Sincere thanks for the thoughtful and helpful response!

Yes, as I wrote, "I’ve kept the AEs as a reminder to never, ever buy in-ear monitors again."

Hmmm … I ended up with the opposite impression. I’d ordered Moondrop Katos and 7hz Timeless AEs intending to keep both. The Katos were so bad I returned them immediately and I’ve kept the AEs as a reminder to never, ever buy in-ear monitors again.

I mentioned Dirac precisely to make it clear that there is a situation in which equalization is necessary … because the designers of your amp and speakers cannot anticipate where your walls are in relation to the speakers. Equalizing for headphones is corrupting the source to compensate for junk equipment, which is usually the headphones. And listening from a PC is evidence that one is decidedly not an audiophile … notice the absence of any mention of PC peripherals in material targeted at actual audiophiles like Stereophile and Absolute Sound. The only place a PC fits in an audiophile’s world is as a Roon endpoint from which to feed actually good audio equipment … none of which has any facility for EQing headphones because there is no market for that among people spending real money on audio equipment … including fine headphones.

Room correction is equalization for a case where it’s actually required, because sound does bounce off walls and the designer of the amp and speakers can’t be expected to know where your walls are in relation to the speakers.

Sorry I wasn’t clear. This should help clear up your confusion: if you imagine that you need to EQ your headphones, something between the source and your ears is junk, and it’s probably the headphones.

Then explain why I’m mistaken instead of just asserting that I am.

When your response is an insult but not a substantive correction, you might be the one who isn’t thinking clearly.

The original poster was worrying that EQ’ing his headphones might damage them. The answer is, “don’t bother: you’re not supposed to EQ headphones”

Exactly what I said it is: EQ for the interaction between speakers and walls, which is real.

Take a look at a massively expensive Stereophile-recommend amplifier, or pre-amp/power amp combo. It will have a headphone jack & zero EQ knobs, with an option for Dirac room correction, because sound does bounce off walls. So, you can spend a car’s worth amount of money on a dream audio system and have nothing in that system for EQing your headphones. EQ is viable when the source is a PC, Mac or Android phone, or an iOS device playing downloaded files … and that’s it. That should tell u everything u need to know about EQ: don’t bother.