Equalization - capabilities and limitations
May 6, 2017 at 7:00 PM Post #46 of 49
EQ is tone controls- too much treble, too much bass- that sort of thing. If you want to alter the phase to make a recording less dry, you need a DSP that adds reverb.

I know what EQ is. In fact, Roon offers parametric EQ in their DSP, which is much more sophisticated than just bumping up bass or treble. It's what recording engineers use to eliminate peaks, add body, create spaciousness, etc. Below is a screenshot.

So you're saying instead of EQ I should add reverb to sweeten the sound? How does reverb 'sweeten' sound?

Screen Shot 2017-05-07 at 6.50.29 AM.png
 
May 6, 2017 at 10:23 PM Post #47 of 49
I think the problem is the words you're using to describe what you're trying to correct. EQ generally refers to specific bands of sound (low bass, mid bass, mids, upper mids, and treble). These bands are specified by Hz. You should determine where the bumps and dips are in your response curve and if your frequency response is imbalanced, just pull back the frequencies that are too loud. This is called EQing subtractively.

"Dry" refers to a lack of atmosphere around the sound- no reverberation ringing off after the sound ends. It's a timing thing. Soundstage is generally affected by phase, which is similar, but on a smaller scale. If your problem is the envelope around the sound and not frequencies, then a DSP is the solution.
 
May 6, 2017 at 10:52 PM Post #48 of 49
Thanks for the education. I'll work it out. And improve my description of sound.
 
May 9, 2017 at 6:56 AM Post #49 of 49
... would it be wise for me to drop the EQ output gain down to -10dB to better match my headphones frequency response -10dB baseline?

It is possible that you could ignore either of the two points previously and not incur any clipping distortion, depending on the architecture/programming of your EQ plugin and DAC. It's also possible that lowering the output of the EQ by 10dB would avoid any clipping, if for example it's a floating point EQ and provided you're boosting by less than 10dB. The points mentioned in the previous post will avoid clipping regardless of the EQ's (or anything else downstream such as another plugin's and your DAC's) architecture/programming. Always avoiding clipping in your plugin/s is the primary concern. How to get from there to the level your transducer (headphones/speakers) needs is best achieved by boosting or attenuating the analogue signal (from your DAC), IE. With your amp.

G
 

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