Room EQ.

hi, i know this is frowned upon, but my small studio is already treated and i still have a bad problem area between 110-160hz, which i think is from desktop reflections. its subjective effect is to remove some warmth from the sound and kick drums appear lower. currently i eq some compensation (4db, 132hz, 0.4oct) on the master channel which is removed at mixdown export. i also listen to all music through this eq comp to keep familiar with the sound. but its a real pain to have to apply the eq comp in every project and only listen through my sequencer wich allows vst plugins. is there an eq that can be fitted before/after s'card output? then left since all sound will go through it whatever the prog used. thanks for any suggestions. current freq response at mix pos:

wm, Even though you can even out the measured response of the room with an EQ, some of the high and low amplitude freqs you are adjusting will be reflections (reverberations, 360 or 180 out of phase signals,... whatever you want to call them) and so even though you have an even response the sound still won't be right (tight). That being said, if the reverb time is not too long the EQ may improve the ability for your mix to play better on other systems - the 'goal'. EQ is better at fixing deficiencies in your speakers (or your ears!) than your room. Getting past the theory, people do what you propose and it can help. There are a lot of external EQ's available (used in live sound and recording) but to get a good one that doesn't introduce more phase (time) distortions than the amplitudes you are trying to 'hack fix' can be pretty expensive. A good parametric EQ might be a better choice if you just need to fix, e.g.Fletcher-Munson type effects, or that hole in your hearing from standing next to a drummer for years on stage. Personally, if you are continually comparing your mixes to 'commercial music you want to sound like', and you use the EQ to correct for room/volume/hearing effects so the commercial stuff sounds good, I think your approach is probably fine. Just remember you can't fix reflections wih EQ because the reflections arrive at a later time (a phase problem), they are not amplitude problems. The amplitude problem is just an artifact of the real problem. Also, cheap EQ units can do more harm than good. But if it improves your mixes and listening experience, I say go for it.

thanks for the reply. to put it simply, every mix i play in there the kick drum isnt faithfully represented instrumentally or tonally. when i mix i feel the need to turn it too loud and eq incorrectly, of course i can compare to commerical stuff constantly, and train myself into a habit. but this is what i want to get a bit further away from having had to do it in far worse situations for ever. just to be clear i am only eqing 1 trough, where the ringing along with the amplitude will be of lower level to the rest of the response. but obviously the ringing will be amplified with the response after eq as well as additional phase shift from the eq. i have tested my eq settings in headphones and the phase shift isnt really noticable at 4db gain, and it sounds good through the speakers. what i wanted was a software eq to go before/after s'card mixer.

wm wrote:

what i wanted was a software eq to go before/after s'card mixer.

I think you would need to consult your soundcard manual. If you are using ASIO drivers I don't think there is a way to hack an EQ unless the soundcard provides this. If you are using DirectX drivers I think DirectX supports a pipeline architecture and theoretically it would be possible to stick an EQ at the end of the pipeline, but that would probably require writing your own code and hooking the driver - a non trivial task unless someone has done it for you already. I'd try forums for your sound card and sequencer for an answer on this. Some sound cards, like the inexpensive SoundBlaster ones have EQ you can apply to all outputs, but I doubt if this will have the surgical precision you want to hit a single valley of limited Q.

Just use you best EQ plug as the last insert in your mix chain and defeat it when printing mixes. Nuendo has complete control room features that allow you to do this along with other helpful things like metering and stuff. Great for surround work. -ashley