Equalizer in a Hi Fi system

I have indeed had my hearing checked. I hear properly up to 15-16 K. Thanks for the suggestion. No issues there. I correct for ROLLED OFF RECORDS. Your knowledge and insights have stimulated me to look in more depth at room corrective digital applications. Hope your stuffing turns out well!

“For $300 you can get yourself a calibrated microphone, computer program and measure your system to see what it is doing. I promise you, you will be very surprised. Flat is a reference point. Units like the DEQX will go there automatically as a starting point. No system/room is flat to begin with and in some cases are so bad even digital EQ can not correct it all the way.”

I have no doubt all this is exactly correct. Well stated

“The vast majority of albums are now recorded digitally and most music is now listened to via digital program sources. It makes no sense to keep going back and forth between digital and analog. In digital you can easily do all the processing without adding any artifact whereas every time you pass the signal through an analog device there is always added artifact. Just a fact of life. However, some people actually like listening to distortion and that is their prerogative.”

This is one of the most hotly contested issues in mastering studios today. The internet is FULL of debate on the merits of passing the signal through a high quality analog circuit to put finishing touches or air on a record. You can call it euphonic distortion. Others call it realism or beauty. Miro says just passing the signal through his Great River (flat) improves the sound. Many studio engineers have said the same online. I know what my ears hear, and I’m AS MUCH excited by what I hear in my system now as I was several years ago when I started with the Charter Oak. The passion says it all. And my previous anecdotes should be instructive as well. Let’s just agree to disagree on this point.  Happy Thanksgiving!

“I use Electrostatic speakers because their distortion levels are a level of magnitude lower than dynamic speakers if run correctly (no low bass). There are no analog crossovers in my system. RIAA correction is done digitally. I can record vinyl to the hard drive in 192/24 and nobody has been able to tell the difference between the recording and the actual record. Once you are in numbers you can go almost anywhere you want. I use 10th order slopes for the subwoofer crossover, virtually impossible to do in analog. ”

Again, this kind of material stated here tells me you know your stuff, and I’m highly impressed. I think you are on to something as well. I wish I could HEAR your system. I promise to learn more about higher order digital EQ. Right now I’m working through the 1 hour 50 minute video “Understanding the State of the Art of Digital Room Correction” by Accurate Sound on YouTube 

Charter Oak that I have is a very powerful equalizer. In other words you can boost a treble band up to +19 db with NO audible distortion and the resulting SQ is still hi fi, no significant loss of staging, dynamics or image resolution. While in that scenario of full boost that the treble is obviously too much for most records, it still sound GOOD. Still sweet, clean, undistorted, integrated well with the mids to still sound highly musical. It’s just remarkable. Of course, these are the reasons some sound engineers prefer this as the “final act.”  All I can say is I can certainly see why.