Out of the box, they sound absolutely terrible. The bass boost is way over done, the Harman target is far too shouty in the 2.5 to 4 KHz range, and worst of all, the ENTIRE treble region is an absolute MESS! I have no idea what anyone who praises these things is smoking. I guess that just shows how bad the market is.
After messing around with it several times over the course of a few days, these are my current settings in Poweramp Equalizer. It's still far from ideal, as I've been unable to achieve a flattish response (the 6 to 9 KHz region is especially difficult!). This isn't even remotely close to anything perfect. However, it's MUCH better than it was! Definitely a good starting point with these Buds2 Pros. Turning the EQ on and off is a night and day difference. On is listenable, and off is trash. Oh, and I've already tried other EQ solutions and settings to no avail. This is the only decent solution I've found so far. And rather than making two or more separate presets for ANC, passive, ambient, etc., I'm simply trying to make one profile work well enough with all of them for the time being.
I realize that people's ear canals are different and others may not hear what I hear. So, please use frequency sweeps and pink noise to make adjustments. Try these settings, tell me what you think, and if you can improve upon this, please do so and share. If anyone can point me to something similar to what I have here that's already been perfected somehow, please share that with me. Thank you!
Poweramp Equalizer settings:
Low Pass Gain: -8.0 Q: 0.40 Freq: 100
Peaking Band Gain: -6.0 Q: 1.20 Freq: 3.00K
Peaking Band Gain: 1.2 Q: 8.00 Freq: 5.40K
Peaking Band Gain: -12.0 Q: 6.00 Freq: 7.20K
Peaking Band Gain: 10.0 Q: 5.00 Freq: 8.5K
Peaking Band Gain: 3.0 Q: 4.00 Freq: 9.6K
Peaking Band Gain: -15.0 Q: 5.00 Freq: 11.0K
Nah, most things are adjustable, including the number and frequencies of the graphic EQ bands. And there's parametric EQ.
My main complaints about Poweramp Equalizer are that it doesn't work with many of the apps I use, and the band pass parametric function doesn't allow you to specify a start and stop frequency with adjustable Q on both sides, so the band pass is really just a less narrow version of the peaking band function.