Equalizer in a Hi Fi system


Just curious to hear everyone’s opinions on using an equalizer in a high end hi fi system. Was at work tonight and killing time and came across a Schitt Loki max $1500 Equalizer with some very good reviews. What are some of the pros / Benefits and cons in using one. Just curious. BTW. I’m talking about a top of the line. Hi end equalizer. Mostly to calm some high frequencies and some bad recordings. 

tattooedtrackman

Showing 3 responses by mapman

Room Response

 

This example shows my family room response curve that represents the room’s acoustics. Every room is different in this regard. You can see peaks and dips at specific frequencies. To correct those, an equalizer has to be able to target the frequencies where the peaks/dips occur. Most graphic equalizers are designed to target pre-determined frequencies per band. That kind of equalizer can change the tone of the sound but cannot address a specific room’s acoustics which is a primary factor that distorts what you hear relative to what was recorded. A parametric equalizer can be set to address specific frequencies so that is a better solution. Then you have DSP which provides the ultimate flexibility in changing what you hear. DSP is a computer program that works with digital audio signals and. applies algorithms that can automatically determine what needs to change and then create the specific equalization and apply it to the digital audio signal to adjust it for the room. Whereas with a traditional graphic equalizer you can adjust specific frequencies but you cannot do that in a manner that properly addresses the variations that a specific rooms acoustics creates. Hope this helps to understand the differences.

 

Absolutely yes to using equalization for room correction but in this day and age DSP is the most powerful tool to do this best, not analog eq technology that was the best one could do practically say 10-20 years ago or so.
 

If you have a good quality system to start with, corrections for room acoustics is the missing link in most cases to reference quality sound and modern DSP tools provide a much more powerful, cost effective and flexible way to tackle room acoustics properly, though for the less technically inclined, a good old fashioned parametric equalizer could probably do the job.

 

To the best of my knowledge graphic equalizers with fixed ranges lack the flexibility to precisely do correct room corrections in most cases in that each room is different and graphic Equalizers lack the flexibility needed to do the job correctly.

Traditional analog equalization is somewhat dated and very limited 20th century technology. 😉

 

But, I will be attempting Room correction using Roon DSP shortly. Will be using Room EQ Wizard software to create convolution filters for several rooms. Currently use similar 3-rd party filters with Roon and headphones and the results are a big leap forward that would be costly otherwise.

Digital convolution filters can be thought off as traditional analog equalization on steroids. Roon Room Correction