Most sound engineers are not audiophiles. In fact the most popular speaker for mixing for the last few years have been the Yamaha NS-10, $300 a pair and they sound like crap! The idea is that if you can make the mix sound good on these, they will sound good on anything. I just read an interview with a mastering engineer who scrapped all his old equipment and equipped his mastering facility with audiophile stuff after hearing a friend's system. Your sound engineer friend listens to music all day, he no doubt spotted something out of whack with your setup right away without even trying. Each speaker system is different and will have frequency peaks or dips. Then again, many live music engineers (and rock musicians) have blown out their ears and need to boost the highs to hear them. Regarding EQ: pretty much every instrument on every popular recording has EQ applied during recording and/or mixing. The overall mix may have had EQ applied to it during mastering. You have to be careful with EQ; using it generally introduces phase shift, smearing the sound and causing frequencies to clash. Subtractive EQ causes less phase shift than additive. You are correct that overall EQ is often used to tune a room after 'shooting' it, using a frequency analyzer. You would find the sonic 'signature' or bias of the room, and forever after run everything through a compensating EQ curve. A room is a box with resonate frequencies that bunch up according to the dimensions. The worst would be a square room, creating standing waves (resonate frequencies). Next worst would be rooms whose walls are mathmatically related ie 10x20, 12x18 etc. Recording studios generally have high ceilings, too, and frequency absorbing materials of various types to control the sounds that are bouncing around. Finally, most loudspeakers are not really capable of reproducing the lowest bass frequencies. You can somewhat make up for it by boosting the bass. A subwoofer is better. Avoid centering speakers equadistant between walls or between the floor and ceiling to avoid standing waves. I don't consider myself an audiophile. I think you can put together a pretty good system without mortgaging your house. My stereo system in my living room has the bass gently boosted and the treble rolled off a bit. My studio system has a Tannoy sub and near- field Tannoy phase coherent coaxials. It sounds great. The best headphones I have ever heard are electrostatics-the highs are so natural. If I had the right room and the bucks and inclination, I would probably get a pair of electrostatic speakers and a good subwoofer to handle the lows. Interestingly, a few years ago, one of the audiophile mags did a test of all the fancy and not-so-fancy speaker wires. One of the ones that ranked pretty high was Romex - A.C electrical constuction wire! RR
Bree Mcdonough wrote: > Hi neighbor, BTW,I live north of Cincinnati about twenty minutes from > downtown. (I drive fast though) So you don't have an EQ? I have a nephew > who is a sound engineer and when he's in town sometimes he stays with me.... > loves to fiddle with my system. My system is Onkyo. Which is about three > years old now, but I still enjoy it. The speakers are DCM,are you familiar > with these? He fiddles constantly with the EQ maybe because of his > profession? I always thought of him as a audiophile type though. Do true > audiophiles only listen to vinyl? Thanks for your input. (I have a home > theater set-up too and am amazed how important positioning of the speakers > and thus because of that positioning how the sounds bounce off the wall. I > knew nothing about setting this up,my brother did most of the work. The > hardest part for him was hiding the massive amount of wiring in the walls.) > > Bree > > Quite the opposite, Bree. Audiophiles, true audiophiles, don't like tone > >controls. In fact some very, very, hyper-expensive gear lacks tone > >controls > >completely. The best setups have so much detail that the room is not in > >the > >way, so there's no compensation needed. A car, on the other hand, is a > >terrible place to listen to music for lots of reasons. > > > >(The exception to this is ancient 78s and LPs. Before the RIAA curve > >became > >the standard, each record company had their own "curve" and therefore, a > >corresponding tone compensation emphasis). > > > >Lama, who positions the living room speakers so they sound best without > >tone > >controls, then adds the furniture. Really. Then, I adjust the treble in > >the car. (sigh) > > > >Bree said, > > >> Having had a little Christmas cheer earlier tonight.......when I really > >want > >to feel the music and when I'm really in to it........I like mega bass. > >When I play Joni at home......mid-range is down,treble up. I know there > >are > >audiophiles that change/fiddle with the EQ on each individual song......not > >cd but song! They HEAR everything that was intended to be heard and maybe > >more?>>
