Adjusting VMK25 for studio use

How do you turn Valco VMK25 headphones into pretty much the best studio headphones in the world?

I, Valco's product designer, mastering engineer, and general audio guru Jasse “Jazmanaut” Kesti, will explain in this blog post how you can EQ Valco VMK25 headphones in wired mode into top-class studio headphones, with noise cancelling too.

No headphone is perfect. That's simply because one driver is supposed to produce a perfect full-range response without crossovers. That's very difficult and veeeery expensive. 

At my mastering studio I've got one of the best studio headphones in the world, with a price tag of over €4000, and even those benefit from a bit of EQ. 

That's why, for example, Valco's VMK25 headphones beat a lot of “studio standards”, because I've carefully and lovingly tuned their sound with internal DSP processing to be extremely hi-fi, meaning truthful to the original recording. Of course, even the best tuning won't help if the headphones themselves aren't technically up to scratch. Luckily, ours have top-notch composite drivers. 

Unfortunately Bluetooth inevitably brings a bit of latency with it, and in critical music production or video editing that's a nasty bottleneck. When monitoring while playing, the latency messes with the groove, and in video work timing lip sync is impossible.

But luckily the VMK 25s work completely latency-free with a cable, and the noise cancelling works then too, by the way. So mobile mixing on a laptop is a real party when you can get the surrounding noise out of the way. Sadly, going wired bypasses the DSP chip and its tonal correction, but no worries. I've got a fix for that, and it doesn't even require expensive third-party headphone correction software.

Here's how it goes: In your digital work environment, or in audio capture software that supports plugins, (on Mac I personally prefer Rogue Amoeba's SoundSource or Audio Hijack) grab the most neutral full parametric!!! digital equalizer you can find and punch in these values:

Valco VMK 25 ANC ON - Equalizer settings:

1. +10 dB  3900 Hz   Q 2.00
2. -3 dB     1800 Hz    Q 1.00
3. +2.96 dB 900 Hz     Q 1.00
4. -3 dB      58 Hz        Q 2.00

And because we're also making boosting moves here, I recommend you also lower the equalizer output a bit so the signal doesn't distort. -5dB is at least safe.

And just like that, you've got one of the most evenly reproducing pairs of studio headphones in the world, with noise cancelling on top of it all!

Check the measurement results in the image below and be amazed! (Don't worry about the readings above 10Khz. My meter isn't reliable at frequencies that high.)

Now I can already hear some hi-fi enthusiast or home studio wanker whining that no way can bluetooth headphones designed for entertainment use be as good studio headphones as passive headphones specifically designed for the job! 

Well to that I say, I'm personally the absolute last word in hi-fi wankery, and I listen to music in my mastering studio with such ridiculous breadth and intensity that it makes no sense whatsoever. And I designed these headphones primarily for myself.

I use this exact setup, with these settings, for my mobile work and the results tend to be damn good. So: you're welcome!

tldr: And if you couldn't be bothered to read, the same thing is also available in video form here: VMK25 equalization (youtube.com)