EQBase

Headphone EQ

Headphone EQ settings for Mac

Last updated: August 6, 2026

Every pair of headphones has a measured frequency response, and almost none of them are flat. A correction curve is the set of filters that pulls a specific model toward a neutral target. The pages below carry the published AutoEQ correction for each model: the curve, the exact parametric filters, and a one-click preset for EQBase.

EQBase ships corrections for 8,666 headphone models in the app itself, so if yours is not listed here yet, search for it in the Headphones pane after installing. These pages are the ones written out in full.

Wireless and consumer

Studio and audiophile

In-ear monitors

How to read a correction curve

Each page shows the correction as a curve, as a table of parametric filters, and as a ten-band version. They are three views of the same thing. The curve is the fastest to read: everything above the centre line is being boosted, everything below it is being cut, and the height tells you by how much. A dip at 3 kHz means the headphone measured loud there and the correction is pulling it back down.

The filter table is the same information in the form an equalizer accepts: a type, a centre frequency, a gain and a Q, which is how wide the filter reaches either side of its centre. A high Q is a narrow, surgical move; a low Q is a broad tonal one. The preamp line at the top is not a tone control at all, it is headroom: boosting frequencies in a signal that already peaks near full scale would clip it, so the whole curve is pulled down first.

Why two measurements of one headphone disagree

Most models here carry several published measurements, and they rarely match exactly. That is not sloppiness. A headphone measured on a different coupler, with a different seal, on a different unit off the production line, genuinely measures differently, and the gap is usually widest above about 3 kHz where the shape of the ear canal starts to dominate. Each page names the spread on its own data rather than hiding it behind an average, because averaging other people's measurements together would produce a curve nobody actually measured.

The practical answer is to start with the measurement whose conditions look most like yours, listen for a few days, and adjust. A correction is a very good starting point, not a verdict.

How to use these

macOS has no system-wide equalizer, so a correction entered in the Music app affects Music and nothing else. EQBase processes all system audio instead, which means one correction covers every app. Pick your model, download the preset, and double-click it. The free tier includes headphone correction with no time limit.

The presets carry the ten-band version of each correction, which is what the free tier applies, so what you hear matches the ten-band table on the page. If you would rather not download anything, every page lists its filters as copy-paste text in AutoEQ's own format, which most desktop parametric equalizers import on any platform.

Download EQBase free

Credits

Correction data from the AutoEQ project by Jaakko Pasanen, MIT licensed, with each measurement credited to the person or lab that made it.