[Scott Dorsey]

wrote:
Ordered some Etymotic MC5's. They're well made, and the fit
is perfect. I pull my ear out and get a deep comfy fit
with the larger 3-flange tips. Great isolation. The problem
is that they exhibit a horrible peak between around 1-4kHz.
I can cut those bands most of the *way* down and they sound
normal again. I do comparisons to my floor speakers, and
three other sets of on-ear/over-ear headphones and they all
agree with each other. Back to the Etymotic's, and there it
is - I hear mostly those mid-high bands. They make music
sound terrible without overboard EQ.

The problem is likely you didn't change out the whole system. Part of the
system is the earphone, the other part is your ears.

Two things happen. First of all, the low frequency resonance of the
earphone is a function of the compliance of the load that it's driving,
and that load is your ear canal. The volume of the ear canal affects that
resonance. You can reduce the degree to which that's a problem only at the
risk of reducing the efficiency of the phones.

Secondly, you're used to listening to things in free space through your
earlobes. That affects the frequency response on and off-axis (and the
off-axis change is how we get height localization). Your brain is used
to the response as processed by the loves. Once you put signal into the ear,
bypassing the pinnae, the response of the whole system is different.

Wondering whether I chose poorly or whether this is normal
for this type of earphone.

It might just not be the right earphone for you. However, before giving
up completely on it, try driving it with a very low-Z amplifier and see
if it sounds better. A lot of those headphones also do very poorly with
cheap headphone amplifiers that can't sink much current into the load.

It would sure be nice if we could try phones before buying them, just because
they are so dependent on our personal anatomy.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."