Equalizers - Graphiic, Parametric & Channel Balance

Pardon my preoccupation with this subject but my current level of involvement with it has been eye opener regarding the importance of how sound interacts with the surrounding physical environment as well as its interaction with accompanying sounds. Of the things that we all know, one could spend substantial time and effort getting one track of an album, or maybe all tracks on the same album, to sound wonderful (and only to you, btw) and have those settings give the same level of satisfaction for other selections. As in all audio applications, then, everything that one does involves some level of compromise. Obviuously, creating memory settings for every genre is not practical so one needs to determine how to establish a starting point. This is what I'm trying to do.

This is where the use of and understanding of a good EQ, IMO, shines; it is
more direct, practical, easier, quicker, and infinitely less expensive than shuffling costly components to acheive the same results. This all started, BTW, with my desire to resolve personal hearing issues but has now expanded to a more general awareness and appreciation of a much wider range of sound management issues.

Now that I got that out of my system, I have a question. I asked earlier if it would be advisable to use the automatic room equalization capability of the DEQ2496. ZD, you responded that because my stated goal had more to do with correction to satisfy personal hearing issues, that manual adjustment may be my best approach. I appreciate your having paid attention to my posts and totally agree with your suggestion but decided that I'm going to use it to establish a room corrected baseline and make the manual adjustments afterwards to accommodate my ears.

In regard to this I've read several articles that recommend limiting this auto EQ adjustment to lower frequencies because adjustment for full range leads to "confusing" results. I find this confusing also because, at least for me, most of the frequencies where I have left/right directional problems are for those frequencies well above the range of above the human voice.

Anyway, I'll purchase the recommended mic and cord and find this out for myself, I suppose, and I'll report back when I have something conclusive to relate.

For anyone still following this thread I finally received and put into service the ECM8000 RTA setup mic for the Behringer DEQ2496. My plan was to use the auto setup for base room correction first and adjust for my hearing, which seemed right-weighted, afterwards. As suggested in several articles, I decided to do this only for lower frequencies and limited auto EQ to those frequencies below 500hz in the dual mono mode. As I've stated more than several times, I'm not good at discerning subtle changes and, possibly, even more limited in my ability to describe them. The difference, however, that this simple adjustment alone made was obvious even to me. I almost started a new thread titled "it's the room, stupid" the improvement was such a surprise to me.

The apparent and most appreciated improvement is a more centered stage; I no longer have the sensation that what I thought was my stronger right side hearing moving the stage to the right side. The auto EQ reduced frequencies mostly in the approximate 30 to 100 Hz range but resulted in improved clarity in the lower midrange as well. Until I heard it myself I never would have believed that room conditions could have such a significant effect on sound quality.

I'm not saying that a good EQ is the answer to all woes but in my experimentation over the last several months, IMO, it is a good starting point and I highly recommend trying one if for no other purpose, as an evaluative tool. To go a step further, although I found learning to use it was quite a challenge, with the capabilities of the DEQ2496 it should be all one needs to address a wide variety of needs.

That's some good info. I never really thought to use the mic. But I need to ask the important question. Are you to the point where you can enjoy listening to music? I emphasize the word enjoy, because that seems to be the goal in all this.

Yes. Although I never really stopped enjoying listening, I had become distracted by the too wide and seemingly right weighted sound stage which I initially tried correcting using two channel GEQs simply adjusting individual channel gain. Maybe I should have become aware of room correction issues when it became apparent to me that the balance problem became more pronounced as volume levels increased.

When I decided that this might be at least a small contributing factor I tried using a pink noise generator and an RTA app on my iPad to make adjustments. I got some results but because it was hard to see the graphic display located at my listening position from the EQ where I could make adjustments, this was difficult to do. I'm sure that a more experienced and well equipped person could make this approach work as well as the auto corrector of the equalizer but, for my purpose, the 2496 did the job well.

I'm aware that many believe that any additional added artifacts are unnecessary and degrade sound quality. This argument seems based on the premise that if one were to put together a properly thought out system in the first place, adjustments to it would be unnecessary. I doubt that, except for a few, regardless of how well reviewed and ultimately expensive their systems are, that approach is consistently satisfying.

IMO, the relationship that a listener has with their system is intimate and so individually subjective that the ability to fine tune is necessary. For those who are completely satisfied with their sound, I'm glad for you. For those not so fortunate, dismissing out of hand at least trying the EQ approach, are missing an easy and inexpensive tool for improving their listening enjoyment.

Broadstone said:

"I'm aware that many believe that any additional added artifacts are unnecessary and degrade sound quality. This argument seems based on the premise that if one were to put together a properly thought out system in the first place, adjustments to it would be unnecessary. I doubt that, except for a few, regardless of how well reviewed and ultimately expensive their systems are, that approach is consistently satisfying".

Amen, my brother.

"IMO, the relationship that a listener has with their system is intimate and so individually subjective that the ability to fine tune is necessary".

Never truer words were spoken.