Quote Originally Posted by skeptic
As I said in another post about critical listening, the one about the test they used to weed out those with the ability to hear whether one tone was higher pitched than another, sometimes it's a matter of knowing things are "slightly off" rather than being able to put your finger on the exact problem. This leads to experimenting with the octave to octave balance and often getting it dead wrong. Sometimes you know you've made a mistake right away, and sometimes it takes awhile. If you've ever done any cooking and you have made a sauce which doesn't taste quite the way you want it to or the way you remember it, you add a little more of one ingredient or another and taste it again. You realize that you can't just follow the cookbook recipe if you want to get it just right. Your own sensory reaction to it is the final judge and the cookbook only gets you in the neighborhood.

One nice thing about most equalizers is that they have a bypass switch which allows instant AB comparison of the unequalized signal with the equalized signal. While the volume will not be exactly the same, you can compensate by keeping one hand on the volume control and the other on the bypass switch. This will allow you to see over time if things are really getting better. There's no doubt in my mind that they can and do get better, much better. BTW, if you make mostly cuts rather than boost the signal, the equalized signal will sound softer than the unequalized signal. Making cuts rather than boosts was strongly recommended to me many decades ago by an Altec Lansing salesman whose "Acousta Voice" equalizers were among the first professionally available as far back as the 50s and 60s. He told me as I think someone else repeated here, the associated phase shift with a cut from flat is inaudible.

Saturday, I had occasion to go to a local Best Buy on a wild goose chase to find a small electronic translator which could translate back and forth from English to Italian (they didn't have one.) It may have been the first time I was ever in a Best Buy (I hated it.) Anyway, while I was there, I took a look around and the only equalizer they had was an analog unit made by Audio Source. It had such a low profile that it seemed to me it would be very difficult to adjust. The entire range of adjustment for each slider was only an inch or two making small adjustments seemingly hard to repeat or to even see visually. I'd look for one that has a much higher profile with longer range for the sliders. I also would find it inconvenient to use rotary controls like the ones on McInotsh units. "Graphic" equalizers show you at a glance what they are supposed to be doing to the frequency response. I don't think it matters so much which brand you buy but how you use it. However, as I learned when my ADC SS315 failed and I substituted a BSR unit with identical center frequencies and adjusted the controls to the same settings, they didn't sound alike and the adjustments had to be made all over again. The two years is just about up and the sound seems just about right again.

One other thing I'm resigned to is the realization that the best a loudpeaker can do as far as I am concerned is to make musical instruments have the right timbre on some recordings. All other attributes IMO play a secondary role to this goal. This is at least one quality I can readily understand. If some other characteristic such as "imaging" (I'm not sure most people even agree on what imaging means) plays a back seat, so be it.

Yes, it is definitely worth the time and effort. When you get it right, it's like owning a much better stereo system than you started with.
Thanks for the explanation. I think it's clear to me now.