Making speakers sound tonally similar with an equalizer

@gosta

For good results of course you should use a good speaker.

Not much point in trying to make a bad speaker sound good.

Arguably ^that^ is not 100% true.

One can use cheaper drivers and use DSP to shape the bandpass to avoid resonances and breakup modes, and also to have an active-XO that is time and phase correct a lot easier and cheaper than with a passive-XO.

It may not sound as good as a better speaker and better drivers, but it is usually a lot closer than using the same drivers without using a DSP.

You can choose not to make any adjustments above a certain freq to preserve more of the speakers original response if you prefer that. 

And the time domain and impulse response (and phase EQ) are doing additional things that are not captured in the frequency response plot.
Arguably that may be more important than, or as important as, the FR alone.

@holmz 

haha. I'm with you. But why put money, time and efforts into a bad speaker?

If you're a diy'er it's another game. 

Evolution for one million year make us focus on specific timbre voice recognition not on flat frequency response...

Mechanical equalization of a room with our EARS is better than electronical EQ with a mic...It cost nothing...Save a dedicated room...It is more fun to tune and more powerful for improving S.Q....

It take time for sure, many weeks and many months of listening experiments to tune it....

Way more gratifying than buying a tool which will make your sweet spot not so  useful  because located in millimeter... I have 2 sweet spots a few inches large in my small square room so good it is impossible to chose only one...

Isn't a flat response curve what a speaker designer is striving for for most accurate reproduction?

This is correct. The problem is that for the most accurate reproduction of recorded sound you want the speaker-room combination to be flat, or tuned to the house curve of your choice. Once you place a speaker in a room the anomalies of the room give you anything but a flat curve. The amount of peaks, dips and nulls created by the room can be rather astonishing.

An e.q. is a tool that can be used to electronically address some of those anomalies, usually at a cheaper cost than room treatments, with decent results. An e.q. can’t do anything with a null but it can smooth out some of the peaks and dips which can make for a more enjoyable listening experience.

As for your original question; in theory it probably could but that is not the use an e.q. was designed for.

@gosta 

@holmz 

haha. I'm with you. But why put money, time and efforts into a bad speaker?

If you're a diy'er it's another game

1. If one had an either/or choice between radiation pattern and FR, then one can fix FR with a DSP.
2. If the speaker (as a whole) sucks, but the drivers are good… Then one could redo the passive-XO as an active-XO
3. If one had a choice between a passive-XO and an active-XO on a speaker, then maybe they would choose something that could have a s/w patch applied to it?

There are probably some other corner cases.

I am using some last millennium speakers and will be trying the DSP on them.