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Hi all,
I recently moved into a new apartment. Had been playing my system with no EQ adjustments because the room was fine. When I set up my equipment in the new space, it sounded awfully shrill and had absolutely no depth to it. I cut the treble slightly and upped the bass, now it sounds about right.
Is there anything I can do to be more precise about these adjustments or should I go by feel alone?
Thanks,
WJ
Follow Ups:
You should make the sound sound like you want it to sound.
EQ is your friend. More preamps should have it.
:)
You can spend less than $200 and get a calibrated microphone and realtime analyzer software. This will measure the response in your room to see what it actually is at your listening position(s). You can use this information to help you set up speaker positions, listening positions, speaker cross-over adjustments (if available) and ultimately equalization adjustments. I found this process very useful for integrating a sub woofer and getting smooth bass response in a small room. I adjusted the high frequencies by ear, putting some damping on the walls at reflection points and turning down tweeter controls in the cross-over.If you play digital music and use a computer system you can do any equalization in software without requiring extra boxes. Note that simple treble and bass controls don't provide enough flexibility to adjust for room effects, which come about because of three different room dimensions, distances from six walls, etc. I ended up using three parametric equalizers to make finishing touches on bass EQ after adjusting speaker position and cross-over adjustments.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Edits: 06/09/15
If you don't mind doing everything in the digital domain, this system measures response errors at the listening position and corrects them precisely and automatically. It could take weeks of fiddling with a parametric EQ and measuring and remeasuring with RTA to accomplish what it can apparently do in a few minutes. It can apparently smooth out the response of a complex multichannel HT setup, and should have no problems with simple 2-channel stereo.
I heard it demoed a few years ago, with a Denon HT receiver that had it built in, and the "before and after" comparison was impressive. A number of manufacturers now use the technology in their products, but I believe stand-alone versions are available.
This software may, or may not be satisfying. However, if the marketing claims go beyond "automatic, quick, and precise" and also include "accurate" then my BS flag will be raised, because it is not practical to generate exact inverse filters. For example, if there is a deep null at a particular frequency it won't be possible to provide sufficient boost to level out the frequency response. There will be approximations and tradeoffs and no single best solution, even if there is only a single listener position being optimized.
Hearing something sound good in a demo shows that the sound is approximately correct. It does not tell the effects of long term listening, wherein the listener learns the weaknesses of the system. One can hide the pea beneath several mattresses, but eventually a princess will recognize that the pea is still present.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
My Marantz pre/pro has Audyssey XT32. The standard Audyssey target curve is basically the film industry's X-curve but with a dip added at 2 KHz. The X-curve is correct for movies but isn't a great choice for music. And the 2 KHz dip is a bit strange. Audyssey also has a flat setting, but that's not a good target either - too bright.
For stereo music listening, I use Pure Direct mode (no EQ) which sounds better than Audyssey. For multi-channel music and especially movies, Audyssey is better. It's most useful for timbre-matching surround speakers to your main speakers if like me you don't have identical speakers all around.
Most products with Audyssey can be set up with a Audyssey Pro calibration kit which you can buy yourself or hire an installer with a kit to set it up for you. The Pro cal kit includes a target curve editor which can be used to create a more appropriate target curve for music. If you're going to use Audyssey in a primarily music system, I would make that investment.
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