Rives PARC parametric equalizer

This is quite normal. I assume you have installed it or you have heard the impact of the PARC in a friends system.

Bass response in 99% of home environments is extremely bumpy due to room modes. Therefore 99% of people with significant bass extension will have some extremly accentuated bass notes, a "Peak". Other bass notes will be muted or nearly non existant as there is a "Null".

Of course, this introduces some additional dynamics in the bass that were NOT on the recording.

Of course, 99% of people who have this problem and do not correct for it quickly get used to this odd bass sound.

=> This odd bass sound becomes "normal" as your brain recalibrates as to how it should sound for your musical favorites.

The first impression of correct bass is that the "WOW" is gone...the BOOM BOOM TIZZ gives way to a more balanced sound.

It takes time to get used to it!

You may notice that you can actually hear a bass riff properly with equal loudness or correct emphasis on each note as the musicians intended.

You may notice suddenly that each individual track sounds completely different to eachother in the way the bass sounds.... rather than the sameness you get when room modes dominate.

So give it time and you will realize that it is like suddenly removing the sugar from your coffee...hard at first....but eventually you realize you can fully taste the coffee and you get more out of it!

Note conceptually it is better to treat your room as much as you can and to get as even an in room bass response as you can prior to EQ treatment with a PARC. One of the criticisms of EQ'ing to adjust for correct bass is that you are adjusting BOTH the primary signal and the reverberant signal TOGETHER to get the right OVERALL level of sound. This means the primary signal is actually muted somewhat due to the preponderence of the reverberant signal. Conceptually some people postulate this may take some of the "edge" off of what you hear in the bass (changing the timbre or the relationship between primary and reverberant field). This is a fair argument...it is well known that a room with large RT60 is disasterous sounding and even if you get the signal levels in the bass correct through EQ you still suffer from overly long reverb times....simply put bass notes last too long and this will mask what you can hear in between these notes.

Shadome--well stated. We have found on installing the PARC in systems where people have been used to the bass bloat for some time, we have to reduce the attenuation on the notch filters as much as 50%. It's almost like we have to ween them off of the bloated bass because they have become so used to it--as you say "recalibrate". We have also found--even for myself, that totally flat is not pleasing. A little interaction with the room and bass is needed to give us a sense of space--a context so to speak. I think some people have gone for flat and found it's a bit on the sterile side, but that is the beauty of it--you can adjust it not only for accurate measurement, but for personal tastes as well.

Thanks to Shadorne and Rives the inventor of the PRAC for your insights. As i stated i like to hear from folks who have used the device. If you are not one of them, please don't bother. I am a PARC user. In my system, i love what it does to attenuate the bass boom from the standing waves in the 35-45 hz range. However, I can subjectively hear that it subtlely curtails the dynamic contrasts and sucks some life out of the overall sound of my LPs. I only attentuate at 40hz. Further up I don't have problematic peaks. instead i have some suck outs in the 100 to 200 hz range.
I am using a power cord and ICs costing the same as the PARC to feed the PARC. I would like to hear from other PARC users whether they hear anything similar to my experience. And was it bothersome?

I have heard the PARC--obviously, in very high end systems. There are a few things that you might do to see what it could possibly do to the signal--we engineered these things in for just this purpose.

First, the bypass is a true bypass. It goes off the audio boards. Second, if you power down then all the circuitry is removed from the PARC and all you are left with is the connections. You might set up a memory that has no attenuation for any band and then go to bypass and then turn the unit off. In theory--if the PARC is totally transparent and has no effect what so ever you would hear no difference in these 3 settings. Let's face it, you are going through a more complex signal path with each of these. In the world of mega buck cables, speakers, and room acoustics you can hear the difference in almost anything--but here is a way to hear exactly what that difference is. Give it a try--you be the judge.