Does anyone use equalizers anymore?

heiney9

jinjuku wrote: »

Actually I was agreeing with you on a potential lessening of need for EQ in a two channel setup vs a 5 or 7 channel setup. This agreement being based on the fact that you have more placement options to deal with less than perfect room conditions. That post was simply in context of what you had written, nothing to do with the OP. Really trying to stay on topic for the OP and what looks to be an HT setup

My response was more or less directed to WilliamM2's response about the inference he made about better gear curing room issues. I never stated that.

heiney9

jinjuku wrote: »

If you run Vista, MS did away with Kmixer and the subsequent re-sampling that it did.

In XP you need ASIO to do this, in Vista it is a non issue.

You are correct and I run ASIO on XP w/o issue.

jinjuku

heiney9 wrote: »

Never said that or eluded to that. In my direct experience what I thought were room issues several years ago were "cured" by moving up the gear ladder, not by trying to EQ the deficiencies out of my lesser equipment. Not saying that is absolutely always the case............but everytime I made an improvement in gear the sound became more pleasing.

You always seem to read more into a post than anyone I know. Feel free to add whatever you deem necessary to twist these words to fit into your personal POV.

As always in this hobby YMMV

H9

I am sure that room deficiencies aside, moving up to better gear will almost always sound better than the lower end gear you were using (everything else being the same).

I always found the road outside my house to be bumpy. With my Nissan it's ok, but when my business partner comes over in his Lexus, it's a better ride. No need to repave the road:rolleyes:

heiney9

So I should have just added a $300 EQ and saved my money? Thanks where were you a couple years ago :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:.

Face

Room treatments are for room issues.

Why add another link in the chain?

SCompRacer

Only way to know is get some software and do room measurements. The best gear in the world will not fix room problems. Your ears will only compensate so much for frequency drop outs or bloats. And the best way is to test and EQ the R and L speaker independently.

With EQ, one must remember you should not add too much dB or you could have amp problems. 4dB is usually a max for upward correction, while you can subtract more than 4dB going downward. I used a Behringer DEQ2496 until I treated my room. I never tried to get a flat response across the frequencies, just help fix some of the severe spikes.

Face

jinjuku wrote: »

I always found the road outside my house to be bumpy. With my Nissan it's ok, but when my business partner comes over in his Lexus, it's a better ride. No need to repave the road:rolleyes:

Adding an EQ to good gear is like adding a lift kit to a Lexus.

mhardy6647

Face wrote: »

Adding an EQ to good gear is like adding a lift kit to a Lexus.

I'm sure it's been done.

BottomFeeder

I don't use one.

jinjuku

heiney9 wrote: »

So I should have just added a $300 EQ and saved my money? Thanks where were you a couple years ago :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:.

Nope, didn't say that at all. What I said is that moving up to better gear (speakers especially) will almost always net a positive gain in listener experience.

My rough car analogy basically points out that no matter the quality of gear, if you have a wonky room, you still have a wonky room. You may benefit from an EQ in the mix. The characteristics of a room are still there to some degree or another regardless of what speaker/amp/pre-pro you use. An EQ is specifically designed to deal with room response.

An EQ should also be your last resort after other reasonable attempts to correct the conditions that exists in the first place have been made.

Now if it is reasonable for you to spend $100K on a listening only room then you do that reasonable thing and don't bother with an EQ. What is reasonable is all in context.

I know that most other people will have to deaden the walls, play with speaker placement etc... That is what is reasonable for them.

jinjuku

Face wrote: »

Adding an EQ to good gear is like adding a lift kit to a Lexus.

It is? Again how does good gear compensate for a less than an ideal room?

Conradicles

Bunch of EQ Haters...

Fongolio

I don't use one on my two channel setup. I do use the built in parametric on my Yamaha receiver to compensate for the surrounds bad placement behind the listening couch. My car (89 IROC-Z) has 3 amp two sub setup and I use an old Alpine equalizer for sub control and to fix horrible cabin acoustics.

reeltrouble1

conrad,

Naw, we hate all useless electronic's suggestions equally, not just EQ's.

RT1--Tubes Rule.

jinjuku

reeltrouble1 wrote: »

conrad,

Naw, we hate all useless electronic's suggestions equally, not just EQ's.

RT1--Tubes Rule.

Totally agree, just like a pair of $200 2ft interconnects :rolleyes:

Because we all know that imperfect room conditions can be taken care of by higher end speakers, amps, and interconnects:rolleyes:

To the OP: You asked a question "Does anyone use equalizers anymore".

Your VSX-03 has one built in:





If you haven't ran the MCACC then do so and let us know if you hear a difference. Listen to a few movie segments (I like to use Master and Commander) before MCACC and then again after. You will need a serial cable and computer with RS-232 serial port (if you want to do the PC setup route) You can get USB to Serial adapters for around $20-30 bucks (or less).

You spent a pretty penny on a really nice receiver. Pioneer knows what they are doing and put in a EQ for a reason. Get every pennies worth out of it:).

Other movies that I like to use:

Jurassic Park
Aliens
Hunt for Red October
Lord of the Rings (the Balrog scene)
Behind Enemy Lines (the SAM chase scene)

reeltrouble1

pffffftttttttttttt...................200 connects, you think I use lower end stuff???

RT1

heiney9

If you HT guys want to run the auto eq set-ups for your settings, knock yourselves out. For higher end 2ch listening, I find it totally unecessary to use tone controls.

As always YMMV

H9

comfortablycurt

My Onkyo AVR has tone controls for adjusting bass and treble. I didn't even realize they were there until about a month ago...I was looking at it and I saw this "Tone" button on it. I pressed it and thought..."wow, I'm never going to use these". I tried messing with it a little bit, and after a couple minutes I just turned both back to 0. Sounds a lot better that way.

I've got an older Realistic 12 band EQ that I've messed around with a little bit before. I found it to degrade the sound more than improve it. It's back in the box and sitting in my closet now.

EQ's are for live sound IMO. In live venues you run into completely terrible room situations which necessitate an EQ. Unless you have your equipment in a completely horrible room, I don't see why you'd need an EQ in a home setup. If I were in that case, I'd move it into a different room before EQ'ing it. As others have said, why add another component to the chain?

I can see the benefits more for a home theater system, where you can't be as exact with speaker placement, but 2 ch.? No thanks.

jinjuku

reeltrouble1 wrote: »

pffffftttttttttttt...................200 connects, you think I use lower end stuff???

RT1

From your posts, I only think you snort the low end stuff.

comfortablycurt

jinjuku wrote: »

From your posts, I only think you snort the low end stuff.

And now he starts resorting to the name calling/meaningless unfounded flaming.

Great, this thread is headed downhill now. Thanks.

ben62670

I'll post later. Some of the answers are kinda funny.

hearingimpared

jinjuku wrote: »

From your posts, I only think you snort the low end stuff.

comfortablycurt wrote: »

And now he starts resorting to the name calling/meaningless unfounded flaming.

Great, this thread is headed downhill now. Thanks.

Curt, he has an axe to grind with Ted that he won't let go . . . just ignore him.

jinjuku

heiney9 wrote: »

If you HT guys want to run the auto eq set-ups for your settings, knock yourselves out. For higher end 2ch listening, I find it totally unecessary to use tone controls.

As always YMMV

H9

That's great. But you are making some blanket statements like:

Nope, never. If you need one then you have other issues..

How much to you want to bet that the average person with an extra room in the house for HT/Music listening is going to have ZERO issues with room acoustics. Even after speaker placement, even after room treatments, you will still most likely end up with a less than perfect environment. Now with speaker placement and room treatments you may find it 'good enough'. If you already have an AVR with EQ, run it. If you don't like it you can always switch back to an uncorrected setting. Jeesh...

AND

No equalizer or tone controls are needed if you're gear is up to snuff.

Try posting that at AVSForum, Hometheatershack, or Audioholics.
So you ARE saying that better gear (whatever that means, you are forcing others to speculate) negates a room with sub-par acoustic characteristics.

Again you seem to champion that EQ's are not really needed, that it's better gear that is needed. Guess what, if you dramatically improve your room response, and still integrate an EQ, the EQ is going to do very little because there is very little EQ'ing to do. You shouldn't use an EQ to correct for being lazy and not taking care of the obvious room issues. EQ is a last resort. Less EQ the better. Still doesn't mean that you don't benefit from it. Again, if you don't like the EQ in the signal path, by all means yank it. Do what sounds best.

jinjuku

comfortablycurt wrote: »

And now he starts resorting to the name calling/meaningless unfounded flaming.

Great, this thread is headed downhill now. Thanks.

This thread headed downhill with ppl saying you can correct for room errors by simply getting better amps/speakers/interconnects.

That is such a ridiculous statement. Try posting that on some other well know audio forums like AVSForum, Audioholics, or Hometheatershack.

Conradicles

He has a good point. I would not dare use my H/T AVR without the EQ. Sounds horrible.

For 2-channel I don't need one.

But you got to admit some of them look really cool. The lights man, the lights! (not lightman)

TECHNOKID

McLoki wrote: »

I use a BFD (behringer feedback destroyer) on my subwoofers. Has stereo 12 band parametric eq's. (although I only use about 4 or 5 bands of one channel)

Has made a huge improvement in the bass of my system.

Michael

Also much cheaper alternative than snake oil interconnects/cables to change the tonality to your likings I gather

strider

In my opinion/experience, the higher up the gear chain I go, the more resolving my system becomes. There was a point a few iterations ago where any benefits of the use of tone controls was overshadowed by added system noise and loss and smearing of details. I don't feel that room treatments and speaker placement can be considered "EQ". To me, EQ is an electronic manipulation of the signal, whereas room treatments and speaker placements are affecting the interaction of the sound within the listening space in a physical manner. The closest I get to tone controls now are experimenting with different materials and topologies of speaker cables and interconnects.

I find the above to be true when dealing in a 2 channel environment, which is where I prefer to be. When dealing with multiple speakers in an HT environment, I find it useful to be able to manipulate time delays and channel levels to get a more even presentation of each channel at the listening spot.

I do still have a pretty nice Yamaha 12 channel (IIRC) eq, but it justs sits on top of my VCR now.

strider

jinjuku wrote: »

That is such a ridiculous statement. Try posting that on some other well know audio forums like AVSForum, Audioholics, or Hometheatershack.

From what I've read on Audioholics, their editorial style, so to speak, leans quite heavily to the "all things sound the same" point of view. I didn't care for it as I prefer to form my own opinion, but do admit I gave up reading there quite quickly.

Systems

I use a single band of parametric EQ on my subwoofers to notch out a nasty 50hz room mode.I wouldn't dare add one of those noise generating,detail obscuring thingies to my my full range signal path.It would defeat entirely the purpose of using a minimalist single ended preamp if I were to add a box with multiple cheap opamps, pots and switches etc.

jinjuku

hearingimpared wrote: »

Curt, he has an axe to grind with Ted that he won't let go . . . just ignore him.

You are absolutely correct. Making blanket statements about no EQ should be needed is asinine. How about this: You may have a perfect listening environment, you may also have an environment that you listen in warts and all. Doesn't make it the correct approach for someone else.

RT1 Post 7:
Besides that if your rack needs an EQ something is lacking in your gear or you just like a particular frequency.

Or your room may happen to be not acoustically 'perfect'. It may have a certain resonance or peak harmonic point that 'better gear' isn't guaranteed to resolve.

Now people in the know would have first said: TRY IT OUT. Use your ears.
Your room make not be acoustically perfect. If you don't like it, don't run EQ'd.