In live sound I use a driverack that has a built in room correction feature to tune the system to the room. So it got me thinking about my vintage stereo. I ended up using a 31 band dbx eq. I played pink noise into the room and listened to it with a real time analyzer app. Then I just adjusted the eq to flatten out the room. I think it worked good and it sounds really good.

Most people in the hobby today are starting to come around if not fully embrace room and speaker correction. It got a bad rap in the past due to poor implementations from various companies. It’s taken a long time to undue the damage to progress from things like early audyssey and whatnot.

Dirac Live is my hero

Yes, I took a set of measurements with a calibrated microphone, created correction filters based upon that, loaded them into DSP section of my music player/server application(s), and quite enjoy the results.

Even a well constructed listening room can benefit from it; not all speakers are going to interact with it in an identical way due to their different dispersion patterns.

There is a massive stigma about EQ / DSP / Room Correction but I found it to be the biggest sound quality improvement I’ve made to my system costing over £10k.

If you’ve got room problems that can’t be solved any other way like I did and many others do then it can make a higher difference to the sound.

The stigma started at the shop I bought some of my equipment from. Stating that the amp I bought was not good enough and that I would benefit from something else.

Either way I bought the amp with Dirac inside and I was absolutely floored by how terrible my system sounded prior to running Dirac and just how amazing it sounded afterwards.

I have quite a lot of room treatment but Dirac live is still night and day difference.

if you mean room treatment, most people just don’t have the ideal room layout / space for to properly incorporate not only broadband absorption and bass trapping— but diffusion AND soundproofing.

For a “proper” listening space, they all need to be in harmony.
For a listening space being built for the ground up, they all need to be taken into consideration.

I made some simple broadband absorption panels and bass traps myself. But I can’t do clouds or diffusion. And was only able to add traps to my front corners. My listening area is small, a 10’x13’x8’. With a ~3x5x8 opening in the room as a closet space. But I like to think it’s better than most.

! Vintage Jamo Concert II’s, micca rb42’s, minidsp2x4HD, sb1,000 pro and sb1,000 (non pro), emotiva basXa100, smsl ad18, 6 3” 2’x4’ broadband absorption panels (first reflections + behind me on the rear wall, 4 6” 2’x4’ bass traps (front corners floor to ceiling, rear lined with sorbothane) !<

But a lot of us deal with what we have. Not having an idea ll room shape, squeezing speakers into rooms that are WAY too small for them, adding too much broadband absorption with not enough bass traps, wanting to add diffusion where it won’t be utilized as intended because of space constraints etc.
sadly, not enough people give a shit about room treatment and it’s a shame because it gives incredible benifits. Too many people start going down the snake oil path and buying gear that— measured on scientific gear is noticeable… but isn’t audible.
Not only that premade solutions are expensive. For a small listening space that can incorporate absorption, diffusion, and bass trapping it can easily be in the ~$1,500 range. And that’s not something that can easily be a/b tested.

Yeah.

Yes, I do try to minimize the need for EQ with thoughtful placement, but there are limits.

Therefore: I just bought a second Lyngdorf TDAI 1120 for my study. The RoonPerfect does wonders.

I’m not genuine audiophile, but I’m working my way up there.

I think EQ would be important for sure.

For me and I thought process and actual practice, EQ is the last step.

First is obviously equipment. Good electronics and good speakers.

I want to make sure that the music entering the space is as good as it can be in terms of clarity, dynamic range, etc.

2nd is room treatment. All the electronics and speakers won’t mean crap if I’m sitting in a concrete cube with reflection, abound. I’m currently in the process of actively working on this aspect of my space. I’m building bass traps and acoustic panels to place around my room. Bass traps have the obvious positions of ceiling to floor in all 4 corners. Then I will build my acoustic panels and get those placed around. That will be a lot of trial and error at first placing them in spots, listening, adjusting, repeating. This also includes diffusers. Just need a few in a couple of places. But will be building and adding those after all sound absorption work is complete.

Once I have great electronics AND a well treated room, then I will properly EQ the system. I need to have everything in place before EQing. It doesn’t make sense to EQ a lot before treating the room as I’ll just have to do it again since the acoustics of the room will be changing it.

I look at EQ as the final spices to a dish. You go and cook your food. Taste it and say, oh yeah, I need a little more salt, basil, and pepper to make it taste just how I want. That’s EQ to me.

Why don’t people talk about it a lot? I’m guessing it just isn’t as sexy and talking about the 4-5 figure cost items people buy and place in their rooms. It’s a lot more fun to talk about your Trinnov or you Martin Logans or whatever. Than it is to discuss the mic you place on your couch or how you spent the last 3 hours on your hands and knees listening to your bass peaks and valleys. Unless your someone walks in on you doing it and you can laugh at how absolutely insane you must have looked.

With a device and microphone. If you’re really trying to equalize the room, before adding any preference to the settings. DBX pa2, or similar. Yamaha, Marantz and Denon have good room equalizer programs. Pretty good.

To EQ properly is expensive, complicated and time consuming, or both.

To buy new components is a surge of serotonin in my brain juice.

I like the second more.

I used to religiously eq all my headphones. Until one day i reformatted my computer and lost all the individual presets for my different cans. Never bothered recreating them and simply moved on, and never missed it. I know it sounded objectively closer to my preferred house curve, but at the end of the day excellent sounding music was coming out of them either way so i wasnt going to faff around anymore.

Yes.

I tried too but where are the buttons on the walls?

I live in a glass and concrete studio.

I accept that sound will always be a compromise. But furniture did make it quite good to be fair.