Focal Elear EQ Circuit Mod

Here is the result of a bass shelving circuit. This is the best I can do with spare parts I have lying around and no proper workbench (house is a huge mess right now). I could have done better with 18 parts, but I wanted to keep the circuit super simple - not letting the passive circuit suck up musicality. Ever wonder why some speakers sound super accurate but have no life? It's because they have 58 part crossovers with super inefficient drivers.

The tough part with the Elear is the huge impedance bump around 45-50Hz. A notch circuit to even out that impedance bump would require three more parts, and even then the values would take some trial and error to optimize. Still, not so midbassy anymore. About a 3.5db cut at 100Hz, and a 2db cut at 50Hz. The upper bass and lower mids have a slight depression, which isn't horrible as it lends the Elear a bit more clarity; and that depression isn't horrible to the extent that would kill body and foundation of instruments and voices. The upper mid suckout is still there, but not as bad as it used to be because everything is relative. The two part circuit didn't destroy the super dynamic nature of the Elear - Tyll put it as "almost too dynamic" or something that like that. At least I can listen to the headphone on my all analog rig! I kind of don't want to send it early to NY now!

Grey = no circuit in place
Yellow = with EQ circuit


Simple two component circuit to shelve the bass down. I initially tried 4uF, but that rolled off everything way too early with too much of dip in the upper bass / lower mids. 150 ohms took too much away, so backed off to 75 ohms.


Amateur hour testing after scrounging around in my old parts bin.


Here is the FR again in regular scale (same Y scale as FR measurements typically shown). See, it actually looks fairly decent.

 

Not too honky. It's there, but easy to acclimate. Lower mid depression is slight, and no sudden 2kHz cliff like Audeze LCD. I mean, I could think of much worse FR aberrations than a slight 1kHz bump. Not what I would consider totally neutral, but lots of fun now!

 

Shipping this out along with the Elear loaner. Really giving the Elear a serious listen now on my primary rig. Holy shit, this is the most dynamic headphone ever. This is the most dynamic thing I've ever heard with only Bruce Edgar's custom horn speakers being equal to it in this regard.

 

Nonsense. Same thing happens with most digital EQ, and a lot more EQ phase shit happens during the recording and audio engineering process. Also, it's extremely debatable that people can even hear the phase shift (which by the way is extremely minor in this case - something that you already know). I don't see folks throwing away their UERMs or Andromedas (or multi-way speakers) because of supposed deleterious effects of phase shift.

 

LOL, I'm not sure the Synergistic HOT is a real circuit. Based on its teardown, it looks more like some piece of audiophoolisticstry made from boogers, snot, and poop, I mean materials from Krypton. (Not saying the Synergistic HOT doesn't do anything, but I don't think its minor effects are ideal in all situations. One really needs to find the right synergy with these kinds of products.)

I'm not sure the upper mids and treble are really affected that much by the EQ network. It could be minor interplay between the circuit and the driver. It's also possible that the tiny differences are caused minor positioning differences on the measurement rig - although I've gotten very good at repeating results. The upper mids, despite the same dip, are definitely more evident as a result of lowering the bass. Overall, I would say the Elear with the mods are still bassy, particularly in low bass, but not V-shaped. Previously, the Elear was bass (low, mid, upper) galore, infecting everything along the way a la Audeze LCD type sound (the veiled units).

I do find the Elear (with the circuit) very slightly fatiguing during longer listening sessions. This is not from the dynamics (BTW, the dynamics don't only to bass impact of slam, but the mids are also extremely dynamic), but rather from the uneven treble. Again, bringing the bass down also brings everything else back up. The little treble bumps which previously were buried under that rumble and now more evident.

I haven't tried on ZDS because its in the shop for diagnostics and we don't have another one built. But yes, this sounds fantastic and engaging despite its imperfections from my main 45 amp and the Vali 2 (high gain). The super long cable came in handy. It let me sit on the couch while listening to records on my main rig.

I doubled up 1/2W resistors, 150 ohms, mainly to get the 75 ohms I needed. Doing the numbers in my head, 1W should be fine. The Elear only needs a few mW.

I don't think there's a car I owned which I did not modify in some way. In this case, I wanted to do something different. We've focused a lot of physical mods. Tyll's talked a lot about using EQ. This time around, I wanted to do electrical mods. There are lots of ways to tackle the issues and there are headphones out there with EQ networks.

 

FYI, comparison of the Elear with EQ network to the TH-X00. Probably the most similar FR I could think of, with the exception that the Elear has that narrow suckout region. People have been comparing this to the HD650, LCD series, their mom's boobs, etc. With the EQ circuit, it does measurement (and also sound) the closest to the TH-X00. (This is something I realized last night). Elear is more like a super TH-X00 (at least with the circuit).

Grey = Massdrop / Fostex TH-X00 Ebony
Yellow = Focal Elear with EQ circuit
Note that the Y-scale has been compressed a bit to better show differences

 

Well, TH-X00 had bass focused in the lowest octaves. HD650 focuses that more around 100Hz and is back to relative baseline around 20Hz. Elear measurements looks like it takes the HD650's mid-bass hump and just continues on strong to the lowest octaves, so it would make sense that the measurements look more like the TH-X00 after the EQ circuit.

Assuming these are sufficiently easy to open and poke around in, I'll try stuffing shit in the Elear.

 

Higher Q circuits will mess things up more. A cap and resistor in parallel not so much. I don't think Thiel speakers' approach with their first order crossovers to maintain time coherence in BS, but there are downsides to this. There is a tradeoff to everything in audio.