Anyone Ever Use Equalizers

[69 camaro SS]

Hey everyone, You have all given me alot to think about. I'm positive I will purchase the VSX-815 Pioneer reciever. Does anyone ever use equalizers anymoe? I have one hooked up to my old yamaha. Maybe I should just pack the EQ away. Let me know all of your oppions

[Woochifer]

If you're referring to those old school graphic equalizers, they aren't used much anymore simply because the newer multichannel AV receivers don't include the tape monitor switches or premain couplers that you need in order to attach one to your system. You can still use one with a two-channel system, but in general, what's left of the two-channel market now caters to consumers who generally prefer as little signal processing as possible. But, that doesn't mean that equalizers have gone out the window altogether.

Quite the contrary, the home theater market has seen a resurgence in the use of equalization. Except that instead of a standalone box with 10 to 30 slide controls on it, you're now seeing increasing usage of digital parametric equalization integrated into the receiver/processor, which is far more flexible and amenable to the intended usage of equalization -- correcting for room-induced problems and flattening out the extremes in the frequency response. Most receivers on the market now have some sort of auto calibration built in, and many of them include parametric equalization to calibrate the sound to the room acoustics.

The difference between a parametric EQ and the older graphic EQs is that a parametric EQ allows the user to set the center frequency and adjust the bandwidth for frequency range being adjusted, while a graphic EQ has fixed center frequencies and fixed bandwidth. The advantage of parametric EQs is that you can specifically zero in on any problem frequencies and more precisely make the corrections/adjustments needed.

Parametric equalizers are especially effective when hooked up to subwoofers because the room boundary effects and low frequency wave interactions will almost always create at least one major frequency peak or cancellation. The equalizer won't correct for cancellations, but they are very effective at attenuating room induced peaks that make the bass sound bloated and boomy.

Do a search for some of the other past threads that discussed parametric equalizers, and you'll see that a lot of people on this board have seen major improvements in their subwoofer performance by using these devices.

[Feanor]

Hey everyone, You have all given me alot to think about. I'm positive I will purchase the VSX-815 Pioneer reciever. Does anyone ever use equalizers anymoe? I have one hooked up to my old yamaha. Maybe I should just pack the EQ away. Let me know all of your oppions

I'm still forming my opinions, but, of course, you can hear a difference. I got a parametric equalizer, the Behringer T1959.

I had previously measured the response of my system using a Radio Shack meter and the Rives Test Disk 2. There were clearly peaks and valleys in the response. I set up the equalizer to offset the main irregularities. It certainly my opinion that the sound is better equalized -- instruments and voices sound more natural with most recordings. There is no significant loss of resolution, again IMO.

Notably the T1959 is a "tube" equalizer, though the tubes have nothing to do with the equalization. The tubes' effect is much more subtle than the equalizers, but it does soften or "round" the sound; I reiterate that loss of resolution is zero or extremely slight. The Behringer circuitry permits you to literally dial the amount of tube effect you want; it does this by progressively over driving the tubes thereby inducing 2nd order harmonic distortion. Though the bottleheads might hate my saying so, I suspect this is the main "benefit" of tubes.

For more equalizer benefit, I might go for the Behringer DEQ2596 someday. This does parameteric and/or 1/6 octave equalization in the digital domain; it also has a pretty decent DAC so I hear. But note it cost $300 vs. $130 for the T1951.