Headphones distortion tone vs speaker tone

Paulzx

Paulzx

Inspired
Need a bit of advice, might be yet another rabbit hole, but help me to visualize this issue..

Don't normally use my headphones, but had to for a few evenings recently. Probably a mistake because now I'm listening to a completely different version of my tones. However, the headphones, although sounding slightly artificial, do sound really good on my high gain. It's lively, dynamic, tons of distortion, and importantly here, the bass frequencies are really good in that it's clear and has clarity, it's not boomy.. because it's headphones I assume and this form of monitoring presumably doesn't produce the same amount of low end that speakers do?

My issue now is that the same tones going back through my HS7 FRFR speakers, is a lot darker. I don't get the same aggressive bite on the distortion and the low end doesn't have the same clarity. It's just duller on the bass strings, maybe muddier etc but there's a lot more low end coming out the speakers than the headphones.

I'm sure all you high gain players have seen this and know what I mean. Is there any way of getting the speaker tone to sound more like the headphone tone? I don't think there is, unless someone has discovered a way to do that?

I've used all the standard methods to cut the speaker low end, cab cuts, 10 band eq drop the lowest frequency to zero etc, and that does improve it but it doesnt really produce the result I'm looking for. If you cut too much it just starts sounding horrible anyway. I think it's more to do with the way the bass is produced via those two different monitoring options.

Part of the culprit is the room. I'm sure in a big open room the bass would be less of an issue but in my smaller guitar room with the speakers near to the walls, it might be exaggerated whereas headphones obviously are not influenced by the room.

If anyone has tried to tackle this with any success, I would be interested to know!
 
Either your phones aren’t flat or the speakers aren’t flat or both. See if you can find a correction curve for your phones on this site. I have a curve setup for my phones using a GEQ block set to scene ignore. It’s not perfect but I can dial in tones on phones, turn off the curve and run through speakers and it’s pretty close.

https://github.com/jaakkopasanen/autoeq
 
skolacki said:
Either your phones aren’t flat or the speakers aren’t flat or both. See if you can find a correction curve for your phones on this site. I have a curve setup for my phones using a GEQ block set to scene ignore. It’s not perfect but I can dial in tones on phones, turn off the curve and run through speakers and it’s pretty close.

https://github.com/jaakkopasanen/autoeq
Click to expand...
So are you saying the headphone tone should be the same or close to, the speaker tone? If so, I have a big problem because they're nothing alike. Headphones are fizzier more aggressive and clearer low end. I'm using cheap headphones, oneodio, as don't use them very often.

But I'm not really trying g to correct the headphones tone, I'm trying to make the speakers sound more like the headphones. The speakers are yamaha hs7 FRFR
 
The room you’re playing in has resonances. Most of those resonances are in the low end of the audio spectrum. And they affect what you hear.

With headphones, the “room” is only about one cubic inch — the space inside your headphones’ earpieces. That room has no low-end resonances to affect the sound. You can make the response more similar — up to a point — with EQ, but you can’t make them completely equal.
 
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Paulzx said:
So are you saying the headphone tone should be the same or close to, the speaker tone? If so, I have a big problem because they're nothing alike. Headphones are fizzier more aggressive and clearer low end. I'm using cheap headphones, oneodio, as don't use them very often.

But I'm not really trying g to correct the headphones tone, I'm trying to make the speakers sound more like the headphones. The speakers are yamaha hs7 FRFR
Click to expand...

As pointed out the phones will never sound the same as speakers. My issue is I play and adjust mostly at night through phones so I want my presets to translate to speakers as much as possible. The headphone curve gets me closer than I would be without the curve. From there it’s minor adjustments to make it sound good on my speakers. There are some Oneodio curves on there, maybe knowing the phone response would help in making the speakers sound more like the phones. Here’s a better link. A GEQ or PEQ for your speakers might be better since the output EQ on the FM3 doesn’t have presets or channels.

https://github.com/jaakkopasanen/AutoEq/blob/master/results/INDEX.md
 
Thanks to everyone who supplied links, I will look at all of them.

I've abandoned the idea of trying to get closer to the headphone tone, because I've kind of solved the low end issue by putting the bass on the room controls to -4db which is as low as it goes. I was reluctant to do it before because I always felt music sounded better without the cut, but it has helped clear up that low end darkness from the fm3.

Using the room controls and resetting my amp blocks, has resulted in some really pleasing results and I'm in love with the fm3 again.
I do think in small rooms, the low end can smother the tone but I tend to favour messing as little as possible with the default amp tones and making the changes on the speakers themselves. That has worked nicely for me anyway
 
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