[South_Korean]

didnt kno where to put this. my EQ settings can sound good for some songs and bad for some. what does your EQ setting look like?

 

[perdomot]

I was wondering the same thing because the EQ presets I downloaded for Foobar don't make much of a difference and I really am not sure what a good setting for general music(pop, rock) looks like.

 

[South_Korean]

yea, when ever i customize, the bass distorts, trebles too high and sharp. grrrr.

 

[Kram Sacul]

Turned off.

 

[blessingx]

It completely depends on the headphones (and to a lesser extent the source). Even genre sometimes.

Not much in common with HD650s and A900s for instance.

Only consistent EQ I use is the iPods acoustic settting:
31Hz 5, 63Hz 4.9, 125Hz 3.95, 250Hz 1.05, 500Hz 2.15, 1KHz 1.75, 2KHz 3.5, 4KHz 4.09, 8KHz 3.55, 16KHz 2.15

BTW, I aways mention looking at the EQ35 manual on this page. Gives a good description of the frequencies.

 

[MagusG]

EQ is blasphemy. If your gear is good, you shouldn't really need EQ, unless you just cant live without ghetto bass or something.
-MAg

 

[crimsonadam]

All of the anti-EQ sentiment (aside from being incredibly unhelpful to the current thread) assumes that the source material is well mixed/mastered. If you're an audiophile and are listening to your collector's bootleg of some live Miles Davis recorded in some dive club with a crappy mic, then a little EQ is nice to clean things up. Not every album has the benefit of being recorded at Real World Studios.

 

[sgrossklass]

My EQ normally looks either like attachment #1 (an attempt of compensating the HD590 to flat frequency response) or - if I feel like a bit more bass would be in order

(not infrequently) - like attachment #2.

BTW, if your EQ distorts things, then it's because the developer foolishly allowed positive gain in spite of the highest possible level always being 0dBFS in the digital domain. If anything ends up above that after EQ, it'll simply get clipped and thus distorted.

 

[South_Korean]

wow i dont understand this stuff.

 

[sgrossklass]

Quote:

Originally Posted by South_Korean wow i dont understand this stuff.

It might have been helpful to quote the part you don't understand. I guess it was the paragraph with why EQs may distort things? Well, then imagine a nice sine wave at 0dBFS, i.e. reaching exactly from -32767 to +32768 in case of a 16 bit signal (FS = full scale). (If you can't, Audacity can create one for you to look at.) Then increase the amplitude (like increasing the gain in the frequency range containing this would). What happens? Obviously the sine no longer fits into the -32767...+32768 range, but since values outside this are not allowed, these will be clipped (i.e. everything beyond the boundaries gets cut off). Now CDs in the olden days (like in 20 years ago) were typically mastered with plenty of headroom, things rarely reached the -6dB mark. Today you may find ones with -3dB average and 0dB max thanks to the ubiquitous compressors (dreadfully mastered CDs even tend to contain plenty clipped samples), giving you only very little headroom for EQing. That's why the guy programming the Shibatch Super EQ seen on my screenshots implemented a 0 to -96 dB range for the sliders only, while otherwise it's not uncommon to see +12 to -12 dB. The latter was perfectly fine for analog EQs, but for digital ones it obviously isn't a good choice.

BTW: I'm /still/ looking for a good ("digital", i.e. bar-type) VU-Meter plugin for Winamp, one that gives fairly precise readings and extends below -20dB. (Like, say, Audacity's.) It can be a DSP plugin, no prob (as long as it accepts 24 bit audio). The BJR Labs analog thingy is quite nice, but the same in LED style with a wider range and calibrated in dB does not seem to exist. It's unbelievable that such a standard type of VU meter should not be implemented.

 

[tofu]

i use the foobar equalizer

everything is at -6db aside from the 55hz band (0db)

i'm using klipsch la scala speakers. they seem to roll off around that area.

edit: i'm going to purchase an spl meter sometime and do things the correct way. for now i have to judge by what my ears tell me.

 

[PSmith08]

As a rule, mine is zeroed at 0 dB on Foobar and iTunes, but the -6 dB except 0 dB at 55 Hz in Foobar sounds pretty good on my SR-225s. Very relaxed and not really fatiguing at all.

I don't care for EQ much, but it can be helpful. Before I quit EQ'ing, I always tried to match the settings to my gear. If my then-headphones had recessed mids, I would try to bring the EQ up to balance it out. It worked alright. However, I can only recommend trial-and-error or zeroing it all.

 

[tofu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by PSmith08 As a rule, mine is zeroed at 0 dB on Foobar and iTunes, but the -6 dB except 0 dB at 55 Hz in Foobar sounds pretty good on my SR-225s. Very relaxed and not really fatiguing at all. I don't care for EQ much, but it can be helpful. Before I quit EQ'ing, I always tried to match the settings to my gear. If my then-headphones had recessed mids, I would try to bring the EQ up to balance it out. It worked alright. However, I can only recommend trial-and-error or zeroing it all.

yes. the hf runs a bit hot, especially in my room (bad acoustics). attenuating that a bit really helps.

 

[PSmith08]

I find a lot of modern non-classical stuff runs hot, and cutting everything back a bit helps the music come through a lot better.

 

[450]

I boost the bass a little bit on my computer (seriously...integrated has no bass (I'm saving for Juli@

))