A few days ago I used REW to measure my speakers in different rooms and let it calculate the filters for a equalization below 250hz with +-3db linearity tolarency. When I put those into Equalizer APO it spat out a heavily corrected curve since my rooms and listening position are far from optimal. I had to set a gain reduction in APO of about 12db!
Even though the sound was noticably improved it made me think. What price am I paying with such a tremendous correction?
My first thoughts are:
- reduction of the maximum volume of the system due to heavily boosted frequencies that may clip way earlier
- more strain on the amps
- phase shifts, though I am not sure if there is a way to adjust between minimum and linear phase in APO
- struggle with the neighboors if the sub bass was boosted greatly when sitting in a bass hole
The CPU processing power of 1 core @ about 1% I consider negligible.
These are for software equalization. Further for hardware EQs/DSP:
- more noise and distortion in the chain since most gadgets perform sub par compared to high quality DACs
- more complicated signal chain and more points of failure
- increased cost
The feasible counters for some of the cases that came to my mind:
- the more ways a speaker has, the more tolerant it is to eq since frequencies are further distributed between chassis
- speakers with low distortion can handle heavy equalizations more gracefully
- for every 3db gain twice the power of a "normal" amp should be considered
Of course there are also benefits on both sites. Software equalization makes an external devices unnecessary but it's only active on PC. The other way round hardware gadgets enable to EQ for all connected devices on the chain but comes with all drawbacks listed above.
Do I overthink some drawbacks here? Or are there even more one should be aware of?
Even though the sound was noticably improved it made me think. What price am I paying with such a tremendous correction?
My first thoughts are:
- reduction of the maximum volume of the system due to heavily boosted frequencies that may clip way earlier
- more strain on the amps
- phase shifts, though I am not sure if there is a way to adjust between minimum and linear phase in APO
- struggle with the neighboors if the sub bass was boosted greatly when sitting in a bass hole
The CPU processing power of 1 core @ about 1% I consider negligible.
These are for software equalization. Further for hardware EQs/DSP:
- more noise and distortion in the chain since most gadgets perform sub par compared to high quality DACs
- more complicated signal chain and more points of failure
- increased cost
The feasible counters for some of the cases that came to my mind:
- the more ways a speaker has, the more tolerant it is to eq since frequencies are further distributed between chassis
- speakers with low distortion can handle heavy equalizations more gracefully
- for every 3db gain twice the power of a "normal" amp should be considered
Of course there are also benefits on both sites. Software equalization makes an external devices unnecessary but it's only active on PC. The other way round hardware gadgets enable to EQ for all connected devices on the chain but comes with all drawbacks listed above.
Do I overthink some drawbacks here? Or are there even more one should be aware of?