EQing the HE400SE
I bought the HE400SE with the intention of EQing it. I settled on Oratory's Harman 2018 preset but I reduced the low shelf at 105 Hz from 5.5 dB to 4 dB. This is closer the bass of the Harman 2013 target, giving me a thump but with less mud and a lower power requirement.
When I actually tried it, it was too shouty. This issue was mostly solved by reducing the filter at 1.9 kHz from 7 dB to 3 dB. However, on some tracks (such as *Slipping Through My Fingers* by ABBA), the vocals and some of the mids now sounded noticeably recessed and the track felt less lively. Increasing the filter from 3 dB to 5 dB made a meaningful difference but the shout was starting to creep back in with other tracks. I didn't want to adjust that band every time I listen to an album so I needed to find a solution.
I suspected the issue was raising that region affected the one above it, so I needed to lower the 2.95 kHz filter in tandem with the adjustment to the to the 1.9 kHz filter. Specifically, what I did is manually adjust Oratory's preset to hit the mids of the IEF Neutral target, which looked smoother than Harman in the ear gain region.
I know that, on paper, this solution isn't the most ideal. Targets and measurements made on rigs probably do not match up with my own HRTF and specific preferences. I tried to manual EQ it with pink noise and tone generation but finding information about this method was confusing and doing it was unpleasant and time consuming, all for a result that sounded like shit anyway (because I probably did it wrong). It felt like work and this is supposed to be a hobby.
My method sounds good to my ears, so it's good enough for me. The difference between it and my initial adjustment is subtle on a lot of tracks, but when I returned to the ABBA song, the vocals are now more forward than before and everything felt right again.
Attached are the graphs of the presets against IEF Neutral with a 4 dB bass boost. The green graph is Oratory's original EQ, blue is my initial adjustment, and red is my final adjustment.