I thoroughly enjoyed the very informative and educational Opra seminar at CanJam NYC this past Sunday. The simplest way to sum up all the information that was presented by both Rob Darling, Director of Roon Partnerships, and acoustic engineer Konstantin Davy (oratory1990) is to say that whatever preconceived notions one may have about Opra, well these are probably at the least incomplete and at worst just plain wrong.
For example if one were to believe that the open source nature of the Opra database means that it somehow comprised by worthless or poorly produced entries, we learned that lots of care and attention is being paid to ensure the quality of the headphone EQ curves available through Opra. Mr. Davy is truly a master in the field of headphone measurement and equalization and listening to his presentation I came to understand how properly using headphone EQ can lead to greater enjoyment of my headphones and thus, the music. While headphone EQ can’t turn a low cost headphone into a giant killer, it can be used to maximize the performance of any headphone. I came away feeling that headphone EQ is akin to room treatment and correction in loudspeaker based audio.
For me the most important take a ways were that Opra is an option that one can try at no cost and that Opra just presents a starting point, since by using Muse’s Parametric EQ one can easily tweak any given headphone EQ to better suit one’s tastes.
I want to thank Rob Darling for his and Roon’s strong commitment to the headphone community.
Hopefully a link to the video of the seminar will be posted soon.
