predefined EQ settings to compensate the
properties of certain headphone models. The design of these EQ settings attempt to optimize the number
of active bands, so with a change in complexity of the headphone’s frequency response the number of EQ
bands vary.
In a first version of this plugin 19 Headphone Models by Audeze are presented as option settings. The
underlying headphone measurements of these EQ settings have been conducted and evaluated specifi-
cally by Audeze.
This plugin is not applicable with
Output Termination
set to
Speaker
User Manual and
36
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