OK - I thought it best to leave bass/treble/loudness off anyway, and rely on the eq to achieve the desired results? I have it all turned off right now anyway.

Question about EQ settings in general though now: If one is supposed to 'drop' levels, rather than 'raise' them to achieve desired sound, would it not make sense to drop 'all' the levels to -2 or -3db, and that would then allow room to 'raise' some, and lower the remaining accordingly? Otherwise (in my mind) it seems that any level that actually needs to be raised - requires all the other levels to in fact drop to compensate to keep it below 0db in order to eliminate clipping potential??

Or is my logic off base?