A Geek Goes Flying

As I am, alas, bereft of a balanced DAC/Amp for my Mac Pro battlestation , I have my faithful Philips SHP9600 (at $67 a steal ) set plugged into the headphone jack of my Loxjie A30 . Borrowing u/oratory1990’s 10-band (“octave”) EQ settings for the SHP9500 , and approximating the values using the Apple Music EQ. Close enough. Apple Music Equalizer The EQ settings are apparently stored in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Music.eq.plist and are stored as what looks like a blob: com.apple.Music.eq.plist in a text editor //TODO: Figure out how to edit those stored settings and tweak to be integer-perfect (rather than visually approximated), with prefsetter or similar.

The only time I’ve gotten the FiiO BTR5-2021 to work with a headset mic, it’s been the Sennheiser PC38X. I tried the mic that came with the Philips SPH9600RM, nothing. I just tried a V-Moda BoomPro (which has its own issues, like, the impedance I measure on the left and right channels is way higher than it should be, and if you don’t get the inline volume control just right, the left channel is significantly louder than the right), same thing. Reached out to V-Moda support. Really frustrated so far... Update: I picked up. another PC38X (now branded EPOS, after the Sennheiser spin-off) on sale for $129 (from $169), and picked up the Boom Mic for Drop + THX Panda Headphones ($9 instead of a purported list price of $49). Both work perfectly with the BTR5, and the boom mic fits the SPH9600 perfectly. Huzzah. Drop Boom Mic  I wish I knew why the BTR5 seems so finicky when it comes to which microphones it will work with. Also, the BTR3 is a less expensive module that will do what the...

The current gold standard seems to be the Harman Curve , and enthusiasts have gone to considerable effort to measure different headphones and create equalization curves to try to bring their “cans” more in line with that ideal . One huge repository of presets is found in the AutoEQ project . For instance, the Sennheiser PC38X headset I use at the office has multiple enthusiast-provided EQ settings: Sennheiser PC38X (velour earpads) [ oratory1990 ] (though oratory1990 disclaims : “The ‘Github-page’ ... is created and maintained by u/jaakkopasanen. It’s his thing, has very little to do with me, actually.”) Sennheiser PC38X [ oratory1990 ] Sennheiser PC38X [ Rtings ] On a Mac, the excellent application SoundSource not only allows a system-wide EQ, but it incorporates the AutoEQ database; if your headphones are in the database, a ready-to-go set of EQ parameters is a couple of clicks away. I haven’t been able to find where SoundSource stores these presets, nor does it appear there’s an...