Winamp Equalizer?
 

I use Winamp to listen to music on my PC. When I use headphones, I always have the feeling that the sound could somehow be better, versus how music sounds through speakers. The headphones themselves are high quality, Razer Carcharias, with a circumaural design. I've tried using the Winamp Equalizer set to "headphones", but it seems to change some sounds in a good way, in that I can hear them more clearly, while it distorts others in a bad way. I thought I'd ask what others think who've used such a setup to listen to music.

If you're going to use an equalizer on your media player, it should be set very minimally, and not with a preset. I'm assuming that most of the songs you're listening to are studio recorded and mastered, so they're already EQ'd and a lot of them are probably boosted to the limit. When you add additional processing and boost the frequencies, you're piling it on and your headphones probably can't handle it, not to mention your audio card.

If your headphones themselves are muddy sounding, instead of boosting the high frequencies, try reducing the lower ones near 250 hz. Overall, just experiment. Pick a particular song that sounds like it needs help and mess with the EQ settings by REDUCING the frequencies that are in abundance. This will allow the weaker frequencies to be more apparent, while ensuring that you'll never overlimit any songs. Doing this will compensate for any frequency prejudice your headphones have.

I'll give your suggestions a go. Thanks for the help.