What is the best iTunes Equalizer settings for Bose QC15 Headphones?

I'm a bit of an audio geek, so I can tell you that YES whatever sounds right is what you want, but NO those settings are not very good. The general setting is "OK" but the values are extremely out of range. Take that setting and reduce the distance between the sliders and you're getting there. Look for example at how the other iTunes presets are made, the don't go that far from the horizontal middle, and for good reason.

When you play a recorded song, the song has usually been put through an extensive process of mixing, EQ and mastering before you got it, in order to get the best balance of all frequencies, to ensure the best sound accross a wide range of speakers and headphones, and to ensure the most important details and instruments are audible when played together.

All speakers are different, and that's where the idea of an EQ for the listener is introduced. The idea is to tweak the overall sound from your music player (iTunes) to compensate for the strengths and weaknesses of your speakers. Which to be honest, is a bit much to expect form a typical music consumer.

The iTunes EQ has a set of horizontal lines representing 3dB (volume steps) each. In my experience you should not boost or cut more than 6 db at the most - and that's a lot! I stay at around 0-4dB. The extreme options are there to cut noise from bad recordings or emphasize a detail you can't hear very well.

So here's basic EQ lesson:

The EQ represents the range frequencies in sound that the human ear can hear. Actually they go beyond that - most people cannot hear the far left and right frequencies. The range of frequencis start at "deep" or "low" frequencies at the left (bass) passing through the Midrange (midtones) in the center, to the (treble) at the right.

Your speaker has a limit to how many frequencies it can play at once before it starts to lose detail - meaning one sound will drown out in order to make room for another. So don't over-EQ your sound or it'll ruin it.

How to tweak an EQ:

1) Start by playing a well-produced piece of modern music - it'll most likely be well mixed and employ a wide range of frequencies. I'm into heavy metal but for this I'd probably go with some average pop music, because metal is so noisy it gets hard to pick out the details.

2) Set you EQ to FLAT - zero all accross the board. It'll sound pretty flat and boring unless your speakers are very "flavoured" or "colored" already.

Sliding any of the EQ bar up, will increase or boost the volume of the frequency the bar represents. You can't really add frequencies that aren't there already - you're just adding noise in that freqeuncy and that will "fill up" the available frequencies on your speaker, causing that "drowned out" effect I was talking about.

Instead, slide them down from the center, and you're cutting the volume instead. This is better because it'll leave more "room" for the other frequencies. You can always use the Preamp slider at the end if you're worried about loudness (but I wouldn't).

3) Start by tweaking the 500 and 1K slider. This represents the middle of your ears' range of hearing and the most noticable change. It should most likely go downwards - this will take the "canned" sound out of your music and that'll be apparent quickly. Go ahead and slide that down as far as -6dB.

4) Now work outwards from the center forming a "v" shape, where the top tips of the V end at the 64 slider and the 8k slider. The very far left and right sliders (32 and 16K) should dip down again to about 0bB. Trust me, these are almost non-important in most music. You can tweak thos last if you feel it's needed.

5) now it's time to start playing round with the V shape. Go ahead and try sliding the sliders a little up or down between 125-250 and 1K to 4K. You may find that some need to move a lot out of the average "V" shape before the sound is good. This is what my iTunes EQ settings ended up looking like for my Motörheadphones "Motorizer" headphones:

Hope it helps.

Ive tried the same until I found this I hope it helps. I think it needs some tweaking but its as best as i've come so far.

cheers

Idk about Bose, but I have a pair of Beats by Dr. Dre ones and this is the setting I find works best.

Whatever sounds good to you.

I have found, for my favorite genres (Jazz, Hip Hop, Rock, Soundtracks) that Latin provides the greatest auditory bang for my buck with the QC15's. Limnos is correct in that you have to choose your pref, but for built-in settings, try Latin!

Great settings, gremblin!

Gremblin, thanks a lot. Very nice, indeed.

That is a wonderful setting for my Bose headphones. Sounds much much better than any of the default settings.

The Hefster had a pretty good post, but still not quite correct. You are right that some frequencies are not heard by human ear, however the frequencies you really cannot hear is 25 hz and below, however if that was the only frequency being played... I actually still can hear it, it's a low rumble sound. from 32hz to around 80hz is generally where your sub-bass exists. Your "Thump" or "Kick" generally exists around 100hz. The muddy sound you occasionally hear is around the 200hz to 250hz, but you don't want to cut completely because some of your fullness comes from near here as well. From 500hz to 4k is where A LOT of your instruments, vocals, and things reside such as: Guitar, Pianos, Synthesizers, Acoustic Guitars, Snares, Toms, Some parts of Bass guitar actually do exist in this band such as the natural sliding of the fingers across the strings, the initial plunk or slap sound to give it funk etc, same goes for your kick, even though the thump and bass portions exist in the lower frequency range, there still generally are some existences in the high frequencies that give those instruments the necessary "Punch" which you'll find somewhere around in between 1k and 4k. The rest of the frequency band on up is your brightness or "airy" sound that gives the track that little bit of sparkle.

Now on to the EQ itself. Understand that in the world of "Creative EQ" there really is no "Right" or "Wrong" setting. Regardless what people think, this is solely up to you.

NOW, if your talking about an actual theoretical "Right" or "Wrong", then this EQ should be theoretically set up to compensate for the room you are listening to your music in. This means running pink noise through your speakers and using a calibrated measuring microphone to capture your room's eq response, and EQ'ing to try and obtain a flat sound that is balanced. This is what recording engineers, sound producers, and extreme audio enthusiasts do to listen to the "Original Studio Sound" without the coloring from your room.

Sounds expensive? It's not really, that is if you don't care about 100% accuracy. To get 100% accuracy you would need acoustic panels in place, as well as some Bass traps, but you can obtain a measurement microphone for as little as $20 and then download "REW" otherwise known as: Room Equalizer Wizard. The Room Equalizer wizard will generally utilize your microphone from the place where you listen to your music and play a frequency sweep from the low inaudible portions to the upper audible portions and measure your room's response, giving you the frequencies that your room has a problem with. Generally if it's a smaller room you'll have problems with bass, and if your in a very large room, you'll struggle with treble, and probably reverberation as well, but it all depends on the shape and size of your room. After running such a program you can generally generate a list of all the adjustments you should make to your EQ based on the frequency, the "Q" band, and the gain setting. The standard iTunes EQ will not get you 100% accurate, but you can come pretty close to a flat sound based on cutting and boosting the appropriate frequencies. Take into consideration as well that the top and bottom of your iTunes EQ is 12dB and -12dB. With the amount of lines in between this means each line is approximately 3dB of adjustment either way... An easy way to do this set-up is to purchase the Dayton Audio imm-6, purchase the app "AudioTool" (about $5), then download the text based calibration file from Dayton, rename the file to a .cal file, and load the file into "AudioTool". Then of course from the input of your computer you want to hook into the "Monitor" jack from the IMM-6 which at that point should be plugged into your phone. The sweep noise generated from "REW" will come out of your speakers, into the IMM-6, and back into "REW" through your input, giving REW the response of your room.

Understand that every microphone, every speaker, every headphone, every device has a different response to frequencies, and this is why theoretically there is no such thing as a "One Setting Fits-All". This is why we have EQualizers, so that you can adjust to accomodate your listening environment, not to copy the settings from someone elses' listening environment. What is correct for them is not what is correct for you... it might still sound good, but it's not correct for you because you don't have the exact same furniture, exact same shaped room, exact same type of carpet, etc. When placement of furniture changes, and placement of your speakers change, or anything changes, EQ settings need changed. This is why my computer sits in the same place, all the time and doesn't move... and my furniture as well.

Good luck, and hope I helped you guys out.

I find the QC15 pretty well calibrated out of the box.

I don't have a mac....but on my desktop and laptop PC system I use the following settings for the QC15 (with noise cancellation on):

I listen to a mix of music, but skewed towards electronic, pop, and indie.

These settings have been calibrated to improve voice clarity and bass ambiance, but also to reduce harsher/distracting trebles deliberately for long periods of listening (I listen for hours while working).

YMMV....

Great Setting - I would never have figured the step type dB settings like this.

This setting works perfectly for a SONY SRS-BTX500 speaker.

Thanks.

THIS IS MY ****!