Equalise to get a flat frequency (WHY NOT?) - Page 7

 

I already tried to explain my subjective ideal frequency balance isn't the objectively measurable flatness. :P Therefore this method is useless for me.

Edited by RPGWiZaRD - 11/30/12 at 4:48pm

 

It's the *lack* of a sound signature that sets it apart from colored cans.

 

The point is to be able to start from a baseline, then adjust to taste with tone controls. Imagine you turned on your stereo and it picked a random volume to start playing at. Wouldn't you want it to begin from a neutral point- not too loud, not too soft- to start with? Then you could adjust from there on a case by case basis. If you don't have any baseline at all, you aren't even in the ballpark to start. It takes MUCH longer to set your balance.

 

I'm betting two bits you've never calibrated your system to flat so you don't even know what flat really sounds like.

i may try the sine sweep technique later, just to see how it goes.
and im not trying to archive a perfectly flat system, more of a fun sounding one with all the elements working in harmony

after some trying: either my laptop mics are not good, these sine waves are too painful, or im not good at using sine waves to tune. i'll stick to tuning manually by ear for the time being

Edited by streetdragon - 11/30/12 at 9:56pm

 

That's an oxymoron, anything that can be audibly distinguished has a sound signature by definition.

Wrong, perfectly flat cans would be indistinguishable one from another, unless they differ in resonances or reverberation.

but then again isn't 2 identically coloured cans indestinguishable from each other as well?

 

Resonances or reverberation would prevent them from being perfectly flat.

And let's not forget distortion or transient response.

Flat response is the absence of coloration, or I suppose equal amount of all colors, depending on how you look at it. In any case, it doesn't have a sound signature of its own. It is the sound that the engineers created. That is going to vary from recording to recording. That's different than a big bass bump, where the bass sound is pronounced no matter what you play, or a treble cut where everything sounds warm and muffled.

One of the unique aspects of a flat response is how it is capable of a wide variety of sounds. Sometimes it holds back a frequency and lets others dominate, other times it lets go and that frequency comes to the fore. Colored response can't do that.

Everyone keeps talking about artifacts of equalization. With a good digital equalizer and proper application that just isn't an issue. The improvement, which is clearly audible, far outweighs the artifacting, which isn't audible at all.
Edited by bigshot - 12/2/12 at 9:51am

 

So would any two headphones that have the same sound signatures...

 

A colored response can do that too. Even if a freq. response has massive amount of bass, a song that has no bass in it won't sound "bassy", because a response can only emphasize what is given to it.

Likewise, a song with a slight amount of bass will still sound less bassy than one with tons of bass even if you have boosted bass frequency.

 

As I said before, given a large number of songs, there is some average sound that any freq. response has. A flat response has a particular sound (in this regards), as does a colored headphone.

If you look through rose colored glasses, roses will still look rosey. This argument is silly. I guess folks don't understand the concept of calibration to a zero line.

Edited by bigshot - 12/2/12 at 2:47pm

Not necessarily. Reverberation is neither good nor bad usually, unless there's a ton of decay, then it can cause the sound to be muddy.

Resonances can be accompanied by dips, which when corrected, will exacerbate the resonance. On the other hand, they can be completely unrelated to frequency response peaks and dips.