I know what you mean about cheaper components and slower voice coil reaction times.

I had some really cheap non branded subs in a box that someone gave me once, and if i wanted to listen to anything that had a fast-ish beat with the bassline coming in on the off-beat, then there was no audible gap between the beat and the bassline, just one blur of wobbly bass, the speaker literally couldnt keep up.

Quote from Shadowww :

Not Sure, if you can listen to mp3's, something is really wrong with your ears.

Did I say that? No. I will say it now: I listen to mp3s. I can't see how my ability to listen compressed audio files tells you anything about my ears.

Quote from Not Sure :

Did I say that? No. I will say it now: I listen to mp3s. I can't see how my ability to listen compressed audio files tells you anything about my ears.

Well, if mp3 quality don't makes you puke, something is SERIOUSLY wrong with your ears. Or you have never listened to lossless music.

Whatever, kid

Quote from Not Sure :

Whatever, kid

Shadowww is right, The mp3 file format is compressed, and therefore lossy, and worse in quality than something like ogg vorbis format.

At the moment i have only got a set of cheapy tesco speakers hooked up to my pc, so it isnt as noticeable, but if you have any half decent system to test on, (such as the arcam system i was lucky enough to be able to listen to in their testing studio when i did some building work at their factory) the lossy, and therefore lower sound quality of mp3's is more than obvious in comparison to others, even wma or wav, depending what bitrate it is encoded at.

An Equalizer isn't just for running crap equipment, otherwhise they woulden't make EQ units that cost almost or more than $2000.

Every live show, every recording booth, every single high end system I have used or even seen while working with my dad has had at least a ten band multi channel EQ.

My dads old recording studio had an EQ that took up three shelves on the component rack, it cost somewhere around $1500 and was set up specificaly for the studio.

Thats what an EQ is for, to set up for a specific sound environment and specific speakers. If you have a room shaped a certain way, speakers will sound differently than they would in a differently shaped room regardless of how much the speakers cost. Thats a simple fact.

Most audio you will buy on CD or even MP3s won't ever be equalized for your system specificaly. You can't equalize a track when you create it and then play it back on a different system and expect it to sound the same, it doesn't matter how expensive both systems are, it will ALWAYS sound different. That is why it is left to the owner of the system to equalize the sound for the components in the system they run.

As far as the quality of MP3s, it doesn't realy depend so much on what bitrate it's at after 128, it's more dependant on who recorded it and how. I find lots of MP3s at 320 that sound horrible in comparasion to the same song on a 128 MP3. Sure the quality is noticable, but it's not horrifiying unless the person that recorded it did a bad job.

I encode my recorded songs in 128 MP3 to save space and the quality doesn't realy bug me that much, it's more annoying when I listen to an MP3 that was encoded badly.

Now.. :feedtroll


I agree with DragonCommando right there, I do the same thing to my ripped songs, I have them set to the bitrate of 128. I can't distinguish much of a difference between a song at 128 Kbit compared to a 320 Kbit version of it, even on my Logitech X-240 sound system. I listen mostly to rock and electronic music in general, drum & bass, trance, techno, etc.

The EQ is an important piece of equipment for playback and recording that can filter certain frequencies. I asked my older brother who even made his room into a music studio, as well as my father, who helps set up sound systems for company parties, both said that the EQ can be used as a filter necessary to make certain effects.

Quote from DragonCommando :

Every live show, every recording booth, every single high end system I have used or even seen while working with my dad has had at least a ten band multi channel EQ.

I agree that an EQ is an essential in a studio, but i just can't see why anyone would find any use for one during playback... For me, it's the audio equivilant of ricing...
At the end of the day, it's down to personal taste, and i've got no beef with anyone who EQ's, i just don't understand how anyone can think it makes the sound better, thats all...

Quote from Zipppy :

Now.. :feedtroll


I agree with DragonCommando right there, I do the same thing to my ripped songs, I have them set to the bitrate of 128. I can't distinguish much of a difference between a song at 128 Kbit compared to a 320 Kbit version of it, even on my Logitech X-240 sound system. I listen mostly to rock and electronic music in general, drum & bass, trance, techno, etc.

I can't listen to some music in 128kbit mp3 on my system, it just sounds horrid. Anything clean sounding (ie not like DnB where there's sounds coming from all over the place) is just horrible at 128kbit, 320kbit is just about bareable.
But like you say, on my Logitech speakers, 128 is fine, as everything sounds crap through those

Quote from Zipppy :

I agree with DragonCommando right there, I do the same thing to my ripped songs, I have them set to the bitrate of 128. I can't distinguish much of a difference between a song at 128 Kbit compared to a 320 Kbit version of it, even on my Logitech X-240 sound system. I listen mostly to rock and electronic music in general, drum & bass, trance, techno, etc.

Maybe you got crappy sound card - that can be reason of not hearing difference between 128, 320 and lossless too.

Quote from GFresh :

Adding EQ to music imo just makes it sound poor/terrible...

Disagree, i just woke up and i already have an headache, let someone else explain. DragonCommandi can do this, anyways. I dont have anything else to say that - if u think that EQ is used for crappy speakers or is user for ruining the sound thend ... w.r.o.n.g its just wrong.

So how i like to listen to music is wrong? ok then, can't see how really, but as it's wrong, i'll listen to it how you like from now on...

/moff to listen to artificial sounding music..

lol @ this discussion, seriously.

hazaky is trying his best to look like he knows everything about hifi, so no point in arguing with him. He obviously has been learning from shadowfwff

I personally listen to my music like zis - internal sound card on a laptop, logitech x-230 2.1 speakers with the bass knob on the woofer turned up, and in winamp, my EQ looks like a bowl - slightly higher low and high frequencies, slightly lower mid-range frequencies. And it does the job for me.

Quote from Zipppy :

...The SoundMAX driver I have is called "SoundMAX Integrated Digital HD Audio", a driver from 2006. are there any updates to that driver?...

If it's integrated, you should look for its drivers on your motherboard's manufacturer website.

Quote from Fuse5 :

lol @ this discussion, seriously.

hazaky is trying his best to look like he knows everything about hifi, so no point in arguing with him. He obviously has been learning from shadowfwff

I personally listen to my music like zis - internal sound card on a laptop, logitech x-230 2.1 speakers with the bass knob on the woofer turned up, and in winamp, my EQ looks like a bowl - slightly higher low and high frequencies, slightly lower mid-range frequencies. And it does the job for me.

Ey, maybe i know and others just dont know what im talking about. If u dont know about this stuff then dont tell me that "i know everything". Of course, im not super smart but i know what im talking about.

Quote from hazaky :

Ey, maybe i know and others just dont know what im talking about. If u dont know about this stuff then dont tell me that "i know everything". Of course, im not super smart but i know what im talking about.

What I'm referring to, is your attitude, which makes others believe that you think you are superior for having more knowledge in said topic. Which also makes people respond with similar upturned attitude.

Quote from fuse5 :

what i'm referring to, is your attitude, which makes others believe that you think you are superior for having more knowledge in said topic. Which also makes people respond with similar upturned attitude.

qft

...

I dont get it, is there anything wrong what i said?

If an EQ is used in high end sound systems don't you think it's there for a reason?

Seriously, the EQ is there to allow you to adjust the sound AT YOUR DISCRETION. It's there to allow you to adjust for a specific sound environement.

If you don't use one you will NEVER get 100% out of your sound system, because the room you are in will always effect the volumes of the frequencies that reach your ears. Additionaly, every speaker set is tuned differently, so you can't expect one recording to sound the same on every system.

The EQ isn't just adjusted based on the speakers, it's also adjusted based on the listening environment, the room and how the acoustics of it effect the sound. The whole point of an equalizer is to level the frequencies so the audio sounds as it was intended.


As a note, if you use presets on a virtual EQ, like the one on winamp, it will ALWAYS sound like garbage, they will never match the acoustic range of your speakers. Presets are for the tone deaf, plain and simple. Also, if you adjust it yourself and think it makes it sound like crap, you need to learn how to use an equalizer, I'm not saying you are dumb, but you don't know what you are doing.

Those are what I'm using.

Why are your tasty low frequencies turned down?

Basically my lowest are turned up few dB's. Greath tasty bass with dnb

Because I don't listen to (c)rap, po(o)p or Dumb 'n' Ass.

Quote from Shadowww :

Those are what I'm using.

That looks alot like my old EQ.

My old setup had an unusual EQ on the sound card, I could set the bands myself, so I could boost or lower any range I wanted and I found that if you boosted the very lowest and highest it didn't sound right. But on a ten band, they usualy only effect frequencies above or around the bands depending on the type of equalizer.

I have to stress though that a proper equalizer setup will NOT always have the bowl shape, its a common thing to see on mid range sound systems playing recorded media, because it boosts the sound and has a certain appeal. But even on those types of systems thats the easy way of doing it.

It takes alot of time to equalize a system properly, so I always recommend people play with the bowl shape instead, not everyone knows how to do it properly, and often times on mid range systems it will be good enough and does away with the need for seperate EQ settings for headphones and speakers. I use it on my system too, because I'm lazy XD.

I decided to actualy take the time and tune in my EQ, mostly because of this thread.

I now have seperate and proper configurations for my headphones (MDR-V150) and speakers (MM-1000)
They have a very slight simmilarity in acoustics, but not much.

You will notice the bowl shape is gone, this is what an equalizer tuned by ear should basicaly look like:

Quote from DragonCommando :

stuff

Ever heard about parametric EQ?

Quote from Not Sure :

Ever heard about parametric EQ?

Of course I've heard of a parametric equalizer, I've used parametric equalizers before. Hence the comment I made about having an equalizer that took up three shelves in a component rack, It was old and oversized, but it got the job done.

My old sound card had a virtual parametric equalizer, unfortunately it wasn't very good and was a chore to work with since everything was numbers, no sliders or virtual knobs what so ever.

Most virtual EQs arn't parametric because sound card manufacturers don't think people will know how to use them, and for the most part a ten band virtual graphic equalizer is enough for a PC sound system.

If I wanted to use a parametric EQ I'd bring my dads old one out of storage (not the big one) and set it up, but its quite pointless for the space it takes considering I don't do recording on my computer anymore.