best study (tutorial learning) headphones

I should have put this in the advice forum.

 

You're really fussing way too much over the measurements. Have they even arrived yet so you can evaluate for yourself, or are you going purely by graphs and numbers?

And you're can't say stuff like price doesn't matter when clearly everything that you're shuffling towards is in the <$200 category.

You keep mentioning passive noise isolation but now you're choosing open headphones, so we're getting contradictory messages from you.

Are you willing to try iems? That will give you tons of passive isolation and won't heat up your ears.

If you've done any reading on the other threads around this place, you'd know the Senn HD600/650 are generally very well regarded, and that the HD58x is yet another iteration of those headphones. There are measurements here if you search through the appropriate subforum.

 

I have the 280 PRO for that. I'm not replacing it. I'd like to know what's better.

Yes. I'm looking for something breathable right now.

I used the PulseEffects equalizer. I used oratory1990 settings on the SHP9500 (but only for 1,250 Hz and above). I assumed the numbers are French. Luckily I recieved the SHP9500 and not SHP9500S.

I'll get the HD 58x, determine how breathable and clear sounding it is, and sell it or the SHP9500.

 

The HD280 is already very good for passive isolation. You can better it by opening up the cups and putting some heavy felt or other materials into it. Light fluffy stuff for tuning, heavy stuff for snuffing out sound. People also get into specialized arrangements of materials, shaping them into doughnuts or squares, with hole patterns, etc, but that's an entire rabbit hole.

If you really want to dive into more, some constrained layer damping like dynamat also works very well and you want to apply that to the inside surface of the cup (technically you could do outside but it looks ugly). If you spot any vent holes on the cup, you can seal those up with some tape although that will likely reduce bass but we don't really care about that here. If you really really want to damp out more you can also line the cup walls with a thin layer of plasticine (plumber's putty is a cheap substitute that you can get from the hardware store). This will make the headphones heavier, but we don't care if you're going for maximum passive isolation. If you can find aftermarket gel pads (typically it will be a gel layer over top of memory foam), these tend to offer better isolation as well.

 

Any ideas for loudness equalization settings? I installed AutoEq to make equalizer settings. I used "pyenv local" to set the folder's Python version. pyenv would only install with freeCodeCamp instructions.

So far I used AutoEq for the HD 280 PRO with these settings.

Code:

python autoeq.py --input_dir="measurements/innerfidelity/data/onear/Sennheiser HD 280 Pro" --output_dir="my_results/HD280Pro" --compensation="measurements/innerfidelity/resources/innerfidelity_harman_over-ear_2018_wo_bass.csv" --equalize --show_plot --parametric_eq

frequency response

There are more args under "Command Line Arguments" here.

I don't know if the bass should be flat or reduced more. The headphone data is from Innerfidelity. I don't know if the target has to be from them. Targets from them have either flat or Harman shaped bass. I chose a flat bass one. Its like Optimum Hifi by oratory1990.

 

If you are willing to do this deep dive into EQ and convolution filters, then really you should also start experimenting directly with your own ears instead of blindly applying other people's graphs and numbers.

I don't have the time to read through the link you posted.

As a starting point, anyone's data is fine, Innerfidelity should be good. Use those to do a baseline adjustment of your headphone (this is just a generalized curve, it won't be perfect for everyone). From there, apply a second filter/EQ/whatever on top that you tweak to suit your particular ear and requirements (which I assume is still learning from tutorials at 3.5x speed). There's no set methodology other than trial and error as you develop your own. Maybe the simplest is to make a moderate hump or dip and sweep the frequency across the range and see how you feel about it.