Why don’t you hear for yourself.

Depends on what I’m doing with it.

If it’s a vocal input, I’m probably boosting the 2k-5k a little, because that’s where lots of the vocal clarity and intelligibility comes from. A small boost somewhere in that range (exactly where varies slightly from one vocalist to the next) usually keeps the audience from straining to hear. Unless it’s a true bass singer, they’re getting a high pass filter, probably around 160Hz-180Hz. Anything below that will just be mud for anyone except a bass. Lastly, most people sound a little less harsh with a small shelf cut around the 8-10k range. Not a lot, you just want to take some of the harsh squeakiness out of things. Maybe a de-esser too, but that’s a different topic.

And if it’s an instrument, I’ll probably consider cutting a little bit out of that same 2k-5k range if it’s stepping on the vocals. Too much noise in that same range will make the vocals sound muddy, because they’re getting steamrolled by the instruments.

Basically everything on the drums (except the kick, and maybe the floor tom) gets some sort of high pass filter. Especially the cymbals. I don’t need to hear kick drum in my ride cymbals. And inversely, basically everything over ~2k gets rolled off of the kick, because I don’t need to hear the cymbals sizzling in my kick mic.

A stringed instrument like a violin or cello will EQ very similarly to a singer in the same range. In terms of instrument voicing, instruments played with a bow sound the most like a human voice, so I guess it makes sense that they would EQ the same. But it also means that strings will tend to overwhelm vocals if they’re in the same range. For example, a bari-bass singer will compete with the cello for the same auditory space. So you’ll want to be careful that you don’t accidentally make both of them sound too much alike. Otherwise you’ll run into the same trap of having them both occupy the same auditory space, and they’ll make each other sound muddy.

I like bass as long as it doesn’t drown out mids and highs

I really wish Grados werent made of thoughts and prayers. Never had a pair last longer than 6mo and the most recent set I bought were a pair of sr325x’s

Whatever, as long as they’re all there in some capacity. I feel like my brain is good at equalizing within reason. I had headphones that when unplugged a bit, they probably put the capacitive mic in series with the drivers, muting a mid frequency band, effectively making it sound like someone used a shitty “vocals removing” tool.

And of course, missing bass (tiny phone speaker) or anything over 5 kHz (MW band of AM radio) doesn’t sound good either.

just give me more fucking bass

I like drum and bass so it’d have to be bass but subbass under 200Hz plays a very important supporting role.

Around 532 nm is pretty nice.

Oh, wait, did you mean audio?

1.4KHz.

There’s also the effect of psychoactive drugs. Cannabis is correlated with an affinity for heavy bass (think reggae and dub), and apparently cocaine can cause sound engineers to push the treble up, resulting in a harsh, brittle mix.