whats too much eq?
Printed From: the12volt.comForum Name: Car Audio
Forum Discription: Car Stereos, Amplifiers, Crossovers, Processors, Speakers, Subwoofers, etc.
URL: https://www.the12volt.com/installbay/forum_posts.asp?tid=103487
Printed Date: May 14, 2024 at 6:38 AM
Topic: whats too much eq?
Posted By: daboss593
Subject: whats too much eq?
Date Posted: March 29, 2008 at 9:03 AM
Replies:
Posted By: haemphyst
Date Posted: March 29, 2008 at 9:17 AM
Posted By: daboss593
Date Posted: March 29, 2008 at 3:19 PM
Posted By: aznboi3644
Date Posted: March 29, 2008 at 3:35 PM
Posted By: greenbroncoguy
Date Posted: March 30, 2008 at 3:59 PM
Posted By: haemphyst
Date Posted: March 30, 2008 at 5:16 PM
Posted By: daboss593
Date Posted: March 30, 2008 at 8:07 PM
Posted By: greenbroncoguy
Date Posted: March 30, 2008 at 9:03 PM
Posted By: haemphyst
Date Posted: March 30, 2008 at 9:20 PM
Once you DO have an RTA, (and you do not have to spend a lot to get one...) you'll never use music to set anything, you'll want to use pink noise.
If your speakers are of high enough quality, and you set the crossovers appropriately, treat the car, properly place the drivers, and adjust the gains correctly, you should be able to get a really good sounding system going. I did it for years JUST like that. Once you know what pink noise sounds like, it's pretty easy to come really close even without an RTA.
I mentioned that you don't have to spend a lot to get into an RTA. It's true. Not including the laptop(s) I use to do the actual signal processing, I have a 50 dollar mic, (the Behringer ECM8000) a 100 dollar piece of software (TrueRTA, level 4, but MOST people can use level 2 or 3), and a 100 dollar mic input for the laptop (an M-Audio MobilePre USB). The laptop can be something as small as a PIII 500MHz machine, with 256MB of RAM.
Trust me... I know of the tweak, tweak, and tweak some more... Even with computing power to help, I spent about 5 hours fixing my response curve and setting my TD until it was JUST RIGHT! And that was in the summer... In Bakersfield... In the HEAT...!
That EQ on the subs is going to be a tremendous waste of EQ capabilities. Below 80Hz you won't have any control at all... Maybe one or two bands will be effective in the sub's passband. You'll literally be throwing 29 bands of EQ away. I'd use that on your highs, where you might be throwing ONE band of EQ away... Use the crossovers in the amps, you'll be fine with those for now.
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It all reminds me of something that Molière once said to Guy de Maupassant at a café in Vienna: "That's nice. You should write it down."
Posted By: haemphyst
Date Posted: March 30, 2008 at 9:58 PM
greenbroncoguy wrote:
First of all, let me start out by saying that I'm not going to argue with someone of your stature who admittedly has much more knowledge and experience than I do to bring to the conversation. Perhaps I should have worded my response a little differently...
I appreciate the respect shown by that statement, but I'm not everything, and I don't know it all... I never said I was or did. No, please... argue. I am interested in your opinion, and that's part of what makes this the best forum going. We all respect each other's opinions here, and nobody is going to flame you for speaking up.
greenbroncoguy wrote:
EVERYONE's ears perceive sound differently. To me, perfectly RTA flat sounds bad; perhaps I like clipped, over EQ'd, peaky music, but be that as it may, I HAVE heard RTA flat - and as I said, it sounds like ass. I listen to primarily hard rock, classic rock, some rap every now and then when the girlfriend is in the car, and blues as well.
I did concede that everybody's ear is different. What you hear is NOT what I hear. I will still maintain that a flat response sounds best to me. I was merely stating (perhaps abruptly) that a blanket statement like "it sounds bad" is NOT the same meaning as "it sounds bad to me". Modern hard rock and rap, especially, are the biggest offenders of the overprocessing. Take Nickelback's latest. I LOVE that album... Good driving music, awesome lyrics... Just good, plain rock and roll. It could be one of my favorites, a true "guilty pleasure" for me: but the recording is CRAP! Rockstar is SO clipped in places I can hardly listen to it sometimes. Perhaps building a system with the resolution I did put into mine is really a curse... TOO revealing, but I digress. My flat system sounds FANTASTIC with that particular album, and when I feel like I want to "crank it up" a bit more, (and those times DO happen...) I have subwoofer level on the deck! Signal processing? Yes. EQ? TECHNICALLY yes, but my hardware EQs are trunk mounted PC adjusted devices with no way to "tweak", once set... (Not without a PC anyway.) I'm really just adjusting the "tone control".
greenbroncoguy wrote:
A systems' frequecy response that shows up flat on a screen will not be perceived as flat to the human ear, as humans' ears are more sensitive to some frequencies as opposed to others. So, even though your prefectly RTA'd-flat system response appears flat on a computer screen, does NOT mean that all the frequencies being reproduced will be heard at the same levels by your ears - because they won't be.
This is the fault, again, of the recording industry. If recorded faithfully, you should not be able to tell the difference between a live session or the recording. If you are seated in the venue during the recording session, you shouldn't know that you are listening to a recording later. This takes a FLAT curve. You have listened SO LONG to overprocessed music you think you are missing out, when you really aren't. A flat RTA should recreate the original performance... You will be missing nothing, and it WILL sound right, I promise you. I grew up going to the orchestra in Grand Rapids, Michigan, (one of the finest orchestras in the nation, at that time - I can't speak for them today - that was 30+ years ago) so I KNOW what full-blown orchestra sounds like, I understand the emotion portrayed. My car DOES sound right, I promise.
greenbroncoguy wrote:
You stated that an RTA should be used to return the system to flat, not to augment the system to ones liking - IMHO that statement is so wrong I can't even believe it was even posted. If you are spending all this money on a stereo system, why would you not want it to sound good to you? Everyone has different tastes, everyone like different things.
Well, the RTA is the tool used to make sure the system IS flat, but I understand what you meant...
No, seriously, an EQ should be used as a set-it-and-forget-it device. Fix the anomalies, and never touch it again. EQs can be VERY hard on a system, causing the user to very easily overdrive amplifier inputs, causing all SORTS of bad things to happen. Tone controls are (or really can be) just as bad, but since they are effective on a much wider band of the music, it can be more easily heard, thus alerting the user to "potential damage", before it happens. A very narrow band EQ, like the 31 band device the OP has, can easily hide the overdriven narrow band within the music, and damage can occur quite quickly.
greenbroncoguy wrote:
IMHO, I would RTA the system to flat, and then use your EQ to make minor adjustments to make the system good to YOU. After all, you ARE the one paying for and listening to it, right?
I agree... But I also look at things from a deeper, far more technical angle, I think. (Read again, my last paragraph) I am a HUGE fan of "overpowering". ("Headroom is our friend." -- Haemphyst) I don't know if you have read my thread regarding the system presently in my car, but if you have, then you know I am running over 600 WRMS to each of my doors! A mis-adjusted EQ could and would cause VERY rapid, and irreversible damage to some VERY expensive and literally irreplaceable drivers in the hands of the "un-trained". Different points of view, as well as different listening habits, as well as different "personal response" will ALL come into very deep and critical play here.
greenbroncoguy wrote:
That's all I'm saying...
And that's all we can ask.
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It all reminds me of something that Molière once said to Guy de Maupassant at a café in Vienna: "That's nice. You should write it down."
Posted By: greenbroncoguy
Date Posted: March 31, 2008 at 11:29 AM
^^^ I think I more or less agree with you; I just really think most people (including myself) are simply used to listening to clipped, over EQ'd music to begin with - as you stated. This leaves one with a sense that something is "lacking" when they listen to a flat-tuned system...
But still I maintain; I do not like the sound of a flat system
. My initial statement that a stereo system tuned flat with an RTA will not sound good was perhaps a little forward, if not blatently wrong; as we all have different listening tastes. Maybe playing classical music or something flat may sound nice, but still I think part of what makes rock/rap fun to listen to is the "peakyness", "hit", etc. of the music itself - somethign which I believe a RTA'd flat system lacks.
And as adding too much EQ boost can cause overdriving of an amplifier; IMHO if you have to add more than a few db of boost or cut in a single band, you probably have an install issue and the trying to EQ out to problem is not the proper fix. I too believe in headroom - I have 350w rms going to each DLS Iridium midbass in my front doors, and currently am trying out some Blaupunkt vc100 tweeters w/ 100w rms. After I give those some time to grow on me, I'll put my Seas neo aluminums in and see how they work out with the 100w rms. So yes, headroom is absolutley your friend.
-Matt
Posted By: theetimurban
Date Posted: March 31, 2008 at 3:24 PM
Well, just my $.02 here, and will probably in no way contribute to the proceedings here, but really the only thing I listen to in my car is opera, classical music, and DCI, i.e. Puccini, Pavaratti, Gustav Holst, Tolstoy, and pretty much every show by Carolina Crown or Phantom Regiment. And I have to adjust the EQ, mine usually ends up looking like what I could only call a suspension bridge, to get anything that sounds like a "live" performance. Obviously there's just no way to match the acoustics of a perfomance hall in a car (at least my car 
). When I was in Atlanta last summer I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to ride in a 2006 Maybach 57 S, and even in a car designed purely for luxury, Dvorzaks New World Symphony just couldn't compare with hearing it live as performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. I may be wrong, and in fact, I probably am, in saying that, there's no way microphones right up by the stage can capture the depth of what you hear from 100 yards away, in a real concert hall.
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Posted By: theetimurban
Date Posted: March 31, 2008 at 7:32 PM
Posted By: daboss593
Date Posted: April 01, 2008 at 9:44 AM
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OWWWWWWWWWWW you said you discharged the cap!
Posted By: haemphyst
Date Posted: April 01, 2008 at 10:03 AM