EQ, Mics, and REW, oh my!

[glaufman]

I also wonder, in terms of being accurate vs sounding good, and noting that the two should not be mutually exclusive but in a perfect world where the "drunk monkeys" aren't so drunk after all, is what kind of signal we should be looking for a flat response to? As in...
When we talk about scans in REW, I think we're talking about using REW to inject the test signal, and I'm always assuming it's test signal sweeps all frequencies with the same output level (not sure if that's going to be equal voltage (peak/rms) equal power, etc... for now I'll assume equal voltage, which should mean that a flat amp should translate that into flat power? In which case that's analgous to white noise? And wouldn't it make more sense to see how we respond to pink noise? Anyone with these pretty REW curves ever take a graph with pink noise going through their system?

[brucek]

More people should read and re-read this line......

I have gone from 10 filters on my sub to get a perfect curve fit, to using only 3 filters to knock off peaks and it simply just sounds better even though the measured response is not exactly on the target line.



brucek

[Spridle]

One thing that stands out with only using 3 filters on my sub as opposed to 10 was that the transition area between subs and mains is very smooth and I only have to reverse the polarity (180 degree phase shift). Before I was getting dips in the transition area that I couldn't fully fix even with varying the phase in 5 degree increments. I was also hearing some strange subtle bass sloppiness in certain songs with playing frequencies around 70-150Hz. With 10 filters, I think there must be wild phase shifting going on.

I also have an AudioControl SA-3050A 1/3 octave spectrum analyzer which uses pink noise as the signal. When I plot these points, SPL levels match up almost exactly throughout the spectrum to a smoothed REW curve. I use the AudioControl mic with REW with a calibration file I created.

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

glaufman wrote:

…someone who listened suggested boosting the treble a few days ago because he couldn't hear the attack in some cymbals, and I spent an hour trying to explain it was being heard as the artist intended, and boosting it for this disc would make it too bright for most other ...

Simple tone controls will do the trick without messing with overall system calibration. I use mine all the time when I run across treble-challenged programming and the reverse (which seems to be less common), and set them back to flat when I'm finished. Of course, I have simple knobs for my tone controls, which makes access quick and easy. Might not be the case with more recent receivers...

Regards,
Wayne

[atledreier]

brucek wrote:

More people should read and re-read this line......

I have gone from 10 filters on my sub to get a perfect curve fit, to using only 3 filters to knock off peaks and it simply just sounds better even though the measured response is not exactly on the target line.



brucek

I use one (1) filter to tame my 30Hz peak... Now if only I could tame my inner wall flexing 5mm whenever T-rex walk by, I'd be happy. There should be EQs for walls too!

[brucek]

I use one (1) filter to tame my 30Hz peak...

Yeah, I have been an proponent of less is more for quite a while now. I use to have a perfect response that absolutely tracked the target line. It used just about every filter the BFD had to offer. It simply didn't sound that great.

Then I decided to use REW to measure at multiple positions and place all the responses on the AVERAGE tab to see the over-riding trend that all the results shared. I used the Average button to create a new response from all those results. I created my filters from that average response (REW allows this) and created only two filters to get rid of the major resonance. I then only used one more filter at the crossover area. So I've been using three filters for the last while, and it sounds much better, and in any position I sit.....

brucek