![]() ![]() So I will tell you what I have used them for and go back in time a little. They don't have much value in the reproduction of properly recorded and produced digital music. In the analog age of the LP and tape machines properly used they served a purpose. Basically if the faders are pushed to extremes, or worse one band has a lot of cut and an adjacent one gain then severe ringing starts to occur. Now as others have stated they have a high propensity for misuse, with awful results. The more complex parametric equalizer allows he center frequency of the bands to be adjusted, and their width and Q. The center frequency of the band can not be changed. Common, used to be the 10 and 12 band equalizers. In fact often split up into fractions if an octave into 30 bands or more. Also, it's important to know where each instrument lies in the audio spectrum, to prevent wasted time hunting for the correct slider to adjust.Ĭlick to expand.So I have arrived back in the Twin Cities. Part of the reason is that we, as listeners, don't have separate tracks to work with and that's where the real changes came from during the mixing phase. If the equalizer can be described as 'transparent-sounding', it's not going to be $99.Īnother issue with using an equalizer with modern equipment is that an AVR isn't usually made for connecting an equalizer, Compressor/limiter, Dynamic Range enhancer or anything similar may not see the signal level or load needed.įor hearing the music in a new way, it can be fascinating but for listening to it as intended by the production, it's usually best to leave it alone. Graphic EQs add problems of their own and using these for a high-end system comes with the risk of messing with the overall sound quality. That said, the system isn't being used for mastering CDs/DVDs/BDs or movies, so the ultimate quality isn't necessary but overall, I have to say it works well for the application.Įqualizers that are made for HiFi rigs are less noisy, but they will still add noise if the sliders are raised and in addition to the hiss, distortion increases, too. I installed one in a bar and for that application, the A/N ratio was OK, but in a quieter place, like the fitness center where I recently installed that same equalizer, moving the sliders above +/- 0dB makes the noise audible if it's above 1KHz. This Wikipedia article explains the differences between graphic and parametric equalizersĬlick to expand.The Behringer equalizers do a decent job, but I wouldn't call them 'Audiophile' because of the noise level. The graphic equalizers, no matter how many bands it has, involve more guesswork. Proper use of more modern digitally-controlled parametric equalizers involve a measurement system to identify the frequencies and band widths of unwanted or offending sounds that can be diminished or filtered out. And they invite the idle user to play with them. Personally, I'd stay away from used graphic equalizers because those slider controls easily oxidize and get noisy. This overreaction, taken to extreme, led to audiophile pre-amps that had no tone controls at all. It's my guess that the back wash in opinion against graphic equalizers led to the 'audiophile' overreaction where any tone control, including simple bass and treble controls, is thought to be as 'evil' as the misuse of graphic equalizers. If they are very conservatively used to reduce certain unwanted frequencies, they can help. Too many people were tempted to use them to boost signals broadly, with unfortunate results. Using graphic equalizers (usually with analog slider controls) in audio playback systems seemed like a good idea in the past, but has fallen out of fashion. Has anyone else done this, presumably with an equalizer (I haven't used one since the late Seventies). So that got me to thinking how fun it would be to continue to isolate various players and their performances beyond just turning off one channel. Lennon too on Not A Second Time pulls off a creative "blink" upstroke on his Rickenbacker that is barely noticeable on the stereo mix until the right channel is turned off. Paul's vocals and other instruments overwhelm Harrison in the background but if one turns off the right channel, there it is plain as day and creative as heck. For example, I never heard before until last night George Harrison's nifty little riff played twice on I Saw Her Standing There even though I've heard that song played ten thousand times over the past 50 years. What I would like to do is, for select tracks, enhance or diminish i.e. I like the way my system sounds so far as-is so I am not looking to an equalizer to help it fit the room or vice-versa. Is there even such a thing as an "audiophile-grade" equalizer?
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