I am just curious if any one has added any equlizers to their HT systems. I have an older receiver 75 x 5 and I am trying to get a little more emphasis out of my front speakers and was wonder if a simple $100 10 band equalizer will help at all.
Jerry
Posted on
I love equalizers! I do use one in my system. I have had the same pair of speakers through 4 amplifiers and 5 different living rooms. A simple adjustment of the EQ and it's all good. A couple of years ago I searched long and hard for a good EQ to compliment my system. It was the only time I repeatedly purchased units just to take them home to try them only to take them back, usually the same day, because I was unhappy with the sound. The problem was mainly the hissing (white noise) that was generated by the EQ. I wanted to go preamp-EQ-amp, so any noise made by the EQ was dumped right into the amp with no attenuation. Since my new preamp has no tape/processor loop, I have to go pre-EQ-amp. I tried several $1-200 EQs that were designed for both home and professional use and they all hissed. Then I finally splurged out of depseration and spent $400 on the Yamaha EQ-550. I am so happy with it. There is absolutely no noise generated from it. It only has a +/- 6dB adjust instead of the usual +/- 10-12 dB found on most EQs. It has the pink noise generator on it and comes with a microphone to adjust each octave to the same level in the room. It's not perfect tuning but it's a good starting point. I usually just use my "Golden ears" to fine tune it to the way I like it. I took a crash course on proper EQing once from a sound team who set up the new recording system for my church which I do the recording for once a month. The main good bit of advice I took from it is to not adjust the levels more than 6 dB because that is where the phase of the frequencies really starts to lead or lag. Below that it doesn't really move (which was proven by a real time analyzer on his lap top). Also, adjust down, not up. If you find that you need more treble and bass, for example, then instead of adjusting that up, leave it alone and adjust the midrange down. Or if you find you need to adjust more than 6dB, then adjust all frequencies between + and - 3dB. Working at Biamp, I got to see how EQs work as I repaired many of them, and really all that happens is that there is an input op amp and an output op amp. In between there is just a straight line with nothing else. How a band gets adjusted is that there is a series of op amps that sample the signal and filter out the appropriate bands. If you turn a fader up, then that op amp sends out a boosted signal into the stream between the input and output op amps. Kind of the analogy of a babbling brook feeding a large river. The large river does not have to go through the brook just so they can combine. Or you could think of the main signal as a freeway, and all the adjustments as on ramps. If you turn the fader down, then the op amp sends an inverted signal into the stream. If the fader is at 0, then the stream passes by it, not through it, unaffected. And since the op amps are voltage controlled, all the faders are doing is adjusting the voltage going into the op amps so they can boost or cut the signal. No part of the signal goes through any fader. I just want to stress that the topology of an EQ is very simple and the sound goes only through a few op amps. Far fewer than it does in a CD player, tuner, preamp, or processor. An EQ has far less of a chance of damaging the signal as any other piece. If you understand this about an EQ, you can realize that it really doesn't tamper with the signal as bad as some people make it out to. So good luck. I do recommend them, but get a good one. Don't skimp on a cheap one, and you will be happy.