Testing frequency curve variations among software

I’ve been feeling frustrated with my mix’s sounding different after exporting from Cubase.

I always check the export in VLC player and sometimes Windows media player(WMP), and have always noticed they sound different, usually worse particularly (to my ears) in the 400Hz and lower region.

I decided I just have to test this for my sanity, and so I wanted to share the results with you here. And I have a couple of questions,

  1. Should I care?
  2. Do you care?
  3. Are you aware of this?
  4. If you are aware of this, what do you do to counteract it?
  5. If these are known curves wouldn’t it be great to have a list of options at the stereo mix that could enable listening through these various curves, that everyone is going to listen to music through, including youtube, spotify, apple etc?

Of course to make these tests fair any audio enhancements in VLC WMP are not engaged and all files types (bit depth etc) are matching.

======================================================================

I ran three tests, first was with a 4 minute song
Green = Cubase
Orange = VLC
Blue = Windows Media player(WMP)
Solid colour in front is average shaded is max

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1yB08NQS_6afxWlJ0sfXKco3pCaC-Qf9E?usp=sharing

At first glance they seem quite similar but the more you look the more differences you start to see between VLC/WMP to cubase. And yet VLC-WMP are almost identical.

======================================================================

The 2nd test was white noise.
Green = Cubase
Orange = VLC
Blue = Windows Media player(WMP)
Purple = Groove Music
Solid colour in front is average shaded is max

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1yX6-6GXOSRJJg1nEhG29rFrQTAmko8rv?usp=sharing

This is where the difference becomes obvious.
Cubase is beautifully flat, however VLC and WMP are seriously… just ugly, Groove music is a slight improvement but still far from flat.

======================================================================

The 3rd test is a sine sweep
Green = Cubase
Orange = VLC
Blue = Windows Media player(WMP)
Purple = Groove Music
Solid colour in front is average shaded is max

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1cbh-AJ09wSQfN88MrurdKvsl_FaGYi1i?usp=sharing

Again similar results

======================================================================

What are your Span settings?
Why is your white noise no straight line?

Cubase is close to linear response. Do you think this is the problem?
What kind of audio interface are you using?