What is your favorite house curve

[Jerry Sobel]

Who uses DSP in their two channel or multichannel set up?

How do you like to set up your house curve?

 

[DonH56]

Same for everything, pretty linear slope from mild bass boost to mild treble cut.

 

[Jerry Sobel]

Same for everything, pretty linear slope from mild bass boost to mild treble cut.

How many dB difference? I have experimented with a 6 dB up to 12 dB difference.

Have you ever tried a 2.1 with 2 channel?

 

[DonH56]

How many dB difference? I have experimented with a 6 dB up to 12 dB difference.

Have you ever tried a 2.1 with 2 channel?

I am not sure without pulling up the Dirac Live file and looking. I think bass boost is about 3 dB and the curve is about 3 dB down at 20 kHz. I will engage the loudness control when listening at low levels but find too much bass boost overpowering. As for the treble, I can't hear over about 12 kHz now (too many wild, loud times when I was younger), but my sons like the top end of my system.

I am not sure what you mean by "2.1 with 2 channel". I have had a subwoofer since I first built my own servo design around 1979 or 1980 to go with my Magnepan MG-I's. I am a strong proponent of having a good sub or two (currently four in my system) and rolling off the mains (using an active crossover, which is now part of my pre/pro unit, natch). I had a sub for music decades before I heard about HT applications or had a system for HT.

 

[Jerry Sobel]

I am not sure without pulling up the Dirac Live file and looking. I think bass boost is about 3 dB and the curve is about 3 dB down at 20 kHz. I will engage the loudness control when listening at low levels but find too much bass boost overpowering. As for the treble, I can't hear over about 12 kHz now (too many wild, loud times when I was younger), but my sons like the top end of my system.

I am not sure what you mean by "2.1 with 2 channel". I have had a subwoofer since I first built my own servo design around 1979 or 1980 to go with my Magnepan MG-I's. I am a strong proponent of having a good sub or two (currently four in my system) and rolling off the mains (using an active crossover, which is now part of my pre/pro unit, natch). I had a sub for music decades before I heard about HT applications or had a system for HT.

Yes I mean a sub. I have two and I was going to try a Dirac live set up with my mains and the subs.
Thanks for response. I can't hear above 16khz.

 

[Blumlein 88]

I like a total drop off of about 9 db from bass to 20khz. Sometimes that's too much bass. So instead I might do flat to 200 hz. Then a 6 dB drop from there to 20 khz.

 

[Cosmik]

Surely the only real answer is 'the right one' i.e. the curve that the interaction between the room and the correctly set up speaker produces - rather than it being a target.

Beyond that, I'm told a lot of audiophiles favour the 'smiley face' EQ setting.

 

[Jerry Sobel]

Surely the only real answer is 'the right one' i.e. the curve that the interaction between the room and the correctly set up speaker produces - rather than it being a target.

Beyond that, I'm told a lot of audiophiles favour the 'smiley face' EQ setting.

I totally agree that the room matters but most do like some bass relative boost.

 

[Rodney Gold]

A house/target curve after DRC is entirely subjective , B&K have a suggested curve , but this is not cast in stone. I set the curve by ear
This is what I use with my trinnov

And this is what I often used for DIRAC

 

[Soniclife]

How many dB difference? I have experimented with a 6 dB up to 12 dB difference.

What are you measuring with, and correcting with currently? They sound large adjustments, especially if they are over a large frequency range.

 

[Cosmik]

What is the real world parallel of a user-preferred house EQ setting? I don't think it makes any sense.

In the real world you can't ask the orchestra to boost the mids and cut the treble. All you can do is ask them to play louder on the violins and play the trumpets more quietly. And then they sound as though they are playing louder on the violins and playing the trumpets more quietly. Once you get into the subjective EQ game you have already lost the hi-fi battle; your EQ variations bleed all over the individual instruments and blur them all together; you are regarding sound as textureless audio paste.

All there is is 'high fidelity' (as close as you can get) and 'audio paste'. If you find that 'high fidelity' doesn't sound any good, your system isn't high fidelity!

 

[Fitzcaraldo215]

I use the default Dirac Live target. Perhaps, after listening to that at length for evaluation, I became adapted to it. So, I was never tempted to tweak it. There was no question, though, that it sounded much better than no-EQ. I prefer to be a set it and forget it kind of guy, anyway.

But, that curve also happens to generally agree, though details might differ slightly, with B&K, Toole, Olive, and many others, including an old Gordon Holt curve I remember from decades ago. However, I agree that if you prefer to modify it to taste, there is nothing to stop you. Perfect is not well defined in the circle of confusion about what your discs are supposed to sound like. So, subjective preferences are in play if you wish to take the time and effort to tweak it to taste.

A friend is also using Dirac, but he is a perpetual tweaker. Before that, he had a Cello preamp/equalizer with multiple bands of Mark Levinson approved graphic EQ. He loved that, and listening to his system with him was an ordeal. His hand would almost constantly and unconsciously adjust the EQ and volume during play to "get it right".

He has spent countless hours and hours creating alternative Dirac target curves with slight broadband tilts and dips, mainly of a few negative dB in certain frequency ranges. He uses them more as tone controls, selecting during play from the four set up in Dirac's GUI dashboard. But, some of those alternative curves are under almost constant modification.

Do they make a difference? Yes. Are they better? Some, no, in my opinion. But, I suppose I could get used to most of them over time. But, hey, it is his way of having fun with his system. It makes me think of a cat needing to mark his space with urine. If my friend does not constantly custom modify the curve and explore the sonic differences, he just will never be happy. Hey, the controls are there to do so. Gotta use them.

 

[DonH56]

What is the real world parallel of a user-preferred house EQ setting? I don't think it makes any sense.

In the real world you can't ask the orchestra to boost the mids and cut the treble. All you can do is ask them to play louder on the violins and play the trumpets more quietly. And then they sound as though they are playing louder on the violins and playing the trumpets more quietly. Once you get into the subjective EQ game you have already lost the hi-fi battle; your EQ variations bleed all over the individual instruments and blur them all together; you are regarding sound as textureless audio paste.

All there is is 'high fidelity' (as close as you can get) and 'audio paste'. If you find that 'high fidelity' doesn't sound any good, there is something wrong with your system somewhere: it could be better!

Alas, few of us have rooms with the size and acoustics of concert halls, and the acoustics are different for small rooms. I do not sense any blurring of instruments, and part of the reason for EQ is I do not listen at "live" levels very often, and the rest is simply because I like it. Until a couple of years ago my systems were always as flat as I could get them and I rarely added EQ to taste. I don't know if it's due to the recordings I have, just the way I feel these days, or what, but it is not because my system is lacking. I have noticed a tendency of many recordings to sound too "bright", at least brighter than I hear at live concerts and such, in many small rooms and that matches what I have read in various reviews and AES papers.

YMMV - Don

 

[RayDunzl]

Who uses DSP in their two channel or multichannel set up?

How do you like to set up your house curve?

I do.

For me, flat, or a very minor downslope.

I match the equalized RTA at the listening position as measured by a dumb microphone to the RTA of the recording (unadjusted)

Mic in-room at the listening position, left and right RTA of the CD source. The mic sums the L/R so, the trace peaks don't match exactly. They do get closer if micing a single channel. Red is peak over time, black is the current excitation. The blacks aren't 100% sin sync, using three instances of REW.

You might note that the recording has plenty of "slope" built-in starting about 1khz.

I think the studios provide enough rolloff on top, and maybe a little too much cutoff on the bottom. You can't do much about missing lowend.

This recording isn't bad on the lows, many drop at 60Hz or more.

My viewpoint is not expected to be popular, but you can try it if you like.

Earlier post: https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...verall-system-integrity.892/page-5#post-25717

 

[Rodney Gold]

The house curve is to put back what a normal room will do , you correct to flat which sounds rubbish and then you add in the lf room gain and the hf dropoff .

 

[RayDunzl]

The house curve is...

... preference.

 

[RayDunzl]

Ok, here's my house curve at the moment. Listening to HDRadio WSMR Classical on the LSR 308.

 

[amirm]

When I do perform localized bass optimization with PEQ filters, after I am done I put in a shelf boost of the whole region to taste. Without it, there is a loss of bass impact.

 

[amirm]

Here is the target curve (in dashed lines) for JBL Synthesis Arcos system for the main speakers. Looks like a 5 dB drop from 80 Hz to 20 kHz:

The faint gray is pre-correct, the blue, post correction.

 

[NorthSky]

A house/target curve after DRC is entirely subjective , B&K have a suggested curve , but this is not cast in stone. I set the curve by ear
This is what I use with my trinnov

And this is what I often used for DIRAC

That looks real good to me.