All speakers have a little EQ built in


It may come as a shock to audio purists but part of the work of a crossover is level matching as well as tonal adjustments of individual drivers.  Ahem.  That's what we call equalization. 

This is true whether the speaker uses active or passive crossover, and may be in place just to adjust phase matching in the crossover range.

Also, curiously, while companies may brag about the number of parts in their crossovers, more parts does not indicate more quality.  It may just indicate more equalization had to be done to the drivers to get them to match. 

erik_squires

Showing 1 response by phusis

That’s one of the cool aspects of outboard actively configured speakers and controlling the filter parameters with an external DSP at the listening position, on the fly from your network connected laptop; every filter tweak here is done via the already installed digital crossover, so no added tone controls other than what was there actively to begin with - in the digital domain, and with all filter parameters at your fingertips to be adjusted individually. I still prefer going about the settings manually with the aid of measurements, but with a good microphone and digital correction software this can also be done "automated" in both the amplitude and time domain. Have a bunch a presets made, and compare the different equalizations/adjustments to each other. That’s "tone controls" par excellence from my chair.

The prime takeaway here is tailor fitting your speakers to your room and your taste from the sweet spot. Vital aspects of setting the filter parameters aren’t "taste" per se, but the minute fine tuning from that framework I believe mainly is, and is where those subtle treats are found. I’ve never much cared for slightly tilted up highs and lows (kind of a mild loudness effect) which may evoke a "likeability" to the sound, certainly at lower to moderate SPL’s, but is rather more drawn to absolute coherency and a strong center core/sphere - perhaps something akin to (a more hypothetical) widebander or Quad-like ESL (i.e.: acting as a point source) on mean steroids, or the "musical monitor."