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I combine some traditional treatment, a small diaphragmatic bass trap, several enclosed, but not air-tight areas with hidden rigid fiberglass and foam from 4-10" deep... and a lot of luck with my adobe house... massive walls with varied density (sand/clay/straw) plaster surfaces that angle out as they rise, irregular plaster surface due to the underlying adobes and natural plastering work, natural round and square beams with herringboned rough boards above with ±1/4-3/8" gaps for a ceiling... two layers of tar paper on top of the 1" boards, then 12" of fiberglass, then a relatively tight airspace ("flat" roof), with a frame and plywood covering with 4" of sprayed foam covered with elastomeric paint and rock. Finally, a brick on sand floor and a 27-28' wide x ±13-18' depth room in different areas, and openings into other rooms... lots of African wood sculptures (mostly masks) with irregular shapes and hollows... Altogether, I have lots of natural diffusion and absorption, lots of mass, and a fair bit of space for frequencies to work in.
With that, I came to love relatively subtle EQ done by ear from a really clean computer and player software. The way I hear it, and understand it, the player software EQ working on the files before the DAC avoids phase issues separate EQ boxes are often dissed for.
It all became a necessity here, my room having been pretty good with a pre-Rachel, post Hazen grid SE34, but with a Torii III, it went off! Not in a good way... even after tuning with tubes, modifying the MG-944s for less bass by plugging the plinths strategically, etc, bass was still too big and thick for me, and still muddling the mids, etc on many recordings for my tastes.
I started with tubes... toning down the bass the Torii and my room accentuated, with things like OC3 or OB3 instead of OA3s, also sometimes lower key small VRs. I came to prefer faster, more open/less thick rectifiers, while tending toward KT66s, and then 6L6 types, as well as ECC88 or PCC88 over E88CCs... With amp settings, and cables, vibration, speaker placement also tuned by sound... This was a fair bit of "EQ," but not enough for me, so I started getting more serious about room treatments and EQ together... scrambling to make my Torii the overall beautiful experience the SE34 had been, but with more power.
I started research running some bass test tones and found the aberrant frequency ranges. Then, having good software I could put EQ into, I started to play with mostly parametric EQs to temper the bass buildup areas in as precise a way as I could. Right off I preferred a pretty steep rolloff low dump, along with tight v Qs to specifically calm the worst areas into the upper bass. I started hearing nice bass that was tighter and less muddled by narrowly tuning down the frequencies that were too intense in the room.
This led me to listening up the frequency range, more test tones, listening and making lists of off frequencies, and then tuning the width of Qs and intensity up or down in those general areas by sound, the Qs I ended up with, often shorter and tighter for shorter/tighter frequencies. Then, after mitigating bass thickness, by tuning the mid bass to the upper mids along with the low bass, things really started to wake up. In the meantime, I was getting advice from Steve and Bob about how to tune the room and speakers.
Importantly, I was using a highly tuned Mac Mini with Audirvana then with error corrected full 16/44 files, and there is no doubt to me that the quality of the computer, files, and software, as well as how the OS is tuned to just music use.... and power, cables, and vibration in the computer... can make a big difference. The computer revealing the music without hurting it much is especially noticeable in the more subtle aspects of the sound, to me the most critical areas to pull without artifacts and truncation for natural sounding music... But also, if we are pulling the subtle, nuanced stuff really well, without the computer and software messing it up, it is likely the easier stuff to pull from recordings is really good too. So it is hard to pigeon hole. But this setup was really good at bringing out the beauty of the recordings without imposing notable nasties itself... stuff that may not come off as anything particularly noticeable but is slower/smeared, or dulling and/or glaring effect that may only be obvious from comparing it with front end tools that allow better revelation... And no doubt, if the front of the front end allows more complete musical information with proper timing from a recording, this effects the quality of good EQ.
In Audrivana, if I am recalling correctly, I could use 4-5 Apple AU EQs, with I think five bands each, allowing me to dig way in... The lowest bass started with a pretty steep rolloff in the 20s, down maybe 8-10 dB??? Can't recall, but pretty much cut. Then some smaller tighter Qs around the upper 40s and into the 50-70 range??? maybe 4-6 dB... Then not always, but generally very narrow ups and downs up the band that were from .1 to maybe 1 dB, but mostly .3 or less.
That was pretty intense fine tuning with that many Qs, and most of them narrow and subtle, the goal, articulately "mastering" the system/room across recording styles. It never really ended, but once the baseline was there, the changes I gradually made were pretty easy and low key, and the sound with EQ on or off was no comparison to me, balanced EQ making pretty much all recordings sound more real... EQ off, once the rest of the system and room were relatively tuned was good except on some recordings with a lot of thick low bass, but EQ on could get pretty exquisite for me... like real music in a really good room. And the way it worked using these small Q levels in this room/house, it sounded best at the seat for sound stage, but pretty great most everywhere. In fact, my final reference for tuning was taking a bath down the hall well away from the room. Subtle spectral and time issues I did not readily notice in the room became clearer there. I was literally tuning the "system/room."
Now, after lots more tuning of the power, computer, components, cables, vibration and room, I am using Amarra, still in my old super tuned Mini. Amarra has sophisticated, but really simple integrated 4 band EQ... Looking now, I have a 7.6 dB dump at 26 Hz that looks like it starts to roll off subtly around 60. Then a 5.6 fairly tight v cut at 61, and two wide lifts of .1 dB at 638 and 6404, the latter quite wide, so lifting a lot of the presence/texture/harmonics/finer-detail and space range a touch.
But now my power is quite refined by sound, helping pull the nuanced stuff and excellent speeds... I also have all fast and complete sounding cables.... and my Torii IV, CSP3, Zstage and DAC are all highly modified/tuned by sound... really good sounding blends of nice film caps (the Torii IV is all film now), wires, connectors, attenuators, etc... Also I have modified my Omegas with more immediate and complex sounding connectors, wires and damping, vibration work... And of course, carefully chosen, nice tubes... Each of these things matter, and how they are tuned together can make big differences in timing and speeds, including how timing and speeds effect revelation/resolution across the spectrum, and associated, how the three effect how un-smeared and complete all the balances are, including spectral balances. Also helping some, I am using a small, pretty fast, and highly tunable sub that is almost imperceptibly set up with many recordings, but it helps clean up bass smearing, especially noticeable on thicker/darker recordings.
Lately I have been working on another room that is also pretty big, ±32x20, with a lean-to roof, maybe 16 ft on the speaker end wall, and 9 on the other end of the 32' dimension, and opening on one side into a long, wide hall. It is more typical frame/sheetrock construction with a polished concrete floor, and tongue and groove ceiling. Lots of glass too, so a highly reflective space. But being pretty big, and the kitchen/dining/living area combined, along with the reflection bounces complicated by the ceiling, lots varied cabinets, furniture, thick rugs with thick pads, African art, some canvas paintings with heavy frames..... surprisingly to me, it is coming together. Just using speaker placement, tubes, cables, etc, and a somewhat complex EQ in an Eversolo T8 with quite a few mostly pretty subtle Qs, though still noticeably reflective, it sounds pretty good!
But I am using a highly modified, fast and clean Torii III, with nice power and cables... Also I am using my latest upgrade earlier HR-1s that I have tuned the plinths, wires, crossovers, damping and connectors on, and once optimally placed, I feel like they are helping in this crazy room. The sound is to me surprisingly good... not a lot of noticeable frequency build ups or comb filtering that cannot be adjusted pretty well by tubes, settings, speaker placement and EQ. Still pretty strong, but tamed, in some ways I like the reflective sound. It is less intense than hearing live music in a nice sounding old stone chapel, where the music is not messed with much except that it has strong reflections making it rich and alive, but the quality of the subtler reflective sound reminds me some of that.
Anyway, I wanted to see what I could do before deciding on treatments, and I was sort of amazed that I can enjoy a lot of music once the system/room got tuned, and a fair bit of subtle EQ work adds up to a real part of it!
Next I will likely make some absorptive panels that hang from the ceiling... but EQ is definitely my friend.
As mentioned though, I have a strong basis from which to work with EQ....gear that is super fast and awake, and biggish rooms helping! Also, I have played a lot with EQ, staying with tuning it over time to my collection of recordings and system/rooms, and each time, improving the natural revelation and speeds, while improving all the balances and realness of the sound.
For me, I think the necessity of EQ as a tool to tune the Torii to my space way back in the day was a big teacher... a "have to" situation, especially not being a bass head but loving fast, textured and natural sounding bass. So though challenging, especially at first, each improvement showed and kept me going. Then, especially once I heard the relationships of how each frequency effects the others, I guess I was sort of hooked. Under these conditions, and with relatively nice rooms to work with, I was less overwhelmed by it, and more caught by it.
From this experience, when I hear people dis EQ out of hand, I get how it can be sort of a mess, especially if everything we are working with is not pretty optimized on its own, including the EQ tool and pathway. But I also know that all things being pretty good, collectively making a system highly responsive to subtle change, that for me, done with care, EQ can be deep and highly relevant toward a more complete musical experience. I am thinking that even if I had really nicely super treated room, I suspect I would still be able to make the whole feel more real with the help of well applied EQ.
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Room Correction (Read 746 times)
