Hi ,

Do you use eq on studio monitoring?

I'm Thinking of getting a good 2x31 equalizer (home studio).

Can someone sdvice me on how to use & from what to be careful ?

Thanks ,

Gal

Just a hint on monitoring,you should not be trying to make your monitoring sound better,you want it to be true.If you had an acoustic spectral analyser and checked your rooms acoustics then maybe notching a resonant freq may be a good idea,otherwise work more on your mixes.

Favorite is to fix / treat the room..

Eqing monitors can = bad voodoo

absolutely agree

We all tried it during the '70s and learned the hard way that it doesn't work unless you can restrict the eq to just the sound of the speaker with none of the room entering into the measurements.

Even then many common 1/3 octave eqs sound so bad that the net result is worse.

A little bit of eq in a well treated room can be fine if you know what you are doing. It can add that last 2%. Try calling Bob Alach at 781 239 0000, he modifies Klark Teknik DN 410s for room eqing.

Steve
www.bangrecording.com
www.blacklinerock.com

I don't EQ my Genelecs. Coco (Steve Brandon) tunes my soffit speakers on White 4400s, but I never mix with them.

I have some acoustic treatment by auralex, an also have an urei 539 room eq to my EAW SM-20 (pasive monitors descontinued, great sound)

Do not use EQ's to adjust CR monitors. Listen to your speakers....get used to the sound of your speakers.... become "one with your monitoring system".

Just my opinion.

ahh, my favorite soapbox: auralex foam is doing more harm than good. it is absorbing mids and hi's, skewing the balance of your room heavily towards the low mids and lows.

if your room is like 99.9% of all home studios, you need the opposite approach: absorbing low-mids and lows, diffusing the highs. low freqs are very problematic in small rooms, and need to be tamed with effective absorbers if you're ever going to get an honest picture of the music.

i HIGHLY recommend spending some time over at ethan winer's acoustics forum: http://www.musicplayer.com . read, ask, learn. getting your room properly treated is the single most important thing you can do to create mixes that translate. plus, it's a joy to work in a room that sounds good.


gregoire
del ubik

Ubik is 100% right as usual.. The auralex stuff in my experience really skews the frequency response in a bad way. It dampens the upper mids and highs and leaves lows boomy.. This means you start adding more top end (makes mix more tinny) and you'll use more reverb and spacial effects then needed. Auralex combined with other treatments can work.. I'd pair it up with some good fiberglass panels or some Realtraps.

Steve
www.bangrecording.com
www.blacklinerock.com

You should only EQ monitors to get them flat. Cheap monitors either have not enough bass or not enough treble. But high quality monitors are pretty much totaly flat and you shouldn't need an EQ. When I first started mixing I had a hard time adapting because I was so used to the hyped sound that you hear in car stereos and boom boxes. But you know what? After a few months of listening non-stop to my monitors I began to hear how much fuller and more natural music sounded. Now I just wish I had a pair in my car and tv!

Agreed.

Besides, why would you want to get used to a speaker that has been eq'd differently than what you'd find in other studios? (i.e. getting used to NS-10's, so you can have a good frame of reference when entering a new studio)

cheers,
Charles

thanks all ,

MY studio room is not good sounding & not even.

MY speakers (genelec 8040) are good , I just wanted to correct some room falts .

But I'm getting use to the sound now.

thanks

Spike,

> MY speakers (genelec 8040) are good , I just wanted to correct some room falts . <

As others explained, EQ does not work to correct room faults. You might think it can, but it really can't for a large number of reasons.

The two biggest problems in all smallish rooms are a severely skewed low frequency response and modal ringing. Both of these are best solved with as much absorption (bass trapping) as possible.

--Ethan

Couldn't agree more!

Think about this: You want two 31 band eq's and they can't be super expensive. So that signal's going through all those cheap little b**tards (62 of 'em to be exact) and there's gonna be what coming out the other end?

And that's not even the real problem (see all the above posts)

Treat the room (diy if you have to, not too difficult).

Buy good speakers (worth EVERY penny) - Genlecs are basicaly crap, no EQ will sort them out (yet another case of industry hype).

Why attempt to correct a time domain problem in the frequency domain?

Fix the room - that's the better choice in every way...

nice explanation of WHY eqing monitors is bad:

Imagine your speakers have a nasty bump (12dB) in the 80Hz range.

So, you cut 12db's of 80hz out of them. Stuff sounds 'balanced'.

I walks a drummer with a kick drum that has a problem in the 80Hz range as well (let's say, er... 12db ). Since you already cut that freqency by that amount, things will sound normal/balanced/ok, but outside of your room the kick will sound too big...

don't eq your monitors. Genelec is no crap, to each his own ears/taste.

Herwig

I guess Herwig's bought into the Genlec hype as well

To me, they are way WAY coloured speakers, with a horrible top end and nasty mid bass peaks and dips and no bass extention. If thats your 'taste', more power to ya!

I have used an eq to treat my room because of the geometry of the room where i cant do anything else. It may be good or bad, but hear my points:

I understand how my system sounds, but when measuring against pink noise through RATIONAL ACOUSTICS SMAART software I can flatten out the response just a little.
Say your EQ has a switch from +-6db to +-12db, in case you decide to equalize the room I suggest you do it in +-12db mode and then once you have the faders placed, switch back to +-6db so your modifications become of a smaller value.

I agree that you should only flatten out the response of your speakers instead of making them sound 'like you like' - if you attenuated something it would end up being too loud outside of your setup and vice-versa. However by having an EQ set you would have a bypass feature which would give you 2 different perspectives on the sound. You could probably imitate NS10s with an EQ which in its turn is making you have 'sort of a second monitoring control'. Makes sense?

P.S:
Yes its tricky to deduct the room noise etc when analyzing, but its possible. Also a cool way would be to use SONARWORKS REFERENCE software to scan your room and then imitate the outcoming curve with your EQ.

And finally when you do the setup I highly suggest topping it up with a frequency sweep test tone to make sure your response has no dips or bumps, since its very easy to get tricked by the new settings to be better.

12 year old thread bump of the day!

Monitors are built to have an ultra flat response. Why would you mess with somethings that's already correct?

If you don't hear a flat response because of room acoustics then you fix the room.
If you have hearing loss then see a doctor.

An EQ doesn't fix either of those issues, it in fact masks the issues and makes it even more difficult to mix.