nerdemoji
Active Member
- Joined
- Jul 17, 2023
- Messages
- 194
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- 301
It’s a story if you care to read it:
I have been using the AirPods Max and my listening device for a while now, and then got EQ a few months ago when I found this site. I wasn’t happy with the treble response even after EQ: the drums sounded weird and there were crazy peaks(7khz and 15kz) and cancellations(6khz and 9khz) everywhere.
So I wanted new headphones. And those were the DCA AEON Open X (W/ EQ). super good linearity and distortion, right. Then, I realized that speakers were cheaper than I thought they were, especially for a decent desktop setup. DCA AEON Open X (on sale @ $369) + SMSL DL200 ($190) is roughly as expensive as the KEF Q150 ($300-350)the best apparent desktop speakers to me) + SMSL AL200 ($220).
So, I actually got them. They sounded really good, except this stupid note that just stuck out a ton. Ah, yes I have read about this on here… A room resonance/mode (are these the same meaning?) I went into tone generator and found probably a 10db spike at 130hz, must have been a sealing bounce. I tried nuking it with a -15 db Q8 in equalizerAPO and…nothing happened. I then when into spinorama and grabbed the suggested EQ settings, and I was sure that it sounded better, fuller. But the room resonance was still there for some reason…
The next day I thought “well maybe equalizerAPO wasn’t working for some reason. I changed the resonance killing filter to a high pass, which should make it sound like crap, but it sounded the same. I couldn’t believe the day before, I was so sure that the eq sounded better when it literally did nothing. I configured the AL200 in the Peace configuration thing, and went back and it was fixed. Now it sounded really nice, especially after I fixed the lower level room resonances as best I could with Tone Generator.
Sound impressions now: speakers sound really different from headphones in that they sound much louder than headphones even when they are not. The bass sounds completely different because it feels both lower and higher than headphones at the same time (though this might still be room related stuff idk). Headphones don’t have any kind of imaging at all in comparison to speakers (or maybe it is just my headphones). The stereo expander effect on Peace is really cool and I don’t understand what it does so if anyone knows here that would be awesome. My brother listen to it and thought they sounded really good and that his songs ”sounded like completely different songs”, probably because he listens to music on fake Lenovo fake AirPods he found on Temu (don’t use Temu guys).
Anyway, I thought it is a cool story that illustrates the cognitive biases pretty well, no matter how long I spent learning about it. That’s the GI Joe Fallacy: knowing about cognitive biases is certainly not enough to overcome them. It applies to measurements, too, when me (and other people) see good measurements we can hear a better sound, even if it does absolutely nothing (or audibly nothing). Bye bye
I have been using the AirPods Max and my listening device for a while now, and then got EQ a few months ago when I found this site. I wasn’t happy with the treble response even after EQ: the drums sounded weird and there were crazy peaks(7khz and 15kz) and cancellations(6khz and 9khz) everywhere.
So I wanted new headphones. And those were the DCA AEON Open X (W/ EQ). super good linearity and distortion, right. Then, I realized that speakers were cheaper than I thought they were, especially for a decent desktop setup. DCA AEON Open X (on sale @ $369) + SMSL DL200 ($190) is roughly as expensive as the KEF Q150 ($300-350)the best apparent desktop speakers to me) + SMSL AL200 ($220).
So, I actually got them. They sounded really good, except this stupid note that just stuck out a ton. Ah, yes I have read about this on here… A room resonance/mode (are these the same meaning?) I went into tone generator and found probably a 10db spike at 130hz, must have been a sealing bounce. I tried nuking it with a -15 db Q8 in equalizerAPO and…nothing happened. I then when into spinorama and grabbed the suggested EQ settings, and I was sure that it sounded better, fuller. But the room resonance was still there for some reason…
The next day I thought “well maybe equalizerAPO wasn’t working for some reason. I changed the resonance killing filter to a high pass, which should make it sound like crap, but it sounded the same. I couldn’t believe the day before, I was so sure that the eq sounded better when it literally did nothing. I configured the AL200 in the Peace configuration thing, and went back and it was fixed. Now it sounded really nice, especially after I fixed the lower level room resonances as best I could with Tone Generator.
Sound impressions now: speakers sound really different from headphones in that they sound much louder than headphones even when they are not. The bass sounds completely different because it feels both lower and higher than headphones at the same time (though this might still be room related stuff idk). Headphones don’t have any kind of imaging at all in comparison to speakers (or maybe it is just my headphones). The stereo expander effect on Peace is really cool and I don’t understand what it does so if anyone knows here that would be awesome. My brother listen to it and thought they sounded really good and that his songs ”sounded like completely different songs”, probably because he listens to music on fake Lenovo fake AirPods he found on Temu (don’t use Temu guys).
Anyway, I thought it is a cool story that illustrates the cognitive biases pretty well, no matter how long I spent learning about it. That’s the GI Joe Fallacy: knowing about cognitive biases is certainly not enough to overcome them. It applies to measurements, too, when me (and other people) see good measurements we can hear a better sound, even if it does absolutely nothing (or audibly nothing). Bye bye
