Newer AV pre-pro's with built in Parametric EQ's
There have recently been a few companies that have released AV pre's with built in parametric Equalization built in. I know Sherwood Newcastle is one, and I've heard the likes of B&K and maybe Denon have incorporated the same in their products. I presume all these products are using EQ's in the digital relm, which is beneficial on a number of levels.
I've personally installed hundreds of systems over the years, and know full well the benefits of flat accurate bass response from a system, and corespondingly how critical speaker/seating setup is to getting high fidelity fundamental perfomance, even maximum dynamic range from a system. That said, there's often only so much you can do in a given acoustical space with bass problems! Often, you just have compromises that can't be overcome except by either major acoustical treatments or EQ'ing the system.
I recently installed the newer Sherwood Newcastle pre-pro in a clients home, that utilized an onboard auto-calibration and Parametric EQ function. I must say I was very very pleased with the resulting improvement and effectiveness it provided acoustically in the room. Infact, I encouraged my client to use a processor that had a built in Parametric EQ, after I showed him some serious problems in his systems bass response performance, via measurements and playing back sound through the system initially, while using his old processor. The short take was he had lots of nasty room mode peaks in his system, that weren't able to be overcome via moving speakers and seats around, as he had fixed wall speakers mounted, and a fixed couch location. And this was in a rather large acoustically forgiving family room, that was open to the rest of the house...this usually makes for smoother response potentially, and easier to setup mostly, compared to typical small rooms.
The resulting setup was yeilding modes that were more than 20db higher than the rest of the frequency spectrum, and that wasn't even considering response from subwoofer, bass bellow 80hz! The solution, was indeed using some form of Parametric re-EQ'ing. Installing the Sherwood piece with the parametric EQ solved most all the problems in the system! The resulting sound was very very coherent, flat/accurate, and with lots of dynamic range and unifomity, not to mention smoothness. Very very very effective! Infact, it was necessary.
Anothe possible solution is to insert outboard Parametric EQ's into one's system. However, unless you spends big bucks on a super high quality, even transparent sounding parametric like the Rives Audio PARC, which is used extensively at the High end audio shows these day's, you're stuck using sonically compromising lower end unit's, which add grunge and take away from the purity of the signal...thus the reason many audiphiles dislike and even shun EQ'ing all together!
I'd like to see ALL the AV pre-pro manufactures out there start to incorporate EQ's into their products, personally. There are now several subwoofer manufactures out there with products that incoroporate either analog or digital parametric EQ's! These EQ's (parametric narrow band) are absolutely INVALUABLE, and often an extreme necessity towards higher fidelity perfomance from any system, and needs to be a fixture in these products! The restulting improvements are just simply to real to ignore.
I'd personally like to petition all the AV manufactures out there for more of this technology being implemented in products. Maybe all of you can help join in, who are in "the know" on this subject?
Anyone out there have any feedback on using these EQ's, or have tried em in their systems?
