And tweaking a closed headphone to be pretty close to an anechoic chamber is not a difficult thing to do.

They probably gouged you harder with a defective unit. HD25 has a bad reputation for big boomy bass that intrudes into the midrange. I personally don't mind it on-the-go. I reduce midbass if I want to use it at home with certain genres. It is the bassiest Sennheiser after the Momentum On-Ear 1st gen.

Sennheiser takes advantage of this by using the same drivers in their whole HD5x5, HD5x8, and HD5x9 lines. Each line uses the same deiver elements, the differences in sound boil down entirely to the housing. HD595, 598, and 599 get the best housings and achieve the best sound. Many would mod the next model below to get the 595/598/599 sound for less money. I've gotten my HD558 sounding better than the three top models.

Folks who believe it's all or almost all about FR are fairly odd to me.

Try convincing music studios of the mentality. They'll laugh at you. Sound is more than just FR, otherwise post effects beyond equalizers would be far more rare. It definitely is of great importance, but the whole story has much more going on, or music production would be much simpler.

For example, closed headphones often lack acoustic dampening materials on the inside. In studio monitors, you'll often find polyester fiberfill inside their cabinets to kill excess resonances, which muddy the sound and can give speakers a "boxed-in" sound. Closed headphones tend to "sound closed" for their lack of fiberfill inside, or sound like they apply a "hall reverb" to everything. Occasionally, some may actually have fiberglass for dampening. Equalizing the headphone can never mitigate this issue as it has nothing to do with frequency response in the first place. The Beyerdynamic DT660 (discontinued) was famous for being a closed headphone appropriate for classical music. It had dense cotton padding inside to kill excess resonances, in addition to a balanced FR. It "sounded open" rather than "closed" as a result, so it wouldn't mask and muddy music with a "hall reverb" over everything. A comparable, more modern headphone (but also discontinued now) is the Pioneer MHR5. Another closed headphone with dampening to purge internal excess resonances is the HRM7, a superb studio can.

Cleaner and finer articulation of sound is also related to other aspects of headphone design; you can't make it happen with EQ, but it can help subtly at best. I'm guessing this is affected by the voice coil and chemical treatment of the diaphragm. I have no idea. The articulation of sound is fuzzier in cheap headphones versus my HD650 and K701, for example.

Clearer, tighter bass out of a headphone is a bit of a tough job to pull off, but the kinds of modifications that can contribute would probably blow your mind. Impossible to replicate with only equalizers.

The differences in resolution between headphones are smaller when using budget DACs, too. Not having your ears clogged with wax also helps, you'd be surprised how many folks don't even notice.

Everyone's ears also have varying frequency responses and whatever else.

Spot on, I say.

That's how I see it, too.

>Overwhelmingly male and neckbeard. I fit right in.

🤣🤣🤣