Why do people argue over who uses a EQ and who doesn't?

Good advice. I stopped using an EQ years ago for a few reasons. I'm not suggesting the premise behind my reasoning is correct, but it guided my decision. I decided that unless I was going to use a sound meter and analyze the room accoustics in my music room I could be messing with the sound rather than fixing it. Knowing that I had little chance of either improving the characteristics of the room, or of finding a better sound than the engineers, I just figured in my hands an EQ was really not equipment I knew how to use.

 

I became such a devotee of leaving the tone controls flat that I bought a nice little Creek integrated amp that doesn't even have tone controls! Leap of faith, but for me it has worked at really well. I grew up with using EQs and having seperates. Just before getting the Creek I was running a really well respected set of older NAD seperates with a really exceptional preamp the 1400 and a 2600A power-amp if I remember correctly. Anyway, despite having these decent components when I auditioned the Creek I just had to keep it.

 

I hope nobody interprets my post as saying nobody should use an EQ, totally a personal choice and I'm sure in the hands of those who know, an EQ can improve sq or solve sq issues.

 

Not always. I don't do any negative EQ-ing, but I experience no clipping. When I boost, I do it judiciously though.....and ReplayGain helps too.

 

Equalization takes careful listening and analysis of the sound. It took me a few months of adjustments to settle on the settings I use now. If you aren't willing to put that kind of effort in, it makes sense to just live with what you've got. Besides, as long as you don't have any huge spikes, your ear will eventually become accustomed to whatever frequency response your room gives you.

But if you are willing to expend the effort to properly equalize, your efforts will be richly rewarded.

By the way, to add one more little known fact to the OP's comments... The principle of frequency masking can cause a boosted frequency in the midrange to deaden the treble an octave above. I had a vivid demonstration of this by a sound mixer friend. He potted up a midrange frequency a little bit and the high end disappeared. I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't hear it with my own ears.

I had always though that the EQ was a way to compensate for any distortions made from the source through to your output (e.g. headphones)

 

That is, I thought it was a way to compensate for a loss in quality from your player to your headset (thereby achieving the original sound as recorded in the studio)

 

I'm not sure if I'm wrong (though I probably am), but I remember a quote in head-fi where it said to 'respect  your music, without EQ, the way the producers recorded it' <-- it's a creed that i've recently adopted :)

No, that's incorrect. EQ is used to correct for frequency imbalances caused by the combination of speakers and room acoustics. Studios all calibrate their speakers to flat response using equalization, so if you don't do the same with yours, you aren't hearing what the artists and engineers intended.

It's faintly ironic how the aversion to even tone controls has arisen as they are "unnecessary things in the signal path that might corrupt the sound", especially considering all the other stuff that people willingly shove in their signal path that is proven to "corrupt" the sound.

Ah thanks for clearing that up!

But is that information saying that EQ controls for headphones are unneeded? 

Headphones generally have a much flatter frequency response and aren't subject to the affect of room acoustics. If you find headphones that you like the sound of, you probably don't need to EQ unless the track you are listening to is imbalanced. Portable headphones are often weak in the bass and benefit from a small EQ boost however.

 

aaaaaaaah ic ic!

 

Thanks a bunch for that! Learn something new on head fi everyday :)

EQing out weak bass often result in abject failure, a lot of transducers have a limited capacity to produce bass, as the bass level raises, so does distortion, to epic levels like 20-30% even.
A small increase could work though.