After a few years away. I am thrilled to discover AutoEQ, bought SoundSource, and got the ball rolling.
The problem is the profiles based on Crinacle’s charts. They all sound excessively bright, vocals sound distant and the bass is neutered. I tested it with everything I have on hand and nothing sounds remotely usable. Male vocals sound like an Eunuch and female vocals sound like someone whispering across the street.
I downloaded the Reveal plugin and it is amazing. Unfortunately, it’s only for Audeze phones. Crinacle has got the most profiles and is great when I want to test new things.
Am I doing it wrong? Do you use the Crinacle profiles?
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The presets are not designed by Crinacle, they are just using his measurements.
For some reason Jakko, the author of AutoEQ, chose a bass-reduced version of Harman for the pre-computed profiles, and this sounds absolutely terrible on IEMs, it combines the worst of Harman (too shouty) with reduced bass so less to offset the shoutiness.
As a result, IEMs it generally kills the bass and is much too shouty and bright, and just unpleasant.
It’s better with over-ears, as Harman is better to start with over-ears although I’d still take full Harman over bass-reduced Harman. Most open-backs though it will still be boosting the bass, while for in-ears, it’s reducing.
You are better off using:
- Oratory1990’s presets
- AutoEQ.app - this is the software online, from the same author, but lets you pick the target and parameters yourself; it defaults to regular Harman, not bass-reduced, but you can pick other targets or upload your own. This also uses shelf filters for bass and treble over 10kHz which is a big improvement over the older presets using peak filters in the treble.
- AutoEQ as implemented on the EQ tab of Crinacle’s tool, or the many Squig.link sites. You can select targets or upload your own. If using AutoEQ with this, limit it to 6,000-7,000 max. Also, consider trying to do it yourself, a lot of stuff I will just make some broad adjustments rather than getting down into trying to EQ every little bit exactly.
Key is the whole issue is the pre-computed presets. There’s nothing wrong with the AutoEQ software itself, it’s great. It’s just a questionable choice of target for the precomputed presets, particularly for IEMs, few people like Harman in-ear to start, and reducing the bass on it only makes it worse.
I would not be using Harman for EQing IEMs to start, I prefer Crinacle’s IEF neutral with a bass boost. Either his new one or the old one, they are both far preferable to Harman for IEMs for me.
I’d also ask, what is it exactly you are EQing, many IEMs don’t need it and are only made worse.
I don’t use AutoEQ. The only EQ I use is Poweramp on my phone.
You can also enable AutoEQ in PowerAmp, BTW.
I’ll recommend using oratory1990 EQ presets like another user said, you can also use this Squig it has the Oratory usound target so you can autoEQ your headphones to that target if Oratory hasn’t done it himself, did this for the tripowin Mele.