[bigshot]

I've never tried to EQ headphones, but it took me at least four months to fine tune the balance and eq on each channel of my 5:1 setup.

 

[gnarlsagan]

I've never tried to EQ headphones, but it took me at least four months to fine tune the balance and eq on each channel of my 5:1 setup.

Headphones are usually much easier to eq imo. There are fewer acoustic variables and they don't change nearly as much from session to session like with speakers (when moving from the "sweet spot"). I use tones to eq my ER4S, and it only took a hour or two to dial it in. Of course it helps having an iem that is already pretty flat to begin with. I can't even imagine how I'd get to calibrating my speakers.

I have a pair of octet matrix speakers that are already pretty flat, but I'd have to figure out how they respond to my room. Do you ever use tones bigshot?

 

[bigshot]

My sound mixer friend is going to come by sometime with his signal processor to help me fine tune, but I don't know if it will help. The problem is, I only have a five band parametric on each channel. That's fine for setting overall corrections, but I can't punch in to every bump and fix it. I really need a more sophisticated equalizer for that, and for 5:1 with multiple inputs, that gets complicated.

I've tuned by ear to the point where it's clear and natural. I still tweak by a dB or so here or there occasionally, but overall, I'm happy with it now.

 

[Joe Bloggs]

5 band parametric EQ, is that part of your surround amp or what? Parametric EQ seems rare in consumer stuff...

 

[bigshot]

In my Yamaha AV amp. Super klunky interface and I have to drop the projection screen to adjust it, but it works.

 

[Headzone]

5 band eq sounds equal to useless to me. 

 

[Joe Bloggs]

5 band eq sounds equal to useless to me. 

Do you know what a parametric EQ is?

 

[bigshot]

It's fine for overall room correction curves, but not enough to go through pushing down a lot of narrow spikes.

 

[proton007]

  5 band eq sounds equal to useless to me. 

 
It probably is useless for you.

 

[proton007]

  It's fine for overall room correction curves, but not enough to go through pushing down a lot of narrow spikes.

 
I doubt there should be such a need with a good system.

 

[bigshot]

I doubt there should be such a need with a good system.

All systems will have little bumps and dips. A spike of as little as 1dB in the wrong place can cause masking issues.

Once you get the overall curve right, finessing the details can continue to open up the transparency of the sound. You do that by rolling a tone sweep back and forth an octave at a time, listening for variations in the volume. You do tiny corrections to make the sweep sound smooth. A couple of passes through the range like this will increase clarity. This is the next step for my system, but I'm going to need to solve the problem of not having enough bands to work with first.

Any system, fancy or humble, benefits from really accurate equalization. The more accurate, the better the sound.

 

[Headzone]

Do you know what a parametric EQ is?

No, I have no idea. Seriously what a serious question is that?

 

[proton007]

No, I have no idea. Seriously what a serious question is that?

Thanks for your contribution!

 

[Joe Bloggs]

No, I have no idea. Seriously what a serious question is that?

Because a 5 band parametric EQ is a heckuva lot more useful than a 5 band graphic. Sure I still prefer the ability to dial up an arbitrarynu mber of bands of parametric EQon my computer but on the phone I used to prefer the 4 band parametric on Neutron to the 10 band graphic on Poweramp when those were the only two choices I had. Rockbox is the best techie portable player around and it only had 7 bands until recently. So 5 bands are far from useless

 

[discouheguo]

Right,People who aren't balancing their response properly aren't hearing what their system is really capable of.