Hi all -
I'm relatively new here but I've built a nice little collection of stuff and I want to share what I guess would be considered a semi-controversial observation (I think?):
I hate to EQ.
Every time I apply the EQ presets that are custom-tailored for certain headphones or IEMs, the overall sound experience sounds thinner/less warm/more metallic. The decibel level clearly goes down so maybe some of the difference is attributable to that? On Mac I'm using SoundSource and Qudelix 5K on portable.
I'm not posting this here to pick a fight with EQ-lovers. I'm just curious if I'm doing something wrong?
P.S. I will say there is one case where EQ really felt like it was needed: UM Mest MKII. It was a muddled mess unless I put EQ on. The rest of my stuff (u12t and Arya) felt like they were better without EQ.
Any other insights/tricks I'm missing?
Rich
there are a couple ways to think about how to deal with the audio signal that gives you the music you listen to.
1) leave it alone, try to get the most transparent gear you can, just enjoy the artist/producer/engineers' vision of what they've worked hard to give you.
2) process it, essentially becoming an additional mastering engineer. any processing fits in this category, and eq is a popular one.
if you're going to process music to make it more in line with what you like, i would learn some about the technical aspects of it, for example what a shelf eq is doing or what the controls of a parametric eq do and what changing the bandwidth around the center frequency does in terms of zooming in on a particular frequency.
but even more importantly, i'd learn to connect what works for you about a track to frequencies. this is what great recording engineers do. sometimes some of what a microphone picked up might not be helpful to getting the music to sound the way you want it. for example, they'll - say - solo the snare drum and find resonant frequencies that hurt what the music is trying to do and 'notch' them out using a parametric eq. or they'll gate the snare signal to remove the signal from other sources when the snare drum has stopped sounding. or they'll find other frequencies where adding more makes the track more musically effective, for example high frequencies are commonly boosted in vocals.
when you're eq-ing a whole mix as a consumer, you obviously don't have access to individual tracks, but you do have access to frequency ranges, and sometimes boosting or dipping certain frequency ranges can make a musical track far more engaging. mastering engineers do this every day. a crude version of this process everyone knows about is "turning up the bass", which is just boosting low frequencies with a shelf eq. a more surgical version is running your song through parametric eqs and picking the frequency, the q or bandwidth (how much do you want to zoom tightly in around that frequency) and choosing how much to boost or dip it. what you need to do to get the music to sound its most engaging will differ on every track and obviously depend on your taste. doing this is jumping through hoops, but it does give you a lot of power as a listener and if you experiment a lot finding what you like, can really improve your listening experience.
good luck -
ps any signal going through an eq or other processor will be degraded, but if what comes out is preferable to you than what went in, have at it.