Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo Do any of you guys use a equalizer in your music?

No EQ used here, just accurate Axiom speakers, no crappy engineered CD's, and appropriate room treatments.

Randy, do you use audyssey EQ correction?

I had a 70hz hump with my Axiom M80 speakers in my listening room which really gave me a bloated sound .I moved my speakers to every possible position to no avail.I attempted to correct this problem with two quite expensive AudioContol equalizers.Again, nada.I was extremely frustrated at this point and was seriously considering to (gasp)sell my Axioms.
Then I was saved by the cavalry.I read about a DBX10/20 equalizer that uses white noise and mike to auto equalize speakers to match listening room and listening position.The problem was that DBX stopped making them in the early 80's.Being persistent by nature I purchased a used one of Ebay and have been listening in bliss since.

Since "digital" equalizers are built in to many of the Avr's and Pre-Pros today they have fallen out of favor because pretty well all of the previous models were just two channel and the poorer quality ones injected a fair amount of noise in to the audio chain.

They are still quite prevalent in stereo musical instrument applications from companies like Behringer and BBE Sound. BBE has a couple of models one of which is 32 bands per channel. The only thing you need are RCA>quarter inch adapters. I believe they are $300-400 at most and quite well built.

I can't speak for the others, but one thing that Pioneer Elites MCACC gives you is a built in 9 band EQ for each of the 7 channels.

After using the pink noise auto leveling feature on the Sansui and being incredibly impressed with the results I decided to go for something with more than 7 adjustments per channel. I have a Behringer DEQ 2496 http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/equipment/0705/behringerultracurve2496.htm digital 31 band on the way.

The difference I experienced after the EQ leveled for the room was much cleaner sound. This was especially true in the bass. It was tight and real and the boominess was gone. I also noticed a difference in acoustic guitar. It sounded nice before. Now it sounds like someone playing it in the room. I now hear fingers moving on the strings that I never noticed before. Vocals also sound smoother. Before there was slightest bit of edge at the top that is gone. All the details are still there it's just more natural sounding. I was amazed at the difference in the EQ on each channel. When I looked at the sliders after the adjustment my first thought was that I would never have set them that way manually. Almost all the adjustments were done by lowering the sliders from 0 instead of raising them.

That's because you can't raise from a null, the room is causing this effect, but you can drop the rest to be a closer match to the null evening out the sound.

I use eq to cut a 16db peak at 56Hz in my room and smoothe out a couple of other bumps: 4 cuts in total. Given how big the 56Hz cut was, I am surprised at how subtle the difference is. It is more like the bass has more presence. It is most noticable on my pipe organ disc and action movies.

I used an AudioSource One with its mike on my 2.1 channel system, and have a BSR EQ I think it's a 5000 sitting on top of my VCR in one of my closets. The AudioSource helped.