Uhhhh, Yeah. What Tony said. But with one additional clarification...

You can only tweak your EQ curves for a little while at each sitting. If you sit there and shift bands around for more than about 20 minutes at a time, you reach the stage where everything you do starts to sound good. Then the next morning you get in the car and think "My God, how could I have left it sounding as bad as that?!"

Do the really big changes first, and then leave it for a day or two, until you are convinced that yes, indeed, the tweets are too bright and the mid-bass needs emphasis. Then soften the tweets, bring up the mid-bass (just a little bit!) but don't try and make the adjustments by ear. Decide that the three mid-range bands need to come up by 2dB, and the top two treble bands need to come down by three, then do it and listen for another day or two. It will take you weeks to get it just right. When you do, be sure to write down the settings.

I use the IASCA competition tracks to set my EQ curves. I am sure that a lot of people on this bbs would be able to recommend commonly available tracks that would also be good for EQ work.

Ironically, after all the tweaking I have done with my EQ, I always end up back at the "Flat" setting (0dB straight across the board) as being the best for my system, with two exceptions: the "Pink Noise" track that IASCA uses for RTA competition; and a Vinyl LP recorded in 1961 that is full of scratches at the top end and lacking in bass response at the bottom.

You could set up a few "generic" EQ presets, called "Bass Enhance" and "Treble Enhance", doing just what the names imply. Actually, as Tony pointed out, it would be better to have them called "Treble Attenuate" and "Bass Attenuate" respectively. I have not had much luck doing this, however... attenuating the treble seemed to muffle the highs more than enhancing the lows.

Another wild-card in the game is the Loudness setting. Loudness enhances bass response, but the tricky part is that the enhancement is not linear with the volume settings. The further away from 0dB you are, the more bass enhancement you get, and the Loudness setting itself is adjustable in 1.5dB increments. Since I have my amp gains adjusted so that my player is almost always right at 0dB, my Loudness setting is pretty much ineffectual. I leave it set at 7.5 (out of 15 max) to enhance bass response when I have the volume lower than 0dB.

It can be mystifyingly complex to get the sound the way you want, with volume, loudness, and EQ all operating interactively (and on my system, L-Pads on six individual speakers, DSO options in my CD player, and a crossover network that gives me separate frequency range settings on six individual plus three pairs of speakers) but if you can just figure out the following three things, you can get a handle on it: (A) How the system works -- how do volume, loudness, EQ, distortion and any other controls you have all interact; (B) What does the system sound like now -- can you identify what you have too much of or too little of; (C) What do you have to do to correct "B". With a little thought and a lot of patience, it really can be as simple as ABC.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

ps: Welcome back to the bbs, Duranike -- where have you been hiding out for the last year? We've missed you!

Edited by tanstaafl. on 20/07/01 11:54 PM.