EQing your monitors

[HangDawg]

I've been having a hard time getting a mix to translate well to other systems. I heard that people used to EQ their monitors to compensate for a crappy mixing environment. Well, I tried it. I'm sure my methods were probably incorrect, and the equipment I used was less than top notch but I think it may have help considerbly. My question is, what is wrong with doing this, and are any of you doing it? I've heard that it is not the "Proper thing to do" I guess it would be better to fix my room. At least I think I have learned where my problems are from my little experiment today.

 

[KingstonRock]

The reason some say that's a bad idea is that by putting an eq into the signal chain you may correct the signal in one means, but alter it in another, consequently you really arent solving your problems, just creating new ones. In my opinion your better off just listening to high quality stuff on your monitors and trying to match your eq balances to their's while mixing.

 

[Blue Bear Sound]

I agree with Kingston......

...EQing monitors is NOT a good idea...

This was covered in great detail in this thread...

Fix your room, get used to the way your monitors sound, or buy yourself a different pair of monitors.......

 

[Ethan Winer]

HD,

> I heard that people used to EQ their monitors to compensate for a crappy mixing environment. <

Some studios used to add EQ to the monitor path, but it doesn't work so these days very few pros do this.

One big problem is the EQ needed to compensate varies for different parts of the room. That is, the EQ setting that helps here hurts over there. Another reason is because dips in the response due to bad acoustics can be very severe. 20 dB. is not uncommon. If you try to correct that with EQ boost you'll probably damage your loudspeakers at loud levels.

The real solution is to minimize the standing waves that cause these problems. For a good explanation of the problems, with free (ie: build it yourself) and commercial solutions, see these two sites:

www.ethanwiner.com/articles.html

Then look for "Build a better bass trap" partway down the list.

www.realtraps.com

The above is my company's site, and the explanations are very detailed.

--Ethan

 

[HangDawg]

Wow 13 pages. That shit was cracking me up. I think I understand though. Thanks guys. I guess I'll just fix my room. I know where the problems are now.