Graphic Equalizer

TechLarry

TechLarry

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Is there a graphic equalizer you can get that works at the system level and can adjust the sound before it goes out USB to the DAC ?
 
Unfortunately no, there's no built-in way in Windows for that to work. The soundcard would have to implement it, you can't just load one. The only way I can think of to do it in the computer is fairly complex. You get something like ASIO Link Pro and route system audio in to a VST host, which has an EQ, then route audio out from that to the soundcard. It'd work probably, but talk about overly complex.

Instead I'd consider just buying a physical graphic EQ and using that. Does cost more, but then there's no issues of compatibility, it is physical hardware that everything gets routed through.
 
Assuming you are after EQing music with good quality:
There is the most awesome EQ that is very comprehensive, shows you the actual true response of the EQ and it doesnt reduce sound quality perceptibly.
I'm using it with extremely good kit with WASAPI.
The downside is that you cant buy it any more, there is only a free demo version which is what I use.
It has lots of demo settings to sample and you can create your own EQ from one and save it under a basic save system.

It called Electri-Q Posihfopit edition.
http://www.pcjv.de/vst-plugins/eqs-filters/electri-q/
Its a VST plugin so needs a VST wrapper, I use this one with Foobar2000
http://www.yohng.com/software/foobarvst.html

You can use any preset to model the number EQ bands you want, I used the 30 stage one, its ace.
As you move the sliders it shows a curve of the actual response you will get.
You can also add more stages in between that are completely floating (not tied to a single frequency band) but I cant for the life of me remember how lol.
There is a copy button that lets you press an A|B button, make changes to one and quickly flick between them to hear the difference.
In some ways its rudimentary, in others its very advanced.
You will make a right mess of things until you get used to it.

After you have fiddled with it for a while (can be hours sometimes), it will put up a banner and wont let you make any more changes until it is restarted.
It will still work exactly as you set it and doesnt give any nags when playing music.
However, it loads the last saved setup or the last setup you shut down with, so be sure to save often.
Bit of a pita to get it into a useable state but its the nads!

I havent found anything better for sound quality.



You can use probably any VST plugin with a Windows VST Host utility.
 
Have you tried Equalizer APO? I can't say for sure if it supports USB audio, but it's definitely the most powerful system wide windows EQ I've found and would be surprised if it didn't
 
username00 said:
Have you tried Equalizer APO? I can't say for sure if it supports USB audio, but it's definitely the most powerful system wide windows EQ I've found and would be surprised if it didn't
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I'm sure I used this a long time ago but couldnt find it on my PC and couldnt remember the name.
It was really good but required editing of text files to program.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/equalizerapo/
As one review stated its a good idea to use it along with Room EQ Wizard (REW) and a compatible mic to EQ the peaks and troughs of your room out.
(its compatible with the output of REW)
There appear to be some GUIs for it now.
 
Just remember that an EQ is a poor mans solution for fixing problems that really can't be fixed using an EQ :D
 
B00nie said:
Just remember that an EQ is a poor mans solution for fixing problems that really can't be fixed using an EQ :D
Click to expand...

Not how I look at it, I use EQ to enhance my already good equipment, or I use it to fix poor recordings. Back in the 60s did they even know what bass is?
 
Yep, many songs need EQing to sound their best.
Old Bowie, LED Zep, old Abba, old Floyd, some shrill sounding modern albums ...
When I was young I used to know the exact position on the bass control for every single song to get the best from it.

Not all hifis can be perfectly set up.
WAF and physical limitations apply so there may be some correction necessary.
 
Nenu said:
Yep, many songs need EQing to sound their best.
Old Bowie, LED Zep, old Abba, old Floyd, some shrill sounding modern albums ...
When I was young I used to know the exact position on the bass control for every single song to get the best from it.

Not all hifis can be perfectly set up.
WAF and physical limitations apply so there may be some correction necessary.
Click to expand...

Usually any corrections make things worse not better. I could accept using EQ on a good speaker if the correction is based on acoustic measurements. Done by ear - well let's just say it's not hifi anymore at that stage. There's also the problem of rising distortion and the danger of exceeding the physical limits of the bass speaker by EQ:ing it to an unnatural extension.

Dynamic speakers respond badly to EQ due to their large moving masses. On an electrostatic panel things are much different due to the weightless characteristic of the piston.

One of the most horrible scenarios I can imagine is having a graphical EQ and then feeling the need to EQ the system based on each record. It's far more relaxing to just enjoy the music knowing that your system sounds correct and any possible flaws are due to the recording.
 
Ok, foobar actually has an eq that works.

But....

WTF is up with all the love for this program ? It reminds me of a 1990's telecom program.
 
There's a grapical GUI for Equalizer APO. I think this is the best solution for system wide EQ, it's easy to use with graphical interface and IMO it sounds good as well (not all EQs works/sounds equal) with very low distortion. As low footprint as you'll get, set n' forget IMO. :)

https://sourceforge.net/projects/peace-equalizer-apo-extension/
(Don't mind most of the extra options it comes with but some of them are quite okay, like using Crossfeed doesn't ruin sound quality for instance and leads to that little bit better stereo width/separation).

Luckily my current headphone setup doesn't need any corrections but Equalizer APO + Peace Equalizer GUI extension would be my goto EQ.
 
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Nenu said:
Yep, many songs need EQing to sound their best.
Old Bowie, LED Zep, old Abba, old Floyd, some shrill sounding modern albums ...
When I was young I used to know the exact position on the bass control for every single song to get the best from it.

Not all hifis can be perfectly set up.
WAF and physical limitations apply so there may be some correction necessary.
Click to expand...

One of the worst offenders are old Beatles albums, ow, my ears.
 
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TechLarry said:
Ok, foobar actually has an eq that works.

But....

WTF is up with all the love for this program ? It reminds me of a 1990's telecom program.
Click to expand...

Once you tweak the ever living fuck out of it, it becomes very very handy for managing music. I do most of my initial utility work with incoming music files. Get the tags, artwork, and format worked out. Then I throw it over to iTunes for safe keeping.

That being said.....yes, upon first use it is not intuitive one bit, and even for me I still stumble my way through setting up again despite having in installed on 3 computers.
 
I have to admit, I do keep topping with it :)

The fact it can go portable is a huge bonus.
 
rezerekted said:
Yes, that helps with stereo separation issues but they are still not very good recordings even in mono.
Click to expand...

With a good speaker you can listen to the recording as it is. Trying to 'fix' the recording through EQ may help a bit in some cases but in the long run it's futile. You'd have to readjust your eq for every recording. What happens in the end is that you probably just leave a 'smiling' eq on permanently and listen to a jilted sound from all recordings.

Of course the option of adjusting the settings constantly is even worse - you're never happy with the sound then and it removes the joy from listening to the music.

Once you achieve a certain level of fidelity in your system you'll realize that no adjustments are necessary. You listen to the recording as it's playing and it sounds as it sounds, flaws and all. Many times with a real good speaker set even ancient recordings 'pop' to life with a realistic sound stage coming from the simple 1 mono / stereo mic recording technique.
 
I never use EQ to fix recordings anymore. I use REW and UMIK-1 measure and use REW's auto EQ custom tuned close to the Harmon curve and apply the PEQ's to my DSP. Boom, never have to readjust anything, at the most maybe a bump or two on the subs for really old recordings but I rarely do that. One of these days I'll upgrade to Dirac Live.
 
B00nie said:
With a good speaker you can listen to the recording as it is. Trying to 'fix' the recording through EQ may help a bit in some cases but in the long run it's futile. You'd have to readjust your eq for every recording. What happens in the end is that you probably just leave a 'smiling' eq on permanently and listen to a jilted sound from all recordings.

Of course the option of adjusting the settings constantly is even worse - you're never happy with the sound then and it removes the joy from listening to the music.

Once you achieve a certain level of fidelity in your system you'll realize that no adjustments are necessary. You listen to the recording as it's playing and it sounds as it sounds, flaws and all. Many times with a real good speaker set even ancient recordings 'pop' to life with a realistic sound stage coming from the simple 1 mono / stereo mic recording technique.
Click to expand...

I have good speakers (ATC SCM11) but prefer to just not play those recordings very often. They sing way too much about girls and love for my liking anyway. :)
 
|Tch0rT| said:
I never use EQ to fix recordings anymore. I use REW and UMIK-1 measure and use REW's auto EQ custom tuned close to the Harmon curve and apply the PEQ's to my DSP. Boom, never have to readjust anything, at the most maybe a bump or two on the subs for really old recordings but I rarely do that. One of these days I'll upgrade to Dirac Live.
Click to expand...

I've been using Dirac for over a year. It's ok but don't expect miracles. Fundamental flaws in room acoustics and/or power/directivity index of your speakers can't be fixed on DSP alone.
 
if your willing to spend money a real Equalizer (like a pro-audio model) or something like a MiniDSP 2x4 would so what you want. The miniDSP would allow you to save profiles and switch if needed.
 
Extra physical connections and devices in the signal path can reduce detail.
Depends on the quality of your kit and how its setup whether you will notice.
 
Nenu said:
Extra physical connections and devices in the signal path can reduce detail.
Depends on the quality of your kit and how its setup whether you will notice.
Click to expand...
I once had a fancy yamaha eq with led displays (rare 30 years ago) that cut everything above 16khz unless bypassed lol
 
Speaking from a music production standpoint:

One of the key tenets in obtaining a good quality recording is to start with a good source. No amount of processing will turn a badly recorded guitar into a well recorded one. You can try it all. EQ, phase correction, BBE Sonic Maximisers, Exciter Plugins, Compressors, etc.

At the end of the day you cannot polish an audio turd.

Yes, old recordings have flaws. Some of them are due to a lack of budget for a good recording studio/engineer. Others are due to a lack of technology.

Some, like this Burzum album, were intentionally recorded terribly, for effect. (Guitars on this album were recorded into a bunch of fuzz pedals and a hifi. The vocals were done on a headset mic found in the studio)

I invite anyone to try and EQ that Burzum album in such a way that it will sound good by modern production standards. Not only is it probably impossible, but frankly, I feel like turning that album into a modern, slick, masterpiece is a pointless endeavour - by the time you're done it will no longer be the same music with the same effect.

I don't listen to music because I think it should all sound the way I would prefer it to sound. The goal is, and always should be, to hear what the 1s and 0s on that CD actually represent. I don't go to art galleries with a selection of tinted sunglasses so that I can make the paintings look more to my liking. I don't see why anyone would do the same thing for music.

Warts 'n' all, I say.


Now, granted, EQ is useful sometimes - Mostly, it's useful if your particular listening room really overaccentuates certain frequencies, but even then, there's a lot more to "room tuning" - Most of the audible issues caused by bad rooms are to do with reflections and subsequent timing misalignment between frequencies - EQ cannot do anything to fix that problem, and even the best Meridian Audio DSP can't make a room stop echoing.

But this is a non-problem for people listening on headphones, and it's expensive to do. Far more effective to get some diffusers or soft furnishings (or rugs), and fix the source of the problem - the room itself.
 
GlacierNine said:
Speaking from a music production standpoint:

One of the key tenets in obtaining a good quality recording is to start with a good source. No amount of processing will turn a badly recorded guitar into a well recorded one. You can try it all. EQ, phase correction, BBE Sonic Maximisers, Exciter Plugins, Compressors, etc.

At the end of the day you cannot polish an audio turd.
Click to expand...

The whole chain of reproduction is what counts. Unfortunately the three most difficult parts are the hardest or expensive to fix: Recording itself, speakers and the room.

If your speakers are bad (which most are) the problems caused by the room eccentuate. You can fix the speaker behavior and it will help with the room and vice versa. Optimally both.
 
I agree, the whole chain is important, but it's rather a lot like PC hardware in that you have "bottlenecks".

If your bottleneck is the source, the PC analogy to this would be a game that just doesn't look good even with the graphics on max settings and all the Nvidia quality settings turned up for good measure. You can throw as much horsepower at it as you like, but once you've exhausted the limits of the source, you're just not going to be able to do anything more to make it look fantastic. (At least, until the producer brings out an HD remaster. How fortunate that the two industries use the same terminology...)

If your bottleneck is the DAC/Amplifier/Speakers, that's analogous to the overall power of your PC (And, like your PC, it's affected by multiple potential bottlenecking factors of it's own) and it's ability to pump out raw frames. In this case "raw frames" is analogous to "detailed, undistorted sound"

If your bottleneck is the room, that's analogous to whether your monitor is capable of displaying what your PC puts out, and I suppose also, the kind of light you sit your monitor in. A monster source and a monster rig on an 800x600 CRT sat in direct sunlight, will obviously look terrible compared to a calibrated 4K 144Hz monitor in a dark room.

A problem in any of them will limit your audio quality, but a problem at the start of the chain will be felt at every subsequent point in the chain, no matter how high quality or well tuned.

Now, as a final point - since I know someone is going to point out that you can mod PC games to make them better - Yes you can, but when you start from scratch to try and modify a PC game, you don't simply open your one default and only tool and adjust a bunch of parameters that are the same for every game. You first have to figure out the structure of the game's files, or the way it's engine works, then figure out how to change them to get your desired result, and then test it to see if it broke anything. Oftentimes this process is so complex that people will code tools in order to be able to do it more effectively. The more ambitious the change you're trying to make, the more time and effort you'll need to invest in order to get a result that's even CLOSE to your desire.

In audio terms, that "modding" process is more analogous to doing a "fan remaster", using high quality studio tools and a variety of complex and difficult techniques, often weeks, if not months of work, just to improve the sound of a single album. (A good example of this is releases under the name "Brickwallhater").

EQ, in the same vein of analogies as above, is rather more like running a game at a lower resolution than your display's native, in order to get "free antialiasing". Some people will do it, and insist it looks better, but in reality what they're doing is trying to mask and ignore a deficiency somewhere else, and anyone worth talking to about it will essentially go "I see what you're trying to do, but it sucks".
 
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Also, as a final note - If it were really that simple to just apply simple algorithmic sound processing to things that sound bad, to make them sound good? Well, quite frankly, enough companies have tried that, you'd think that by now one of them would have succeeded. Creative Audio's "X-Fi Crystaliser" springs to mind as an example of something that was hyped up to do exactly that, and, as it turned out, just sounded terrible.
 
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The point I'm making (and have made before) is that certain parts of the signal path are much cheaper and easyer to develop to a certain high standard. DACs and digital audio for one, you can have an excellent signal noise ratio, frequency response or distortion figures for a few bucks. Then again when recording or when playing the sound in the room you can spend tens of thousands and yet fail to produce a good result. Speakers are the weakest link in a normal hifi system. Their distortion is at the level of several percent!! Also their linearity is typically horrible and the listening room only makes things worse.
 
I seem to recall several years ago being told that speakers are now the only part of a system where abx testing still produces consistent results from test groups - IE the last remaining piece of the puzzle where a layman can reliably tell a difference between two moderately, or even extremely, high end pieces of equipment based on sound alone.

Wouldn't surprise me at all to find that's correct. As a physical device reliant on movement and physical engineering, it will likely be a very long time before we manage to make them linear in any circumstance, to say nothing of making them linear in all circumstances/rooms.
 
Oh, and for OP's sake - I've recently been looking into this: https://www.roomeqwizard.com/

There's also this: http://drc-fir.sourceforge.net/

You may wish to look into these.

It's a fairly involved process and requires a calibrated microphone (Or a microphone for which a generic calibration file is available, the site recommends several types), but it will give you a good idea of how much your room is contributing to any sound distortions.

Additionally, though I can't find it right this moment, I do know there are open source projects out there which can take calibration files generated by these tools, and use them to adjust audio output from programs or the whole system accordingly.

These will be far more comprehensive and realistic to use than just an EQ and your own perceptions - They're based on objective data, and in the case of some of the better DSP solutions, they can also alter not only EQ, but also timing and phase, which are far MORE important than EQ. (Your brain is quite capable of adjusting your perceptions of EQ to balance things out, but it can't do anything about timing problems.)

This article has a lot of information in it that can explain why timing is far more important than EQ: http://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/yamaha-ns10-story
 
GlacierNine said:
Some, like this Burzum album, were intentionally recorded terribly, for effect. (Guitars on this album were recorded into a bunch of fuzz pedals and a hifi. The vocals were done on a headset mic found in the studio)
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That was quite an ear fuck.
 
Audiochris said:
That was quite an ear fuck.
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That album isn't even that bad, at least most of the instruments are clearly audible (not counting bass guitar cuz metal is notorious for having bass guitar lost in the mix anyway). He should've picked Ulver - Nattens Madrigal.



:vamp: I love that album but it shreds ears.

I'm amused by Burzum on [H] oh and Varg purposely asked for the worst gear in the studio for that album and I think the mic was broken...

I'm probably one of the few that listen to music like this on Electrostats. :ROFLMAO:
 
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|Tch0rT| said:
That album isn't even that bad, at least most of the instruments are clearly audible (not counting bass guitar cuz metal is notorious for having bass guitar lost in the mix anyway). He should've picked Ulver - Nattens Madrigal.



:vamp: I love that album but it shreds ears.

I'm amused by Burzum on [H] oh and Varg purposely asked for the worst gear in the studio for that album and I think the mic was broken...

I'm probably one of the few that listen to music like this on Electrostats. :ROFLMAO:
Click to expand...


If I heard 'music' like that on electrostats as the first contact to ESLs I too would spread false rumors about their tin can sound quality. OUCH!
 
B00nie said:
If I heard 'music' like that on electrostats as the first contact to ESLs I too would spread false rumors about their tin can sound quality. OUCH!
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Hahah that music it's an acquired taste.

Before I got my ESL's I made a list of a wide range of stuff I like to test them out with. This is the first song I heard on my ESL's:


I thought I had made a horrible mistake. It was a couple songs later and heard this that the magic of ESL's clicked for me:


After it clicked I got used to ESL's I enjoy them even with metal and less than stellar recordings. It was better once I added a sub and even better now that I know the FR curve I like.
 
GlacierNine said:
I agree, the whole chain is important, but it's rather a lot like PC hardware in that you have "bottlenecks".

If your bottleneck is the source, the PC analogy to this would be a game that just doesn't look good even with the graphics on max settings and all the Nvidia quality settings turned up for good measure. You can throw as much horsepower at it as you like, but once you've exhausted the limits of the source, you're just not going to be able to do anything more to make it look fantastic. (At least, until the producer brings out an HD remaster. How fortunate that the two industries use the same terminology...)
Click to expand...

But you could use FSAA to make the image look better so you are wrong. Just as I can use EQ to bring down the top end if the recording is too shrill for my liking. Not perfect solutions but better than doing nothing as some of you suggest.
 
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