Graphic Equalizer fact or fiction?

[Willy6]

In my HiFi selling days, I considered them a glorified set of tone controls. That was when EQ's were common and lots were sold if displayed as part of a system but not many sold on their own. If anyone asked what they did, I would explain their purpose was to compensate for deficiencies in room acoustics, signal sources and source material. I'm pretty sure though that customers bought them just to flesh out their systems and for the visuals especially if it had lights. I was disinclined to use tone controls or loudness buttons so never bothered with EQ's for myself until recently when I "retrograded" into 8 track tapes. As my tape accumulation grew, it became apparent that some had their high frequencies partially erased. Improper storage I guess. That prompted me to hunt down and find a particular silver face NEC 10 band graphic (the model number of which escapes me) and it's only connected to the 8 track side of things. It does exactly what I got it for and there's the nifty factor - it has lights. One red LED in each slide.

I noticed that just about all of my vintage sansui gear sounds better and more accurate without the EQ I do have one installed but I usually bypass it unless one of my friends wants to play around with it and they usually make things sound worse when they do...

 

[tubeampking]

Fact.

After 30 years of EQ usage I had to have my Cerwin Vega AT-15s refoamed.
Still worth it though.

Um...you lost me on that one. Unless you were being facetious in which case I chortled.

 

[sKiZo]

I hear EQ's make your farts smell bad ... pass it on.

Anything audio can be dangerous in the wrong hands though. Set the bass sliders to +12db, and you may be in for a BIG surprise depending on what you're listening to and how loud you make it. Ditto for the top controls ... good way to fry tweeters if your system can pump out enough decibels in that range.

And of course, goes without saying, no amount of EQ can make Justin Beiber sound good, and your woofs might just shred and your tweets melt just to put themselves out of their misery ...

 

[4-2-7]

I can see why the vintage crowd kinda gravitates to EQ when putting their system together. Pretty much the same reason people shopping for "Home" audio 40 years ago. It looked cool, it made them look like they knew what they where doing in front off friends, it made the system look bigger and better, this is a professional system your looking at buddy. The manufacturers did the same thing, "look at our rack system, professional grade!!" and then they liked the fact it's more they can sell to the buyer.

Did anyone ever notice that during say the 60s....no EQ, except for the phono.

How about a lot of the 70s, when receivers where big and in wood boxes, was there any stand alone EQ built in a wood case to go with your receiver, tuner and integrate...Nope no EQ

Then all of a sudden the rack mount gear showed up, a roll around cabinet, separates, EQ, rack mounting R2R.......Reverb...Strobes...Audio Mixers... The Manufacturers loved it since Quad took a dump and they couldn't sell the idiots a bunch of supporting gear for it. Hey lets build a bunch of crap that looks professional and they will buy it....idiots 95% of those buyer didn't know how to use half that crap and still don't....


McIntosh has a Room correction component, that you run a sequence with a microphone and the computer sets parameters for the system in that room. With that said please do tell me one high end manufacturer that sells a EQ with their system today....none!!!!

So either the equipment suck so bad in the late 70s and 80s one needed a EQ
Or the music sucked so bad in the late 70s and 80s one needed a EQ
Or the rooms sucked so bad in the late 70s and 80s one needed a EQ

The one constant I can think of.... the same idiots are around

 

[Willy6]

I can see why the vintage crowd kinda gravitates to EQ when putting their system together. Pretty much the same reason people shopping for "Home" audio 40 years ago. It looked cool, it made them look like they knew what they where doing in front off friends, it made the system look bigger and better, this is a professional system your looking at buddy. The manufacturers did the same thing, "look at our rack system, professional grade!!" and then they liked the fact it's more they can sell to the buyer.

Did anyone ever notice that during say the 60s....no EQ, except for the phono.

How about a lot of the 70s, when receivers where big and in wood boxes, was there any stand alone EQ built in a wood case to go with your receiver, tuner and integrate...Nope no EQ

Then all of a sudden the rack mount gear showed up, a roll around cabinet, separates, EQ, rack mounting R2R.......Reverb...Strobes...Audio Mixers... The Manufacturers loved it since Quad took a dump and they couldn't sell the idiots a bunch of supporting gear for it. Hey lets build a bunch of crap the looks professional and they will buy it....idiots 95% of those buyer didn't now how to use half that crap and still don't....


McIntosh has a Room correction component, that you run a sequence with a microphone and the computer sets parameters for the system in that room. With that said please do tell me one high end manufacturer that sells a EQ with their system today....none!!!!

Keep the ball rolling

 

[stevo137]

EQ's are in other words "filters" which allow you to filter out or add more or less to frequencies.
Your preamp may have bass/treble control, the Graphic EQ is an extension of those two controls.
They have their place for many applications including what has been mentioned in this thread.
I listen to music pretty much flat but if I were interested in using an EQ, I would use a Parametric which many listeners won't hear the difference.
If you blow drivers don't blame the EQ, you simply sent distortion or power beyond what the driver can handle and this is usually caused by trying to extract more sound than the existing system can deliver because the sound is not what your ears are expecting or longing for.

 

[4-2-7]

Keep the ball rolling

Post #15 twiiii

Understand what he is saying, as far as I know he's the only professional that posted in your thread. He set systems up for McIntosh in homes and clubs, he needed to know how to get the best out of the space and equipment that was given him to work with.

1st speaker placement and matching system components.
2nd room treatment
3rd EQ, very sparingly if the above still needs minor tweaking.

 

[House de Kris]

How about a lot of the 70s, when receivers where big and in wood boxes, was there any stand alone EQ built in a wood case to go with your receiver, tuner and integrate...Nope no EQ

Hmmm, I thought for sure Soundcraftsman had 10-band octave equalizers in the 70s in wooden boxes. Well, I guess I've been edumacated now. So many things I don't recall correctly from long ago. I'm sure glad others have much superior memories of the past. Oh well....

 

[the skipper]

If used improperly it could suck your amp dry and possibly overdrive your speakers. This would because you applied too much boost. And, even then, you would get ample warning before anything bad happens. If something sounds bad, turn it down immediately.

You're best off using an eq it to cut a band of frequencies, not boost it.

 

[Djcoolray]

Well...

Like the guy at work said,"you've got to be smarter than the equipment your working with." But, first, last and always read...read and read about the equipment before messing with it. There are so many people that just hook stuff up just to see what they sound like together. Some people shouldn't mess with things they don't understand until they download an owners manual and read up on what they are destroying. Of course someone always can counter what anyone says.

 

[4-2-7]

Hmmm, I thought for sure Soundcraftsman had 10-band octave equalizers in the 70s in wooden boxes. Well, I guess I've been edumacated now. So many things I don't recall correctly from long ago. I'm sure glad others have much superior memories of the past. Oh well....

Ok one manufacturer (anymore?), I bet they sold a ton of them point is not a common home audio component at all then.

 

[damacman]

Look at it like this - if you boost a frequency by 10dB, then your amplifier will deliver 10x the power at that frequency with respect to other frequencies that are flat (not boosted, not cut). Your typical Octave EQ (ten sliders, one in each octave) has a 30-35 Hz slider at the bottom and a 15-16 kHz slider at the top. The typical "feel good" equalization contour is the big happy face, with those two sliders each boosted the most. Now consider that your average dome tweeter handles about 10 Watts RMS and the average home speaker rolls off pretty quickly below 40 Hz and it should be obvious why your friend said that EQs can lead to blown speakers.

In my 20s, I used to use equalization extensively. Then, I acquired a pair of loudspeakers that were relatively flat from 25 to 15 kHz (or so). Equalization was no longer necessary. Here are a couple good rules to follow when using equalizers:

1. Never boost frequencies below the tuning frequency of the speaker. For example, let's say your big dawg ported speakers are tuned to 40 Hz. Boosting at 30 Hz (a half octave below tuning) is not only pointless, it can cause the woofer to exceed it's mechanical limitations and become damaged. At the very least, the amplifier power used at that frequency is simply heating the voice coil.
2. Cutting at a given frequency (to reduce a peak) is always preferred to boosting the frequencies around the peak. As twiiii points out, this is good EQ etiquette.
3. Frequency response dips near the crossover point(s) of the speakers cannot be fixed with equalization. This is typically indicative of a phase problem between the drivers at the crossover point.
4. He who EQs least EQs best.

I think where the inexperienced enthusiast runs into trouble with an EQ is overpowering the speakers unbeknownst to them. When I was in the car audio industry, we used to sell a product called The Epicenter (the home audio version was called the Phase Coupled Activator). In the wrong hands, this device was like putting a hand grenade inside a power amplifier or subwoofer. People came back with the toroid flopping around in the amplifier (from getting SO incredibly hot, it would actually unsolder itself from the board). Others came back with subwoofers where the surround was torn all the way around the driver or the spider was pulled loose from the spider landing. Even others came back with seized up woofers where the voice coils had been subjected to double or triple their rated power for hours on end. Of course, nobody ever admitted to turning that knob past 1/4 way. We knew better . . . and as a result had to qualify customers better before selling them one.

 

[hbd85]

Fiction! IMO, the only reason for me to have a graphic equalizer in my system is that: I need something to look at while listening to music. Dancing LED bands, not a bad idea.

 

[xero-D-hero]

Anyone who actually believes there were no EQ's being sold in the 70's must've been too young (or possibly too wasted) to actually remember the audio gear from that era.

Admitedly I was a young'n during that period of time,but that's also when this was the sorta stuff I lusted after,and I remember plenty of EQ's in systems back then.

ADC (Sound Shapers),Dynaco (SE-10),JVC (SEA-80),Luxman (G-11),Phase Linear (GEQ-1100),Pioneer (SG-9500/9800),Rotel (RE-2000),Sansui (SE-7),just to name a few.
Heck just about all the big stereo companies had EQ's in their catalogs/showrooms back then,especially towards the tail end of the '70s.

And not all of them came in wooden boxes,so ask me that should'nt need to be a requirement for the sake of this discussion.
In many instances wooden cases would've been an optional item as well. Sometimes those wood cases were built pretty poorly too.

Sure there were the Soundcraftsmen (20-12A) and several other virtually unknown EQ's like the Spectro Acoustics Model 210 (<<<< and yeah I own examples of both those).

And yep both those DID come in wooden boxes,,,SAE also had some like that as well,,,the Mark series EQ's IIRC...

True it was the early 80's that saw the explosion of EQ offerings,that is when they REALLY started to saturate the audio catalogs & showrooms.
For those that dont remember things very well,that deal sorta goes hand & hand with the boom of cassette tapes as a consumer oriented recording medium.
That's also largely why there were'nt many EQ's in systems back in the 60's,as there also were'nt that many tape decks in them either.

That deal aside,we all need to take a moment and remember to respect others POV here. After all that is this forum's moto ***all audio ~ no attitude*** and it seems some posts in this thread are coming dangerously close to copping a bit of 'tude w/the anti EQ rhetoric,and that really needs to end lest we wanna see another of these EQ threads devolve into another p!ss!ng contest and thus get locked.

If one does'nt like EQ's that's their choice.
If one is a EQ diehard that's their choice as well.
The thing to remember is nobody gets to come here and slam/flame other members who dont feel the same as they do.
That sorta behavior is clearly against this forums rules.

But ask my opinion,and I'll say this deal is utter nonsense,as for a good long while I EASILY would've been considered the worst case scenario (still could be by some) in terms of EQ users,and I have'nt damaged ANY gear due to my using an EQ,and I'm no saint folks I use & even abuse my gear (from time to time),yet I've never had the sorta failures the scare mongerers are saying will beset your system the very second you put an EQ in the chain,me I trust my past experiences more-so than this sorta conjecture that is being passed along as absolute fact.

I've also been around plenty of other folks audio systems with no EQ's in them that have had these sorta failures,so honestly sometimes $#!t just happens.

Now I've probably went and jinxed myself with this post,but WTH no guts no glory,LOL.

FWIW

Bret P,

 

[KentTeffeteller]

Re: JBL L-100 failures by EQ users. Dealt with 8 such incidents as a repair technician. The exact thing posted about is what killed all 8 tweeters and the reason why was given. And all those users used extreme boosts in the HF region. JBL didn't replace any of those tweeters for free and warranty was voided. User error is why.

 

[4-2-7]

How about a lot of the 70s, when receivers where big and in wood boxes,

The Manufacturers loved it since Quad took a dump and they couldn't sell the idiots a bunch of supporting gear for it.

So either the equipment suck so bad in the late 70s and 80s one needed a EQ

Anyone who actually believes there were no EQ's being sold in the 70's must've been too young (or possibly too wasted) to actually remember the audio gear from that era.

Since your commenting on my post, I was referring to the early part of the 70s

ADC (Sound Shapers),Dynaco (SE-10),JVC (SEA-80),Luxman (G-11),Phase Linear (GEQ-1100),Pioneer (SG-9500/9800),Rotel (RE-2000),Sansui (SE-7),just to name a few.


Heck just about all the big stereo companies had EQ's in their catalogs/showrooms back then,especially towards the tail end of the '70s.

Mostly all of the above came out the later half of the 70s, and I didn't go track down all the dates,

Yes and again that's what I had pointed to as to time frame.

 

[BobbyBluz]

I still have scan analyzers and RTA's from back when I did Pro audio installations. Every room is acoustically different plus every listening position in a given room will have different frequency responses. There are numerous variables to take into consideration when attempting to calibrate an EQ curve. Even though I have several equalizers, calibrated mic's and analyzers in my equipment inventory I don't use them at the moment for only one simple reason: I'm lazy in my older years and no longer have the energy or desire to EQ out my listening areas.

Proper EQ can work wonders for audio quality and improper can make great gear sound bad. The bottom line is if the listener likes what they're hearing then all is good.

 

[Frank Sol]

Anyone who actually believes there were no EQ's being sold in the 70's must've been too young (or possibly too wasted) to actually remember the audio gear from that era.

"And I'm wasted and I can't find my way home"

 

[Frank Sol]

The bottom line is if the listener likes what they're hearing then all is good.

Back when people were not 'afraid' to use these...

They were happier with their music - IMHO of course

Cannot remember anyone complaining about their JBL 100 or HPM 100 sounding bad

Maybe we were dopes or it was the dope

 

[Wildcat]

I've had two EQs in my life. First one was a crappy 5-band Realistic, the gold-colored unit that matched the equally crappy 25w/ch integrated amp and even worse Realistic Nova-? speakers. Popped those woofers in no time. But hey, I was in my mid teens and that's all the budget allowed. Funny but when I started upgrading components (especially the speakers), I found I didn't need EQ anymore and with my current system, I don't even miss the tone controls. I do still have a 10 band EQ that I kept around in my prior main system for curing a few minor ills with sources (like old cassettes and reels, cutting a bit of "murk" to make things a little clearer) but other than that, I found the response unevenness and phasing issues caused more problems than they solved.

I attended a seminar at AXPONA regarding room tuning, and it is as 4-2-7 put it above. Get the speaker and room position correct first, add room treatments, then use EQ or room correction electronics only as a very last resort. The problem he pointed out was that many plopped their equipment in the room and used room correction, which made the sound good at the single listening position, but threw it even more out of whack at all other positions.