Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions I will never listen without an EQ again

I'm working on room treatment now. And I have to say, at this point I'd take an EQ if it all ends near the same place. My theater is the first room you see when you walk in the house, so some of the basement or dedicated cave options are not as workable for me. Making sound treatment look good, while keeping it cheap is a serious challenge. Now that EQ can be done in the digital domain (thus helping the noise problem mentioned) I would love to get my hands on a truly workable EQ. The key to that is the availability of free software to check your progress. With no means to check other than ear, you never stop fiddling. But with REV, etc., you can SEE the results. The market is in dire need of EQ, and you are seeing it with the new rigs.

Hooking up a separate EQ means that your audio signal is now travelling through each one of those little sliders. Unless you are spending large amounts of money on a pro eq, I don't see how this can improve the sound, it will add noise.

As BrenR states, unless you know what you are doing, and you should be a professionaly trainined audio engineer to answer yes to this question, an external EQ is a toy you will never stop playing with. I know, I had one in the 80's. It is also really easy to damage speakers with these things. I know, I did that too in the 80's.

I try to keep the audio signal as pure as I can, no EQ for me, thanks.

paul

I agree, room treatments are a much better place to spend money on.

pn

Step away from the analog sliders. I'm talking about processing in the digital domain, as is done in the EQ functions of the new AVRs. I don't advocate going back to 1980 and grabbing some noise sliders. We all want a pure signal, but the whole discussion assumes something needs to be changed in your listening environment. Some room issues can't be changed (for any of a number of reasons). At that point, I'm just saying modern EQ functions in HT are behind the times, but catching up.

That fits with the current model.

As an example, I have a huge peak in my room at 52 Hz. Since it is so low, I cannot effectively treat the room. It also happens that the peak shows up through most of the listening area. The peak is caused by room modes and is addative (a summing of waves). Those three things together make it an ideal candidate for equalization.

I also have a null at 71Hz. It also shows up in most of the listening area. However, since it is caused by cancellation reflections, EQing is not going to do a thing for it as any changes in the signal will equally affect the direct sound and the cancelling reflextion(s).

A third example: Suppose you have a peak at one of your seating positions only. You can EQ it, but it is going to affect all your other seating positions as well, so you may actually do more harm than good.

This is probably where EQ algorithms are just recently catching up. Whith more measureing positions and better algorithms, your system can probably make better decisions on what to EQ and what to leave alone.

I think the main reason that EQ is frowned on higher in the frequency band is that the peaks and nulls become more complicated by reflections. It becomes much easier and more effective to treat via absorbtion and diffusion. Unfortunately its not so inconspicuous.

In the 70s EQ I think was considered a one size fits all solution because we did not have a solid understanding of the causes of frequency changes in room. Now that the causes are better understood, EQ becomes but one tool in the chest.

I'm reminded of articles by Bob Hodas - a pro room tuner - who, I think, said he always uses and EQ after computer simulation and then tunes by ear to finalize the sound. So even the pros use EQs to take care of the major issues. It is just a matter of cost and knowledge. The former is long overdue. Here is a link to one of his helpful articles I found. Good short read and the other articles are linked. Hodas And here is the room mode calc he mentions, it has moved. Modes

Personally on the HT, I leave everything flat and it sounds good. In the garage, I boost the treble to it's highest point because the speakers are in a different area, and the bass travels better of course. My Edirol monitors on the work computer have a slight bass bump and a fair treble bump for my own listening, and I push back into the flat detents for anything "commercial." My car speakers are set with a slight treble bump and the smallest bass nudge up.

Professionally, if I'm provided a graphic EQ, I do the camel (mids high) or seal (mids low) hump to start depending on what it is, then tweak from there. And on a "Perkins EQ" for live... I just start with what makes sense and then tweak during sound check.

I'm just glad I don't have anything more than 4 bands to worry about except in WinAmp.

Bren R.

I never thought humping camels or seals would make that much of a difference... Heck, I'm game.

Speaking of digital equalization, I'd like to try Inguz which is designed to be used with a Squeezebox.

Audyssey! Audyssey! Audyssey!

I will never again purchase a receiver with it. It's EQ on steroids (for idiots).