Don't worry, it's not that bad. Equalization generally means "correcting the frequency response" through the use of an equalizer, basically a set of fancy tone controls.
Equalizers come in two major flavours -- "graphic" and "parametric". In the same way that normal tone controls have two "bands" -- bass and treble -- a graphic equalizer might have 8 to 16 bands, each covering a narrow frequency range from perhaps 30 Hz up to 15 KHz. They normally use sliders to set the levels, so the position of the knobs gives you a crude graph of what the resulting frequency response will be (assuming a flat input) -- hence the name graphic equalizer.
A parametric equalizer typically has fewer bands but you can adjust the frequency of each band (whereas the frequency range for each band on a graphic equalizer is fixed). If, for example, you need to do some pretty complicated adjustments in a narrow frequency range (say, for example, you had a screen in front of your speaker and needed to compensate for the reflections
) you could set all the channels close together and get the same result as having a 50-band equalizer but only using the bands in the narrow range.
The main problem with equalization is that it takes some time to get the settings right and never gives you results as good as fixing the real problem. For example, you will see threads here about using equalizers to correct subwoofer response when the real problem is room placement or lack of room treatements. EQ helps but in the case of a subwoofer you can only get the sound right in one place in the room...
The second problem with EQ-ing for screen effects was mentioned earlier -- speakers normally are designed to play at a decent volume with the normal distribution of energy at different frequencies. If you use an EQ to take the amount of treble way up and then turn the volume up, you can fry a tweeter at much lower volumes than before.
I don't feel like this is helping
