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The equalizer you don't know you have

Audiophiles are amazing at finding ways to not use an equalizer or tone control of any sort. Shame because in the bass regions EQ are magic. We can talk all day long about being able to hear the felt on the seat of the third violinist, but when you have a bass mode that is 20dB louder than anything else it can ruin your experience, and no power cable in the world is going to fix it.

But while our desire for audio purity is commendable for its tenacity, you may not be aware that EQ circuits are built right into a lot of speakers. A lot of very expensive speakers.

What do I mean? Well, very few very good sounding drivers are ideal, or integrate well with the other drivers. Speaker designers compensate for this within the crossover. Those caps, and coils which you think are just there to prevent a driver from going ballistic may also be coloring your sound, in a good way. Hopefully no one starts throwing their speakers out after this. :)


Best,

Erik
erik_squires
tomic601's avatar
tomic601
12,912 posts
 
Crossover is a misnomer, s/b filter and compensation network
tomic601's avatar
tomic601
12,912 posts
 
Also a “ full range “ driver is an unequalizer 
erik_squires OP
16,118 posts
 
quiz time: how does an astute designer fix baffle step in the filter ?


I know of at least three answers

  1. A BSC filter
  2. Judicious selection of parts the low pass filter if you can, which for me is often using a coil with slightly higher DCR than you would otherwise. Also see Gravesen's writing on this.
  3. Don't fix it and make your speakers true-bookshelf speakers. See the Crystal Cable Minissimo Diamond for a commercial example.


Best,

E

erik_squires OP
16,118 posts
 
quiz time - anybody remember the Cello Palette?


Mark Levinson's (the man) post ML (the company) equalizer, right?  I never saw one in real life, or any other Cello component.

nonoise's avatar
nonoise
10,880 posts
 
I had an old pair of Decware speakers that allowed one to tailor the sound with different resistors. The Tonian Labs TL-D1s I had were provided with three different sized slats on the backside to tailor the lower mids and base to suit ones tastes and room. My current JBL 4319 monitors have high and mid frequency tone controls to do the same. 
A very slight twist of those controls are easily heard, and at times, appreciated. 

I see nothing wrong and everything to gain from having some control over these aspects of speakers.

All the best,
Nonoise
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