Making speakers sound tonally similar with an equalizer

Speakers can have very different sound "signatures" e,g,

• some might sound natural
• some might sound "boxy"
• some might sound "dull"
• some sound "lively"

That type of difference cannot be rectified with an equalizer

If one speaker is brighter sounding, you might be able to correct for that with an equalizer - that’s about it.

There are even different sound signatures even between models within a product line from the same manufacturer.

In fact, I cannot even remember liking all models from a single manufacturer to date.

The closest I have come to liking most speakers in a product line is Tannoy

Regards - Steve

OK. Figured there would be some unique sound signatures that cannot be duplicated easily and I presume is mostly sound emanating from the enclosure, construction, etc.

In an anechoic space you can equalize and correct the phase of speakers by using FIR filters and make them sound more similar on axis than I think most people would admit, at least up to the volume where the speaker starts to distort audibly. In real listening environments it’s not possible to make speakers with different cabinet shapes and arrangements of drivers to sound indistinguishable because they radiate sound into the room differently and so the combined direct and reflected sound effect is quite noticeably different no matter how you equalize or phase correct. I would bet though that if you took two different reasonably well designed speakers with the same baffle shape, same driver sizes and driver placements on the baffles, let’s say a 5" woofer and 1" dome tweeter on 16" x 7" baffle, they could be equalized and phase corrected to sound similar enough under blind testing that most typical listeners and even a lot of seasoned audiophiles would have a hard time distinguishing them. Any differences that could be heard would most likely be from differences in the specific dispersion characteristics of the different drivers chosen.  

Short answer, no.

You can’t easily improve dynamics, dispersion or bandwidth via equalisation. Not without introducing additional distortion artefacts.

However you could make their frequency responses sound a lot closer.

In fact quite a few people already do this with headphones.

They simply dial in their saved preferred equalisation via the method of choice for every headphone they use. I tend to use some equalisation for every headphone I use. It’s not always easy as what can sound like an improvement with certain music/recordings can sound like distortion with other types.

Dynamic range matters.  A lot of highly regarded speakers have a lot of compression and distortion which is impossible to replicate with simple EQ.

Then the issue is that there is no single universally accepted standard for measuring the frequency response of a speaker in a room.  Consider a planar or horn speaker, vs. traditional dynamic. The integration of the speaker's signal with the room over time varies a great deal here.