I’ve read that the headroom function isn’t supposed to affect the sound quality in any way.
My experience is sadly the opposite.
I use a parametric EQ in Roon to take down a room node at 63Hz about -9dB and to lift 37Hz & 115Hz about 3dB.
Roon indicates clipping quite often if I don’t activate the headroom function (gain -3dB).
Activating the headroom function makes the magic disappear when I play music.
The music seems compressed and it does not sound the same at all.
I compensate with the volume control, but the sound is not comparable in terms of quality when I use the headroom function.
Can anyone explain why I experience this quality loss?
(I have a high end Burmester/T+A-setup playing excellent except from this clipping problem)
I use Parametric EQ all the time to help compensate for my hearing loss. I use several high shelf filters to lift the DB in the frequency range I have hearing Loss (typical guy in my 60,s who went to lots of rock concerts!)
I have the headroom adjusted to about -5 all the time to compensate for the clipping that would otherwise be heard because of my EQ profile, and I can’t say I notice any sound degradation.
Having said that, the sound I get out of my system now because of this capability is so superior to without I probably would happily live with any degradation
That should not be the case, so likely something’s going wrong on your end.
I’m at a loss as to what’s causing that, unfortunately.
To state the obvious:
Setting filters with positive gain causes music recorded at full scale in that boosted frequency range to hard clip, of course.
To remedy that, and the need for headroom adjustment, you could either design filters with negative gain, or just pull down your filter curve (EDIT) with (EDIT) the mouse in the graph, until the maximum does not exceed 0dB - et voilà!
A picture says it better than clumsy words, so see the following:
Yes, I’m playing the same song, not altering anything else than headroom on/off and compensating headroom gain with the volume control on my preamp. Thanks for trying too help!
That’s a pretty wierd eq setting you have there. Two peaks of 12dB with a notch in between of no less then -21dB! is pretty sure to introduce some pretty large phaseshift. Either there is something very seriously wrong with your loudspekers and there room position or you are pretty way of in your method of trying to fix things.
