[Lad27]

I'll have to disagree here. The issue being discussed was whether or not setting the Eq sliders all to +6 actually raises the all frequencies to +6 or introduces spikes at +6 centered around the Eq-ed frequencies. If properly implemented, a pre-gain slider would guarantee that you could start with all frequencies at normal, non-Eq gain and then use subtractive Eq to avoid clipping. And if someone really enjoys boosting instead of cutting, they could do that, as well. It's just a thought and is implemented in a lot of Eq's.

^^ This.
Or even better make it a parametric EQ, so user can choose for at will how to manipulate the signal. It's not rocket science and rockbox people done it for donkeys years. Ability to save several customs presets would be an icing on the cake.
 
At the moment we don't know what the Q parameter (or bandwidth) is unless someone from FiiO chimes in and clarify it for us. I would assume that Q is wide enough to make it almost flat with all sliders up at +6dB. I don't believe it is completely flat.
 
I've played with EQ last night and indeed I could not hear audible difference between custom EQ with all sliders up and EQ OFF. My ears are half a century old and that's what I hear (or better to say don't hear), so I'm all good.
 
Therefore I stand corrected and take my rant comment about incorrect implementation of EQ in X5 back. It honestly didn't cross my mind to slide all sliders up and hear what happens, never had to do such a thing with any equalizer I've ever laid may hands on.
 
What caught me unaware is this default 6dB attenuation. I understand the medical reasoning behind it and clipping protection, but in my opinion this is bordering on uber safe.
6dB att means that signal power was reduced by 75% or voltage wise the amplitude is half. Cars or bikes are not limited to max road limit speed because you may just get killed if you go faster, right?
 
Give me unadulterated 0dB signal with +/-6dB gain to play with and let me decide if I like sound of clipped signal or not. If I want to boost, let me boost and face the consequence. I'll take that anytime over default 6dB attenuation that kicks in once you turn EQ on.

 

[thericochet]

Allowing boosting is an absolutely terrible idea, people. Most people will naturally just try to boost what they prefer and then complain that the EQ doesn't work when it sounds like ****.
 
Moreover it would have no actual advantages over attenuation-only, and indeed an enormous disadvantage - at the moment you can attenuate by 12dB in any band, meaning you could boost bass (for example) to 12dB over the rest of the signal. "Give me unadulterated 0dB signal with +/-6dB gain to play with" would reduce the actual usable headroom from 12dB to just 6dB (since boosting anything above the central zero-point would produce clipping), making the resulting EQ far less useful. Want 7dB of bass? Can't do it unless you want clipping.

You are proposing to take away useful functionality in order to implement useless functionality. There are reasons they didn't do this and that this device sounds better than devices that do, and this is why you know for sure that if a song is clipping it's the file that's bad not the X5 or a 'consequence' of your wrongly set up EQ [if you are boosting something without preamping down, something that has been done for you here, you are actually just asking for bad sound].
 
By the way there is no 'like' or 'dislike' about digital clipping. It's not like analog clipping, it is an instant universal signal ruiner.

 

[Loquah]

  Allowing boosting is an absolutely terrible idea, people. Most people will naturally just try to boost what they prefer and then complain that the EQ doesn't work when it sounds like ****.
 
Moreover it would have no actual advantages over attenuation-only, and indeed an enormous disadvantage - at the moment you can attenuate by 12dB in any band, meaning you could boost bass (for example) to 12dB over the rest of the signal. "Give me unadulterated 0dB signal with +/-6dB gain to play with" would reduce the actual usable headroom from 12dB to just 6dB (since boosting anything above the central zero-point would produce clipping), making the resulting EQ far less useful. Want 7dB of bass? Can't do it unless you want clipping. There are reasons they didn't do this and that this device sounds better than devices that do, and this is why you know for sure that if a song is clipping it's the file that's bad not the X5.

 
+1

 

[TonyVier]

Ok, thanks to dontblameyourears in Jakarta I got my muses01 today. Even to my relatively untrained ears this changes tbe X5 / E12DIY combi a lot. It becomes warmer, and gives the bass more body. Switching back to HPO of the X5, the sound stage seems a bit wider, but the treble suddenly seems to have more grain.

Based on the info from the E12DIY thread I used the BUF634.

(just listened to a few HD classical tracks)

 

[uzi2]

   
At the moment we don't know what the Q parameter (or bandwidth) is unless someone from FiiO chimes in and clarify it for us. I would assume that Q is wide enough to make it almost flat with all sliders up at +6dB. I don't believe it is completely flat.
 
I've played with EQ last night and indeed I could not hear audible difference between custom EQ with all sliders up and EQ OFF. My ears are half a century old and that's what I hear (or better to say don't hear), so I'm all good.
 
Therefore I stand corrected and take my rant comment about incorrect implementation of EQ in X5 back. It honestly didn't cross my mind to slide all sliders up and hear what happens, never had to do such a thing with any equalizer I've ever laid may hands on.
 

 
It would help if all sliders up was the default position and the sliders were labelled correctly.
 
 
 
Quote:

  Allowing boosting is an absolutely terrible idea, people. Most people will naturally just try to boost what they prefer and then complain that the EQ doesn't work when it sounds like ****.
 
Moreover it would have no actual advantages over attenuation-only, and indeed an enormous disadvantage - at the moment you can attenuate by 12dB in any band, meaning you could boost bass (for example) to 12dB over the rest of the signal. "Give me unadulterated 0dB signal with +/-6dB gain to play with" would reduce the actual usable headroom from 12dB to just 6dB (since boosting anything above the central zero-point would produce clipping), making the resulting EQ far less useful. Want 7dB of bass? Can't do it unless you want clipping.

You are proposing to take away useful functionality in order to implement useless functionality. There are reasons they didn't do this and that this device sounds better than devices that do, and this is why you know for sure that if a song is clipping it's the file that's bad not the X5 or a 'consequence' of your wrongly set up EQ [if you are boosting something without preamping down, something that has been done for you here, you are actually just asking for bad sound].
 
By the way there is no 'like' or 'dislike' about digital clipping. It's not like analog clipping, it is an instant universal signal ruiner.

The problem is that all sliders set to 0 is not a flat 6db attenuation, it is each selected frequency attenuated by 6db, so you have a sinuous response curve with dips at the selected frequencies. The only way to get a flat resonse is all sliders to max (or EQ off).
If the sliders were labelled correctly 0 to -12db and default position was 0 then all would be well.

 

[thericochet]

That doesn't actually make a practical or functional difference though, does it?
 
I mean, labeling could be improved but you know what it actually means; default position can be overriden by the user.
 
I don't disagree that the custom EQ should have defaulted to all sliders at the top. Some of the presets have a fair bit of unnecessary headroom too.

 

[uzi2]

  That doesn't actually make a practical or functional difference though, does it?
 
I mean, labeling could be improved but you know what it actually means; default position can be overriden by the user.
 
I don't disagree that the custom EQ should have defaulted to all sliders at the top. Some of the presets have a fair bit of unnecessary headroom too.

But the default position should be flat and the user can mess with it from there. I don't know of any other EQ implementation that does not default to a flat response. Because of the way it is labelled and defaulted, users will assume that everything set to 0 is a flat response, which it isn't...

 

[thericochet]

  I don't disagree that the custom EQ should have defaulted to all sliders at the top.

 
 
...so I presume you still want to be able to boost from the default position and have the default position as loud as 'EQ off'. That's having your cake and eating it, and is impossible without allowing clipping or unnecessarily attenuating the 'EQ off' level.
 
Only EQs that are preamped down first can allow boosting without clipping. So the 'it's quieter that the straight-through signal - why???' complaint would still persist, and the 'a working EQ has to be, by definition' explanation would still be both true and unsatisfactory, perhaps due to common devices that allow boosting with nasty clipping and ones that always preamp to give the impression that they can boost (not desirable at all in an audiophile grade item - in the case of the X5 this would involve the 'EQ off' signal being 6dB quieter for no good reason).
 
The X5 EQ methodology is far superior to either of those alternatives because it both correctly acknowledges that there is a limit past which you cannot amplify and provides an unattenuated 'EQ off' signal.
 
Another common and acceptable method is to automatically preamp the signal by the gain of the highest boost. So if you boost something by 3dB the preamp hits -3dB. Thus the EQ shape is represented at the highest possible gain without clipping. This still means the overall signal ends up quieter and people complain, though (see comments on any of several Android EQs which use this method... it's as if people just want to make it clip!)

 

[CH23]

i suggest somebody mod the firmware to change the current scale image from
 
+6
 
+4
 
+2
 
0dB
 
-2
 
-4
 
-6 
 
 
to
 
 
0dB
 
-2
 
-4
 
-6
 
-8
 
-10
 
-12
 
and be done with this endlessly repeated convo.
 
image can be found in X5/litegui/theme1/eq/scale_num.png (after unpacking the firmware)

 

[uzi2]

   
 
...so I presume you still want to be able to boost from the default position and have the default position as loud as 'EQ off'. That's having your cake and eating it, and is impossible without allowing clipping or unnecessarily attenuating the 'EQ off' level.
 
Only EQs that are preamped down first can allow boosting without clipping. So the 'it's quieter that the straight-through signal - why???' complaint would still persist, and the 'a working EQ has to be, by definition' explanation would still be both true and unsatisfactory, perhaps due to common devices that allow boosting with nasty clipping and ones that always preamp to give the impression that they can boost (not desirable at all in an audiophile grade item - in the case of the X5 this would involve the 'EQ off' signal being 6dB quieter for no good reason).
 
The X5 EQ methodology is far superior to either of those alternatives because it both correctly acknowledges that there is a limit past which you cannot amplify and provides an unattenuated 'EQ off' signal.

It is confusing when you quote yourself and then "presume" that I am meaning something quite different to what I'm saying.
All I ask is for accurate labelling and a default flat response curve and the way this EQ has been implemented would meean sliders labelled 0 to -12db with default position all at top.
No boost available there...

 

[beyerdude]

Well, I was prepared to 'fall on my sword' and admit that there was absolutely no difference between off and 'all' boosted by 6db but from my testing they sound similar but with one main difference - more 'grain' or dare I say slight 'hiss' in the higher frequencies when the graphic equaliser is turned on (and I am sure across the whole spectrum its just the treble is easier to pick) - absolutely no doubt about it - test done with HD600/e12diy muses01 - so to my mind there is some degradation to the sound - a small amount but if you are listening to high quality source material on good headphones you will hear a difference.....anyone else care to confirm  

 

[thericochet]

 
It is confusing when you quote yourself and then "presume" that I am meaning something quite different to what I'm saying.
All I ask is for accurate labelling and a default flat response curve and the way this EQ has been implemented would meean sliders labelled 0 to -12db with default position all at top.
No boost available there...

I quoted myself to show I already agreed with you on that.
The presumption was because you still appeared to disagree at that point, meaning I thought you were arguing for something else.

 

[thericochet]

  Well, I was prepared to 'fall on my sword' and admit that there was absolutely no difference between off and 'all' boosted by 6db but from my testing they sound similar but with one main difference - more 'grain' or dare I say slight 'hiss' in the higher frequencies when the graphic equaliser is turned on (and I am sure across the whole spectrum its just the treble is easier to pick) - absolutely no doubt about it - test done with HD600/e12diy muses01 - so to my mind there is some degradation to the sound - a small amount but if you are listening to high quality source material on good headphones you will hear a difference.....anyone else care to confirm

I hear this too on some cymbals but I took the slight tonal difference (no volume difference) to be a normal result of turning on a DSP that was previously entirely disabled.
 
edit: or maybe with 'EQ off' what you actually get is still shaped somewhat in tone by Fiio's people, and it's only actually flat with it on and maxed out? Does seem strange I admit.

 

[CH23]

@uzi2: yes it would default to -6, but that's accurate.

 

[uzi2]

  I quoted myself to show I already agreed with you on that.
The presumption was because you still appeared to disagree at that point, meaning I thought you were arguing for something else.

The only disagreement, is that I believe the default position should be a flat response and labelled accordingly
 

@uzi2: yes it would default to -6, but that's accurate.

Accurate yes - flat no