u/cosmaprc

Hey folks!

For anyone using Android or iPhone smartphones with streaming apps as their preferred music listening setup, and looking to change and potentially improve the sound of their current headphones, here is a breakdown of how to achieve OS/system-level DSP and PEQ on both platforms, alongside a list of resources to grab top-tier EQ profiles.

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🤖 Android Solutions

My Preferred Choice: USB Audio Player Pro (UAPP) + System Audio Plugin

• How it works: While UAPP is primarily a high-res media player, its System Audio feature allows you to capture audio from third-party streaming apps and route it through UAPP's high-quality USB audio engine and DSP plugins (requires an external USB DAC).
• Toneboosters 10-band PEQ Plugin: A full-featured parametric equalizer with exact Q-factor, gain, and filter controls.
• Toneboosters Morphit Plugin: Highly underrated feature with its "Simulate Mode" where Morphit can emulate the frequency response of specific headphones. Per Toneboosters documentation: > "Morphit will simulate the response of a specific headphone. Choose the headphones you would like to simulate. Besides specific brands and types of headphones, the list includes generic models to simulate a generic HiFi headphone, typical ear buds, a studio reference headphone, Harman target curves, as well as dummy-head responses."

Honorable Mentions (With AutoEQ Support):

• Poweramp Equalizer
• Wavelet
• Precise Volume 2.0
• Rootless JamesDSP

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🍎 iPhone Solutions (The Hardware Route)

iOS does not natively support system-wide PEQ software due to strict sandboxing restrictions that prevent third-party apps from intercepting audio streams from other apps.

How to bypass this: You have to offload the DSP processing to hardware. Using a USB-C / Lightning Dongle DAC with onboard hardware PEQ gives you true, system-wide, zero-latency PEQ across every iPhone app (YouTube, Apple Music, Spotify, etc.).

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> EDIT (Post-Publishing Update): As of iOS 27 (September 2026), Effectdeck has officially exited beta, introducing a software-based path for system-wide PEQ and DSP directly on iPhone! Huge thanks to user Lopsided_Band_4979 for sharing this update. For more details, see their comment.

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My Preferred Hardware PEQ Solutions:

• Qudelix-5K: Features a 20-band parametric equalizer saved directly onto the DAC’s DSP chip, managed via an iOS app.
• Neutron HiFi DAC V1: Features full hardware DSP including parametric equalization profiles saved directly to the DAC.

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🎯 Where to Find EQ Profiles & Target Curves

(Note: Direct URLs are posted in the first comment below to avoid thumbnail previews and filter issues)

• Oratory1990 Presets (Reddit Wiki)
• Rtings Headphones EQ Repository
• PEQDB
• Squiglink
• Roon OPRA
• AutoEQ

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🎧 My Daily Mobile Setup

For context, my personal rotation includes the Hifiman Sundara (2020/2022 revision), Sennheiser HD560S, and AKG K371.

• On Android: When listening wired via a dongle DAC without hardware PEQ support, I run the UAPP + Toneboosters setup.
• On iPhone: I offload the EQ processing directly to my hardware DACs (Qudelix-5K or Neutron HiFi DAC V1).
• EQ Profiles: Depending on the headphone, I dial in either an Oratory1990 Harman preset or an Rtings target curve.

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What setup are you currently running for mobile PEQ? Let me know if I missed any other notable tools!

Happy listening!

I want to share a few tips I’ve picked up along the way that have helped me make the most out of my UCTS:

HiRes on iPhone : To get hires on an iphone try the LHDC One usb-c BT dongle from Tempotec. Select other device when first plugging in and raise iphone volume to max. Then go in the Moondrop app and set a touch control for volume up and one for volume down, You now have hires with upsampling to 192khz and independent earphone hardware volume control on iphone.

Not enough volume ?: Try setting the standard tuning profile and then setting all the default PEQ bands to the max +3db while using the minimum Q value 0.20. You should see the same Frequency Response shape move up the graph and so you have now increased it’s overall volume/loudness though I can’t say for sure if or how much distortion this may introduce.

Want more bass but can’t find the right profile for you ? Try this manual easy to set up PEQ:

20 hz | -12 db | Q: 0.71
30 hz | +3 db | Q: 0.71
50 hz | +3 db | Q: 0.71
60 hz | +3 db | Q: 0.71
70 hz | +3 db | Q: 0.71

That’s it, hope someone might find some of these useful.

I recently got the wave pro x and I’m having a lot of ear fun with it! 😁

I do have a couple of software requests that I think would improve it:

- Could you add some preference curves like harman, diffuse field etc and/or some official measurements to the PEQ? PEQ is a useful tool but using other people’s measurements and autoeq or other external data usually does not result in a good sounding peq profile so I’m wondering if you could bridge this gap somehow to make the internal peq even more useful ?
- Could you add a fine grained multi step independent volume slider in the app? I have had mixed results setting a preferred volume due to android/iphone having very few volume steps and I know it is possible because I have seen it in other headphones. Imo this would also be a useful feature.

Thanks

My qx13 dac always shows the same mA value no matter how I power it.

For example in desktop mode on estick shows around 233/235 and it never really goes higher even if I plug a wall socket power adapter into it, but the slider looks a lot larger than this and only about a quarter of the way , 5 lines or so out of maybe 20.

With desktop mode off it shows around 180 when powered by estick.

The line underneath shows 5.09 V with estick attached.

Does anyone know if that is normal ?

Got 2 of the jiezi dacs recently for 15 GBP each or so, to pair with my m50xbt2 wired and k371 with peq to rtings curve if needed and connected to my iphone 17 pro max or my moto androids and while it does have some frustrating quirks with not being able to always set the peq Q values and preamp 100% correctly , I am amazed at how small and powerful it is. Drives both headphones easily set to full volume at dac level and under 80% at phone level with or without eq.

I wish fiio would fix these peq bugs that are plaguing their dacs like this one or the qx13 but other than that , I think it’s an amazing device and I would recommend it as a small, cheap and yet powerful portable dac.

Edit: I’m on the latest firmware 1.5 upgraded on Android using the bin file from the downloaded zip off the fiio forum.

To date, my “Pusherman”, goes by the street name of, Moondrop, has supplied me with 3 pills. First two were almost free of charge, red and blue, no doubt to get me hooked on them, and they good, they reeeal good, but the third, this U.C.T.S. one, cost a buck or two and it’s really getting me Ultra High-Fi! Strong pills, these, but once hooked you always lookin’ for that next thing so one can only hope the lab can cook up some even stronger Pill/s for Moondrop to supply me with!

qx13 dac xmos 1.33 states “Fixed the issue where PEQ curve Q values were inconsistent.” and latest are xmos 1.36 with mcu 2.04 on which I have tried configuring rtings curve peq for my sundara headphones but even after the fix in xmos 1.33, on some bands the value can never be set correctly in the second decimal point. I don’t know if this is a regression in 1.36 from the fix in 1.33 , but the issue remains and as far as I am aware affects the qx13 and the jiezi dac.

There is an annoying bug in the Fiio Control app’s peq software where when I manually adjust peq on all 10 bands, for some of the bands/frequencies, their Q value cannot be set correctly.

I move the slider to a value and then when I lift it sets a slightly different value in the decimals, like adding or subtracting 0.01 or 0.02. And if I set it intentionally higher or lower by the amount it adds, the gui shows I’ve fallen on the right value, but after saving and checking the values in the autoeq tab, they are again slightly different.

From what I’ve seen it only affects decimal values, and likely the second decimal place rather than the first. Not sure if it’s some sort of rounding error or not but it makes it impossible to set a perfectly accurate Q value.

Would be nice if fiio fixed this as the jiezi is a very cool dongle.. small, cheap, peq and autoeq, powerful enough to drive efficient headphones and most importantly to me, it seems to be working fine on iPhone.

I have recently gotten the fiio jiezi usbc dongle and when playing with autoeq and my akg k371, I noticed an issue with autoeq-ing it to the diffuse field target.

Whenever I autoeq my akg k371 to the diffuse field -1db tilt target preset, the volume shoots up significantly. This only happens if I start from the akg k371 preset. If I start from the second k371 preset available, called akg k371 (brainwavz earpads), and I autoeq to the same target, the volume is lowered significantly, as expected.

The highest positive gain added in both cases is between 5 and 7 db so the added gain the peq is reporting does not account for the huge volume difference. The autoeq graph also looks fairly similar between the 2 so again I don’t see a gain difference reported that would explain this.

Also, if I autoeq to harman 2018 , in both cases, with the akg k371 and the k371 brainwavz measurements, the volume is lowered, as expected, and it’s very close between them and also similar in volume to the diffuse field result when starting from the brainwavz preset. So this also makes me think the issues is related to the particular combination of akg k371 measurement plus the diffuse field target.

My settings are stock and latest firmware, but I have disabled the inline mic function and set the volume steps to 120 instead of 60.

Anyone experienced similar issues or has the jiezi to try it out and see if it happens to you as well? Thanks

Edit: I’m using it on a motorola Android smartphone.

This just happened to me using a new iphone 17 pro max and audio technica m50x bt2! I have been using the lightning model on iphone 14 without issues but when I got the new iphone 17 pro max, as soon as I plugged in my usbc version of the ka11 , updated to latest firmware and which had been working flawlessly on android, luckily I had my headphones off when I hit play because the volume all went to the left earcup and it sounded maxed out…

It happens only when I first plug it in and then don’t change the iphone volume from it’s hardware buttons and only on uac 2.0. Change uac to 1.0 and i constantly hear popping noises. Touch any of the hw volume buttons on the iphone and the issue is fixed until next remove/plug in cycle.

Same iphone 17 pro max , had a similar issue with another non fiio dac and that one got permanently damaged…

You ever find a song that you wanna play over and over non stop until it's burnt into your brain and it just stays in your head for a while ? I just discovered 'I don't wanna be me' by Type O Negative, a band I don't really listen to, but this song is Rockin' ! Only replayed for about 20 times and there's still a lot of daytime left to keep it on repeat and then at night I know it's gonna play in my head over and over and over and... you get the picture 🤘

Had the Wuthering Waves U.C.T.S. OWS for only a few hours and I’m amazed at how good it sounds!

I never played the game and know nothing about it but I got it because I own 2 pills already(red and blue 😁) and I was already fairly happy with them but they get a bit shouty/unclear at high volume with community peq presets and I heard this new one sounded better so wanted to try it but honestly I didn’t know what to expect.

First tried on iphone 17 pro max AAC with some
vocal drum and bass and synthwave and I could immediately tell it was a serious improvement in sound quality. Well defined, balanced, has clear and fairly punchy bass but the mids are very well defined and clear and highs are clear but not overemphasised/sharp or too rolled off… just right. I would almost say it’s comparable in tuning or perceived sound signature to the Sennheiser hd560s post 2022 version…

Switched to Android moto g84 with LHDC lossless 44.1khz 24bit auto bit rate and listening to some oldies but goodies, Gail Ann Dorsey, Huey Lewis, Danzig, Sabbath and I’ve not tried LHDC before but it’s exceeding my expectations, coming from LDAC and even APTX Lossless… I swear, it feels like I can hear a difference in instruments details and even if it’s placebo it just sounds amazing!

Tuning is perfect as is set to standard… not even worth trying peq yet couse I feel almost like I’m listening to a combo of my akg k371 almost in the bass and definitely hd560s in mids and treble.

I’d say that I’m not easily impressed when it comes to headphones and earphones but this one has managed to impress me from the start and that is something only one other headphone has been able to do so far, the OG hd560s post 2022 version so I’d say it’s damn good sounding.

Moondrop should have skipped the pill and gone straight to this open ear hifi madness without having anything to do with whatever game this is and I think OWS would be a lot more popular right now, but I still appreciate the ‘Ultra’ HiFi quality sound Moondrop’s been able to achieve with this OWS. I would recommend it to people looking for audiophile hifi sound out of open ear wireless earphones.

Had the Wuthering Waves U.C.T.S. OWS for only a few hours and I’m amazed at how good it sounds!

I never played the game and know nothing about it but I got it because I own 2 pills already(red and blue 😁) and I was already fairly happy with them but they get a bit shouty/unclear at high volume with community peq presets and I heard this new one sounded better so wanted to try it but honestly I didn’t know what to expect.

First tried on iphone 17 pro max AAC with some
vocal drum and bass and synthwave and I could immediately tell it was a serious improvement in sound quality. Well defined, balanced, has clear and fairly punchy bass but the mids are very well defined and clear and highs are clear but not overemphasised/sharp or too rolled off… just right. I would almost say it’s comparable in tuning or perceived sound signature to the Sennheiser hd560s post 2022 version…

Switched to Android moto g84 with LHDC lossless 44.1khz 24bit auto bit rate and listening to some oldies but goodies, Gail Ann Dorsey, Huey Lewis, Danzig, Sabbath and I’ve not tried LHDC before but it’s exceeding my expectations, coming from LDAC and even APTX Lossless… I swear, it feels like I can hear a difference in instruments details and even if it’s placebo it just sounds amazing!

Tuning is perfect as is set to standard… not even worth trying peq yet couse I feel almost like I’m listening to a combo of my akg k371 almost in the bass and definitely hd560s in mids and treble.

I’d say that I’m not easily impressed when it comes to headphones and earphones but this one has managed to impress me from the start and that is something only one other headphone has been able to do so far, the OG hd560s post 2022 version so I’d say it’s damn good sounding.

Moondrop should have skipped the pill and gone straight to this open ear hifi madness without having anything to do with whatever game this is and I think OWS would be a lot more popular right now, but thanks anyway for the hifi quality sound, I appreciate it 👍.