EQing your monitors to flat response (or close to it)?

R

rawville

New member
ok, let me start by saying that i've been working with sound for a while so i'm not retarted, but i still have plenty to learn.

something i've learned about mixin gand mastering is that you want your mixing enviroment to have as flat a response as possible so when your mix is played on shitty system (far from flat) it at least sounds decent because it was mixed in the middle of the spectrum.

now, i don't have ANY money to sink into a custom room or top-of-the-line monitors, but when working under a budget i've always lived by the moto "95% quality at zero cost is better than 100% quality at the cost of your arm and leg".

so that being said, i need some help getting a response from my speakers and bedroom that is as flat as possible.

the speakers are a 4.1 altec lansing setup with the THX logo on them (yeah yeah, i know that a THX certification deal with the whole enviroment and not just the speakers). and the room i mix in is about 15' x 15' with a lot of 1in compressed duct board (very good at dulling reflections) on the walls.

to tell the truth, the speakers sound pretty damn good (very smooth sounding) it just that i have a problem with some of my mixes sound too bassy and some too bright when played on other systems. part of this reason is because the speakers have a bass and treble adjustment on them and i'm always moving them to help me listen to different frequencies ranges in the song while mixing.

what i need is a set EQ point to mix around. i want this point to be as close to flat response as possible so when i listen to the mix on a clock radio (no lows and overcompensated highs) or a crappy car system (too much lows and crakly mids) it still sounds decent because it was mixed right in the middle of the spectrum.

THIS IS WHERE I AM UNCLEAR:
i know that you can EQ speakers by playing white or pink (i'm pretty sure pink) noise through the speakers and recording it with a flat response microphone. you then tweak your speakers and repeat the process till the recordings from the microphone give a falt response.

the only mic i got is a berhinger B-1 and it is exceptionaly flat with a slight boost in the 4-11k peaking at 6db around 10k.

i know white noise is completely flat and pink noise is filterd white noise that drop i believe 3db every octave. and i'm pretty sure that pink noise is what we use to claibrate equipment since it technicaly sound more flat to the human ear.

THE QUESTION:
my problem is this, if i use pink noise to calibrate my enviroment, should the ideal level give a recording that drops 3db every octave or should my recording be flat? (with a boosted 4-11k range to compensate for the mic of course)

i'm not sure if i made my problem clear and understandable, but i'm pretty fluent with recording terminology so hit me up with whatever type of help you can give.

thanks
 
Oh no, here we go. Hey, look down about 10 -15 posts. Someone was just asking this same thing. You're not gonna like what you hear:D
 
HangDawg said:
Oh no, here we go. Hey, look down about 10 -15 posts. Someone was just asking this same thing. You're not gonna like what you hear:D
Click to expand...

yeah i just found it, i understand what the people are talking about, but i believe my situation is different.

first off, my room is pretty dead due to all the duct board and cushione furniture.

secondly, i'm only try to eq the speakers for the basketball sized sphere where my ears are located 100% of the time durning mixing. i don't care what it sounds like in the back of the room.

thirdly, i'm not trying to find completely flat, just close to it.

all i need to know is do i use white or pink noise. and if it's pink noise, should the recording have a flat response or a 3db drop every octave up?

i'm not trying to acheive 100% perfection because i simply don't have the finacial stregth to do that, but i KNOW i can get damn near 95% if someone would just help me answer my question.

all i'm trying to do is get as close to the middle of the spectrum as possible.

i know this method of eq monitors isn't perfect, but it's better than just guesstimating. i mean, at least i got sumthin to work with ya feel me?
 
pink noise is what is generally used for calibration, and you'll want to look for a flat response...but as you've learned, not the best situation to do for a studio monitor setup. Best left for the live venues for hunting down potential feedback problems and crap like that.

Bring a cheapie boom box into your studio and make it easy to pop reference mixes into it and keep your hands off your adjustments on your speakers as I'd almost think you'd just be better to learn your monitors a bit better and learn how to compensate...unless they are just waaaaay off. That knob twiddling on your speakers sounds like that is what is getting you into trouble. You can't adjust your mixes properly when you adjust your speakers.
 
rawville,

I use pink noise and run it thru a lot of my equipment so I can see how it works too !

As you said it is basically white noise with a -3db/octave slope that gives it equal energy per octave, as opposed to equal energy per frequency like plain old white noise. Pink noise is closer to the energy balance in music than white noise.

When I do this in a closed system like an audio editor playing a pink noise wave that is either feeding a plugin or some outboard equipment I have the speakers turned down. I don't listen to that stuff in the so called 'closed-loop' scenerio.

I use Voxengo CurveEQ to look at the pink noise spectrum because it has a viewing slope that I can set to +3dBm per octave so the pink noise is a flat line. Otherwise I would see a somewhat flat line but the pink noise would be sloped downward at -3dBm per octave. I can also CurveEQ and rebalance any piece of music in this fashion and easily make the average as flat a line as I want using any slope I want.

Out in the room with speakers turned on and the room interactions it is more interesting ! :)

I use a behringer ECM8000 omni small-cartridge measuring mic that listens to pink noise and tones at various points around the room as well as my listening spot. I'm doing this to see how various acoustic treatments effect the response at my listening position.

I've also tried 1/3 octave EQ to see how it effects things and I am able to balance things fairly well above 700Hz or so with just a peak or 2 I can't touch. The lo-mids and bass are more tricky and have more places that won't EQ out yet. I still have 1/10 octave parametric and 1/60 octave feedback eliminator to have fun with so I don't know if that will help.

I can see though that there are certain peaks and valleys that get pretty tricky even at one listening spot. My choice could be to try and find the best spot for the speakers in the room and then move my listening position accordingly.

My actual plan right now is to determine what treatments I need, play with their positioning, determine speaker positioning and speaker configuration (with/without sub), play with EQ.

What fun !

I want to be able to balance the frequency response of my speakers and room to +/- 6 dBSPL. I don't know if that's possible with what I have so my ears might have to 'learn' a large peak or valley or two. I hope not.

Happy room/speaker balancing !
kylen
 
Monitors typically have nothing like a fla response. It's more like a rollercoaster. And that goes for good monitors too. EQing to a flat response is pointless, becaus ethere is so much else than the frquency response curve that is important, and an EQ will make those things worse.

Yes, EQing your monitoring MAY improve things. But mostly it does not.

If you want monitoring with good specs, check here:
http://www.earthwks.com/ns/speakers_graphs.html
 
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All things in the other post still apply. Also if you can hear someone whispering to you from the corner of the room, don't you think the mic will hear the millions of reflections bouncing around the room? you would have to have the volume turned down so low to calibrate, that when you listened at regular volume your E.Q.ing would be meaningless.
And in a 15X15 room you might want to check your response around 75hz.
 
Raw,

> i understand what the people are talking about, but i believe my situation is different. first off, my room is pretty dead due to all the duct board and cushione furniture. <

No, your situation is exactly the same. And duct board and furniture are hardly proper acoustic treatment.

EQ'ing speakers does not work. Period.

--Ethan
 
People confuse room acoustics with speaker output.

In both cases EQ can help you achieve a sound you want.

1) No speaker is perfect, except maybe to the creator and the person who loves it just the way it is (a speaker only a mother could love :-). If your goal is to get to pink flat (or white flat or...?) you can't do it without EQ regardless of the room. If you want close flat output out of the speakers take them outside in a big open quiet field, keep any reflective surfaces to a minimum and EQ them using an RTA. They still won't be perfect, but much closer.

2) Now bring them into any room, treated or not, and what you hear and what the RTA will show, has changed based on the acoustics of the room and where you are and the speakers are in it. You can try your best to treat and position everything but you'll still get a different sound, though I'm sure their is an ideal room shape and size and treatment and location for everything, I don't know of anyone who has created that, and it would have to be custom made because our ears are not spread apart in exactly the same way.

So, EQ your speakers the best you can to flat in as non-reflective a space as possible, treat you room as best you can and find the best spot for you and you speakers, and then adjust EQ a bit more to deal with any significant reflection effects that remain.

And those that say "EQ doesn't work" I say put 5 sets of speakers in front of yourself and then modify the room so they all sound exactly the same, without touching an EQ. Once you are there, we'll take out the RTA to show you how off you are. Blah! :yawn:
 
I think we may have a winner for necro-post of 2015. I can't recall the last time someone broke the dozen year mark. Congratulations.

By the way, RTAs are time blind. If you really want to measure acoustics you need tools that can see the time dimension (e.g. SMAART, TEF, SIM, REW).

[Edit] Welcome to the forums.
 
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