Posted on 08/11/2025 2:51:24 AM PDT by Paul R.
One thing leads to another!
I was trying to find some inexpensive Bluetooth headphones for my daughter, as she wants some for her b'day, but nothing pricey while she's away @ college. She's very sensitive to pressure on her ears, so they need to be completely over the ear headphones. She's also a very keen listener (she got that from me) and picky about sound quality. In some ways she's pickier than I, a lifelong audiophile, am.* This really limits choices!
For example, I'd stumbled onto a set a couple years ago that sound quite good -- when they are not generating weird "chirpy" artifacts, or just simply turning themselves off without warning. They are also more of an "on ear" type, and making connections is sometimes erratic.
Two or three other pairs just have sound quality that stinks.
Then, a few days ago, I found an over-the-ear Bluetooth stereo headphone that doesn't seem to have any awful problems except the top end is slowly rolled off. Hooked direct to my stereo, I can eq. the top octaves up a bit, and the phones sound fairly good. Then the frequency balance is acceptable, the midrange does not sound hollow, and distortion seems acceptable. The fit is ok, says my daughter, and these seem very reliable when it comes to connecting and staying that way when desired.
However, my daughter will be using these quite a bit with her laptop. To do the EQ job, I found a small* program called "Equalizer APO" (Version 1.4.2).
The idea is to NOT get into the complexities of, say, Audacity. KISS.
Well, Equalizer APO is probably a bit more complex than absolutely necessary for THIS job, but, it does have some nice features: One such is an independent volume (gain) control. That is, said gain control is independent of the gain control in the vid you are watching, such as a You Tube video. It is also independent of the Windows speaker volume control. This is quite useful, as sometimes the volume one can get out of the video (You Tube) volume control plus the Widows volume control is quite weak, and Bluetooth headphones usually seem to have weak gain, leading to low sound levels. That's a problem if you want to rock out, and I'm not talking about blowing one's eardrums out. Just provide a couple volts or so at the line level outputs.
So far, so good, right?
*Note: Daughter-san's hearing is surely better than mine, as I'm 70 y/o. OTOH, I have much the greater experience in knowing what to listen for and how to both quantify and qualify it. If something sounds poor, I usually have a pretty good idea what's causing it. Daughter-san, not so much, and she sometimes struggles to give a description that could lead to such analysis. For example, she described one headphone's sound as "crunchy". But, distortion at the levels she was listening at was fairly low.
Great tag line, BTW!
“ See above post. And, WAY out of the price range...”
The only reason I got them was because I took part in an auditory product comparison project and they were a gift. I used Dragon software it and trained the program how to understand the different Indian accents of the offshoring project I was working on.
Now, there's an understatement! 100% agreed on that one. And I'm 70 and think that despite my best efforts, I only learned about 10% of what I really wish I could have.
Granted that that applies to everything.
Agreed also on that last, except it would depend on who was doing the remastering (or re-recording, which may be what you really mean), and their purpose. Most remasters of rock, pop, country, etc., actually got worse in many respects. Have you ever checked out the Dynamic Range Database at dr.loudness-war.info?
Of course, dynamic range isn't "everything". Not by a long shot. But, I've had fairly good luck with buying CD's that rate highly on that website. Very often they are overseas releases.
You really were “damn lucky”!
OK. It seems like you know exactly what you want based on your knowledge and requirements, so why ask here? You know the price point and performance you are looking for, what to buy, and where to buy, so just do it, then tell us what you decided and why, and if it meets your expectations.
All true! I remember when I was a kid a friend’s dad had a “classic Hi Fi set”. It was LOUD, it had four speakers, and each output had it’s own “tone control”. But it was MONO! It wasn’t even stereo output. lol
But it was made for when 78s and 45s were all recorded in mono. Pretty hard to do much with it digitally so there is sometimes a limit to what can be fixed.
As for the headphones, I’m curious as to whether anyone has actually found such a combination of attributes. It likely exists, but one might have to go though hundreds of products to find it.
As for the EQ programs, I an interested in what others may have found or suggest. For example, it turns out Equalizer-APO actually DOES have parametric filter capability, if a bit clunky. But it took a while and me sort of stumbling on to it, to find it. I posted sort of hoping someone had a quicker answer.
And... For the most part it’s been a fun discussion.
Ah, great memories! My Grandpa had a working wire recorder my brother and I inherited. But, God help me, my brother ended up with it, he is deceased, and I don’t know what became of it.
Hopefully he donated it to a museum or something...
Then there was the 1st time I heard Uriah Heep “Salisbury” on the new headphones (my first good ones - Koss Pro4-AA, IIRC) I’d bought a few hours prior. Wow!
It turns out Equalizer-APO actually DOES have parametric filter capability, if a bit clunky. But it took a while and me sort of stumbling on to it, to discover that.
“go through”
Yep, Uriah Heep, YES, and few others came out right when the recording technology was changing by leaps and bounds! Blow your head away stuff!
I actually have an old RCA crank player and a whole collection of Edison and RCA Victor platters. Belonged to my Grandmother.
Pretty nostalgic to fire it up once in awhile and actually appreciate all those scratches... ;)
I hope one of my kids will take it and appreciate it!
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