If you’re a follower of hi-fi trends, you might have noticed that tone controls don’t seem to be cool any more. High-end amplifiers have become very minimal, with only a volume control and power switch.
Well, there’s high end and high end. Richard Burwen’s system would certainly qualify as high-end by almost any definition, if only because of its 20,000 watts of amplification, 169 speakers, and 34 channels of active crossover and EQ, which Burwen claims to have spent a year adjusting by ear for a flat overall frequency response. In other words, the very opposite of a minimal system.
Moving on to my own hi-fi system, which has 60 watts of amplification, 2 speakers, and no tone controls or EQ whatsoever, and has been plagued by annoying room modes. I’ve tried several different speakers, but the bass on all of them just sounded terrible in there.
Recently, I realised that the fundamental problem is that my living room has the two large opposing walls made of solid brick. These two reflective surfaces allow a standing wave to develop between them, and the result is a highly resonant bass boost of about 9dB at 60Hz. I fed the measurements of the room into an online room mode calculator, and it agrees that I should get terrible bass.
So, what to do about it? The minimal solution would be to damp the resonance by installing bass traps. This would be a major carpentry project, though, and good bass traps have to be physically large, so I would lose space in the room. And, I hate working with rockwool, it makes me itch all over.
So, like Richard Burwen, I decided to install an EQ, and “tune by ear for flat frequency response”. My first attempt was with an Alesis PEQ-450, which is a 10-band digital parametric EQ. It only took about 5 minutes to find the offending frequency and notch it out, and I was amazed by the improvement. I found myself getting out those old hip-hop and drum’n’bass CDs that had just sounded offensive on the system before.
However, I wasn’t too happy with the sound quality of the PEQ-450. Maybe I was imagining it, but I felt that it grunged up the treble somewhat. It was also too big and I had nowhere to install it. I ended up buying two (they’re mono) Presonus EQ3Bs on Ebay, and again, tuned them by ear for best bass. I could have gone digital with a Behringer DEQ2496, but in the end, I decided that the simpler solution would be better.
So now, I find myself in the situation of committing audio sacrilege (tone controls are bad! So EQ must be worse!) in order to get a major improvement in the performance of my audio system. Mmm, sacred cowburger.
The EQ3Bs in place
The system. The graffiti paintings are by my brother, and help to break up standing waves too. 🙂