Consumer Stereo EQ's

[Lackatee]

Hello guys,

I often have a thought when im mixing, that I'd like to compensate for the Consumer Stereo EQ's and what the end user might be boosting in his or her car and/or *insert any other device here*.

I've searched around, and even broke out a few manuals for my car stereo and home reciever. Even searched around on Google, though I might not be touching on the right keywords. I'm having a hard time finding any info on what freq's these consumer EQ's are boosting/cutting at in the "Bass", "Mid" and "Treble" sections.

I guess my question is this.. Is there some sort of standard for Consumer stereos, of any kind, in what Freq's the EQ perform's its boosts/cut's at in each "band" on the stereo? Or is it everyman for himself and you could get anything? For example, I would think that "Bass" would boost 80hz and it would be fairly common among many stereo systems. But then you might have some Random Stereo that does it at 100hz or something..

People that have systems with gigantic amps and crossovers in there cars are out of the realm, obviously.. I'm just talkin your basic stereo/reciever EQ.

Anyway,

It would be great to know what some of you have discovered or know about this. It would be much appreciated.

[bgrotto]

I don't do any mastering, but I do keep a boombox handy to reference the records I'm mixing. It's got one of those "loudness" buttons that hypes the shit out of everything, and makes for a great double-check on my mixes' HF and LF content (if there's too much of anything up or down there, you'll hear it on this thing!!! Ouch!!).

For checking the midrange, I keep a cheap pair of computer speakers hooked up to our headphone amp (one of them not-so-great-sounding Furman cue box that gives each musician his/her own mix, plus a simple hi/lo shelf EQ). The suckiness of the amp, combined with the suckiness of the EQ (which I set in a variety of configurations for the sake of reference), combined with the suckiness of the speakers yields a pretty good "worst case scenario", a la a listener hearing the music on their laptop speakers or something similar.

I prefer to work that end of the "translatability" factor out in the mixing stage, and let the ME work in a broader sense, if that makes any sense...

[masterizer]

Originally Posted by Lackatee

Hello guys,

I often have a thought when im mixing, that I'd like to compensate for the Consumer Stereo EQ's and what the end user might be boosting in his or her car and/or *insert any other device here*.

I've searched around, and even broke out a few manuals for my car stereo and home reciever. Even searched around on Google, though I might not be touching on the right keywords. I'm having a hard time finding any info on what freq's these consumer EQ's are boosting/cutting at in the "Bass", "Mid" and "Treble" sections.

I guess my question is this.. Is there some sort of standard for Consumer stereos, of any kind, in what Freq's the EQ perform's its boosts/cut's at in each "band" on the stereo? Or is it everyman for himself and you could get anything? For example, I would think that "Bass" would boost 80hz and it would be fairly common among many stereo systems. But then you might have some Random Stereo that does it at 100hz or something..

People that have systems with gigantic amps and crossovers in there cars are out of the realm, obviously.. I'm just talkin your basic stereo/reciever EQ.

Anyway,

It would be great to know what some of you have discovered or know about this. It would be much appreciated.

Not all stereo's are created equal, you need to mix and master so that it will sound the best it can on all systems. People listen on a wide range of speakers from built in laptop speakers to the top of the line audiophile systems.

One of the very important things is the midrange because all of the speakers are going to include mids, lower quality speakers will leave out low and sub frequencies as well as high frequencies.

Charles Dye uses low end computer speakers for most of his mix, this is also why many great mix engineers mainly use ns10's. If you can make a mix sound good on lower quality speakers, it will most likely sound better on a better system as this is the idea behind the method.

That being said, you also need to make sure that the lowend and highs are correct in your mix as well. This will require speakers that can accuratley reproduce the necessary frequency range.

When you're finished with your mix, mastering will apply the final adjustments and transfer the album to its final medium. If you listen to the top mixes, they sound good on just about any system you listen on. I like to listen on many systems for mixing and feel that it really helps the mix translate well on other systems.

[Lackatee]

You guys flew of course on me here.. I'm just asking if theres a "common" ground that "most" stereo's meet at when it comes to cutting boosting on a generic 3 band eq.. That was it. My question comes more out of curiosity and wanting to experiment a little. I know how to mix, and I know how to get it to sound good on other systems. That's old news.

Anyway, I actually found some info on it later and found out what I needed to know.


EDIT: And yes Safe, it is fairly common @ (bass)100hz (mid)1k and (high)10k.. Thanks

[OMNIFEX]

Originally Posted by Lackatee

Hello guys,

I often have a thought when im mixing, that I'd like to compensate for the Consumer Stereo EQ's and what the end user might be boosting in his or her car and/or *insert any other device here*.

I've searched around, and even broke out a few manuals for my car stereo and home reciever. Even searched around on Google, though I might not be touching on the right keywords. I'm having a hard time finding any info on what freq's these consumer EQ's are boosting/cutting at in the "Bass", "Mid" and "Treble" sections.

It is usually the following:

60 or 100 Hz for the Bass

1 kHz for the Midrange

16 or 10 kHz for the Treble.

It is very easy to measure the starting point of any bass/treble control.


Cheers!