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<!-- #thumb --> <p>According to the AGB’s <b>Dictionary of Audio Myths</b>:</p>
<p><b>EQ-PHOBIA</b> – <i>The unfounded, mistaken, hyperventilating, irrational fear of equalization</i>. <a title="" href="http://www.pstracks.com/opinions/freq-too/11453/#_ftn1"><b>[1]</b></a>, <a title="" href="http://www.pstracks.com/opinions/freq-too/11453/#_ftn2">[2]</a></p>
<p><b>TREATMENT<i>:</i></b><i> Use a heavy hand on the parametric equalizer to test for the specific frequency and amplitude of the patient’s reaction to determine at which frequency hives appear; and at which frequency the patient loses control of the bowels.</i></p>
<p>Purist audiophiles get mystified, revolted, and unhinged by the very idea of equalization “polluting” their pure and unsullied home systems and recordings – analog and digital. Reporters who asked to remain unidentified, were seen fleeing the scene of criminal equalization having been applied to the rooms of unsuspecting victims. Other eyewitnesses reported that the allergic reaction to unintended, even to deliberate equalization, may prove to be be fatal. This writer, having himself become the victim of self-imposed equalization, cannot confirm reports about audiophiles found in the their listening seats having assumed room temperature.</p>
<p>The understanding, or better put “common wisdom,“ is that if one corrected the frequency response to allow the music to flow full range and sound correct in relation to reality, the phase response gets messed up in the process. This assumption came out of poor filter performance and issues inherent in the crossovers of many conventional loudspeakers, the poor design of many octave-equalizing electronics (even the very high priced ones of years long gone) and the misunderstanding of even some educated designers. In other words, ignorance. That “common wisdom” is, often, ignorance. Or have I repeated myself?</p>
<p>Putting it mildly, this writer is hardly an expert on this subject, however it should be clear that:</p>
<blockquote readability="14"><p>If you had achieved correct frequency response in a circuit, system, or your listening room, you will have also achieved correct – matching phase response. In other words, don’t worry once you had achieved correct FR about time delay for speakers that are, allegedly not time coherent, or your earbuds or headsets that are allegedly not time coherent.</p></blockquote>
<p>“Systems are analyzed in the <i>time domain</i> by using convolution. A similar analysis can be done in the <i>frequency domain. </i>Using the Fourier transform, every input signal can be represented as a group of cosine waves, each with a specified amplitude and phase shift. Likewise, the DFT can be used to represent every output signal in a similar form. This means that any linear system can be <i>completely</i> described by how it changes the amplitude and phase of cosine waves passing through it. This information is called the system’s <b>frequency response.</b> Since both the impulse response and the frequency response contain complete information about the system, there must be a one-to-one correspondence between the two. <b><span>Given one, you can calculate the other</span></b>. The relationship between the impulse response and the frequency response is one of the foundations of signal processing: <i>A system’s frequency response is the Fourier Transform of its impulse response</i>.”<a title="" href="http://www.pstracks.com/opinions/freq-too/11453/#_ftn3">[3]</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/new-1.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-11458" alt="new 1 Freq you too!" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/new-1.gif" width="500" height="458" title="Freq you too!" /></a></p>
<p>What *you see above is the fact that you need to, you must do whatever is possible to achieve full range sound in your home, desktop or portable headset system. By correcting for errors in frequency response, you are correcting for errors in phase response. Full range sound is, accurate sound; less than full range sound is not accurate sound. That, is the nutshell and we can go ahead to smash the nut…but we won’t because this is not about reality denial.</p>
<h5><b>THOSE WHO CAN’T, TEACH; AND THOSE WHO CAN, DO!</b></h5>
<p>We set aside the snake oil salesmen for a moment. We set aside “common wisdom” which is called common because it is common, baseless, and relatively useless.</p>
<p>WHAT ANALOG EQUALIZATION CAN DO IMPERFECTLY…</p>
<p>DIGITAL EQUALIZATION CAN DO PERFECTLY!</p>
<p>Now I know I had violated common wisdom, haven’t I? As much as one reader is revolted by digital manipulation of the audio signal, another can only be awed by the POWER of digital signal processing (DSP)…that is, theoretically, limitless. One can only be awed by its power if one had actually tried it, used it, had dramatically improved results from it – as opposed to having an opinion about it.</p>
<p>The very same audiophile who is revolted by digital equalization in the home is certain <i><span>not</span></i> to be revolted by the equalization on his recordings (digital and analogue – many of the last made through digital transfers); and made <i>after</i> the actual recording’s time and place, after mix down, and after post production.</p>
<p>He is not likely to be revolted by the RIAA curve (heavy-handed equalization) inscribed by the cutting stylus on the molten mother/stampers – distortion imprinted into the lacquer at the time of cutting, and the equally heavy-handed and phase shift-causing reverse RIAA equalization designed into his phono preamp. <a title="" href="http://www.pstracks.com/opinions/freq-too/11453/#_ftn4">[5]</a></p>
<blockquote readability="6"><p>What will it take for the analogphile to get revolted about equalization badly used on almost every LP? A flying turntable <em>via</em> Cirque de Soleil?</p></blockquote>
<p>The fact is, the typical listening room is exciting all sorts of resonance, reflections, absorptions, FR peaks and valleys, screwing up what might otherwise be a relatively FLAT frequency response needing no DSP – and of course no such place exists because if it had, it would have to had violated all known laws of physics and reality.</p>
<p>I’m certain many of you had the shaming experience after visiting an audio buddy whose system cost one quarter that of yours and yet his sounded better? You haven’t? If not, you should, I guarantee he exists, his system exists, and his system is better than yours!</p>
<p>If you’re worried about the room’s and your equipment’s limitations with respect to frequency response, you ought rather be worried more about the contributions room distortions impose to a messed up phase and timing response, no? Or both?</p>
<p>How much do you think a 1/8<sup>th </sup>inch offset on the baffle of your loudspeakers, one driver in relation to the other, will contribute to perceived sonic purity and accuracy (after the speaker’s output is merged with a plethora of room-and-equipment-caused FR issues) when you sit ten feet from your speakers? You got it. 1/8<sup>th</sup> inch. Better put, none at all. You will hear though, a 1/8” movement of your speaker’s positioning…or you should hear it. Even better put: snake oil is being sold for $5000 and up – and the buyers are lining up. Are you one of them?</p>
<p>Indeed it is likely – not “possible,” but probable – that you can make a decent $1500 loudspeaker sound as good or better than a good $5000 loudspeaker after you had carefully, using measurements, DSP equalized the output of your amplifiers and other gear and taken some reasonable steps to treat your rooms. You can make a $500 earbud sound better, clearer, more transparent, more dimensional, more “real,” than the current fave $1000 and $2000 planar headset. Yes, you can! And the last is so easy to accomplish that you might say: WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT?</p>
<p>Well, the reason you didn’t think of that is because, well, here it goes: I had.</p>
<p>The other reason is that the audio manufacturing community doesn’t want you to understand the math and fact that:</p>
<h4>Accurate FR = Accurate PhR</h4>
<p>Down the road I will show you how to do your own experiments to achieve what is possible today, do it on the cheap, do it on the fly, and to test the thesis outlined above.</p>
<p>And when someone who disagrees with you about it all because they have an investment in their own narratives, belief systems and incomes, just tell them:</p>
<p><strong>FREQ YOU TOO!</strong></p>
<p>To be continued…</p>
<p>Andrew G. Benjamin © All Rights Reserved</p>
<center><a href="http://www.pstracks.com/opinions/freq-too/11453/emailpopup/" onclick="email_popup(this.href); return false;" title="Forward to a friend and help us engage more readers" rel="nofollow"><img class="WP-EmailIcon" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-email/images/email.gif" alt="email Freq you too!" title="Freq you too!" /></a>*<a href="http://www.pstracks.com/opinions/freq-too/11453/emailpopup/" onclick="email_popup(this.href); return false;" title="Forward to a friend and help us engage more readers" rel="nofollow">Forward to a friend and help us engage more readers</a></center><br /><!-- // MAILCHIMP SUBSCRIBE CODE --><center><a href="http://eepurl.com/eSzBY">Get new and fresh stories like this each morning by joining the folks reading Paul's Posts. Click here </a></center>
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[Source: http://www.pstracks.com/opinions/freq-too/11453/]
<p><b>EQ-PHOBIA</b> – <i>The unfounded, mistaken, hyperventilating, irrational fear of equalization</i>. <a title="" href="http://www.pstracks.com/opinions/freq-too/11453/#_ftn1"><b>[1]</b></a>, <a title="" href="http://www.pstracks.com/opinions/freq-too/11453/#_ftn2">[2]</a></p>
<p><b>TREATMENT<i>:</i></b><i> Use a heavy hand on the parametric equalizer to test for the specific frequency and amplitude of the patient’s reaction to determine at which frequency hives appear; and at which frequency the patient loses control of the bowels.</i></p>
<p>Purist audiophiles get mystified, revolted, and unhinged by the very idea of equalization “polluting” their pure and unsullied home systems and recordings – analog and digital. Reporters who asked to remain unidentified, were seen fleeing the scene of criminal equalization having been applied to the rooms of unsuspecting victims. Other eyewitnesses reported that the allergic reaction to unintended, even to deliberate equalization, may prove to be be fatal. This writer, having himself become the victim of self-imposed equalization, cannot confirm reports about audiophiles found in the their listening seats having assumed room temperature.</p>
<p>The understanding, or better put “common wisdom,“ is that if one corrected the frequency response to allow the music to flow full range and sound correct in relation to reality, the phase response gets messed up in the process. This assumption came out of poor filter performance and issues inherent in the crossovers of many conventional loudspeakers, the poor design of many octave-equalizing electronics (even the very high priced ones of years long gone) and the misunderstanding of even some educated designers. In other words, ignorance. That “common wisdom” is, often, ignorance. Or have I repeated myself?</p>
<p>Putting it mildly, this writer is hardly an expert on this subject, however it should be clear that:</p>
<blockquote readability="14"><p>If you had achieved correct frequency response in a circuit, system, or your listening room, you will have also achieved correct – matching phase response. In other words, don’t worry once you had achieved correct FR about time delay for speakers that are, allegedly not time coherent, or your earbuds or headsets that are allegedly not time coherent.</p></blockquote>
<p>“Systems are analyzed in the <i>time domain</i> by using convolution. A similar analysis can be done in the <i>frequency domain. </i>Using the Fourier transform, every input signal can be represented as a group of cosine waves, each with a specified amplitude and phase shift. Likewise, the DFT can be used to represent every output signal in a similar form. This means that any linear system can be <i>completely</i> described by how it changes the amplitude and phase of cosine waves passing through it. This information is called the system’s <b>frequency response.</b> Since both the impulse response and the frequency response contain complete information about the system, there must be a one-to-one correspondence between the two. <b><span>Given one, you can calculate the other</span></b>. The relationship between the impulse response and the frequency response is one of the foundations of signal processing: <i>A system’s frequency response is the Fourier Transform of its impulse response</i>.”<a title="" href="http://www.pstracks.com/opinions/freq-too/11453/#_ftn3">[3]</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/new-1.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-11458" alt="new 1 Freq you too!" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/new-1.gif" width="500" height="458" title="Freq you too!" /></a></p>
<p>What *you see above is the fact that you need to, you must do whatever is possible to achieve full range sound in your home, desktop or portable headset system. By correcting for errors in frequency response, you are correcting for errors in phase response. Full range sound is, accurate sound; less than full range sound is not accurate sound. That, is the nutshell and we can go ahead to smash the nut…but we won’t because this is not about reality denial.</p>
<h5><b>THOSE WHO CAN’T, TEACH; AND THOSE WHO CAN, DO!</b></h5>
<p>We set aside the snake oil salesmen for a moment. We set aside “common wisdom” which is called common because it is common, baseless, and relatively useless.</p>
<p>WHAT ANALOG EQUALIZATION CAN DO IMPERFECTLY…</p>
<p>DIGITAL EQUALIZATION CAN DO PERFECTLY!</p>
<p>Now I know I had violated common wisdom, haven’t I? As much as one reader is revolted by digital manipulation of the audio signal, another can only be awed by the POWER of digital signal processing (DSP)…that is, theoretically, limitless. One can only be awed by its power if one had actually tried it, used it, had dramatically improved results from it – as opposed to having an opinion about it.</p>
<p>The very same audiophile who is revolted by digital equalization in the home is certain <i><span>not</span></i> to be revolted by the equalization on his recordings (digital and analogue – many of the last made through digital transfers); and made <i>after</i> the actual recording’s time and place, after mix down, and after post production.</p>
<p>He is not likely to be revolted by the RIAA curve (heavy-handed equalization) inscribed by the cutting stylus on the molten mother/stampers – distortion imprinted into the lacquer at the time of cutting, and the equally heavy-handed and phase shift-causing reverse RIAA equalization designed into his phono preamp. <a title="" href="http://www.pstracks.com/opinions/freq-too/11453/#_ftn4">[5]</a></p>
<blockquote readability="6"><p>What will it take for the analogphile to get revolted about equalization badly used on almost every LP? A flying turntable <em>via</em> Cirque de Soleil?</p></blockquote>
<p>The fact is, the typical listening room is exciting all sorts of resonance, reflections, absorptions, FR peaks and valleys, screwing up what might otherwise be a relatively FLAT frequency response needing no DSP – and of course no such place exists because if it had, it would have to had violated all known laws of physics and reality.</p>
<p>I’m certain many of you had the shaming experience after visiting an audio buddy whose system cost one quarter that of yours and yet his sounded better? You haven’t? If not, you should, I guarantee he exists, his system exists, and his system is better than yours!</p>
<p>If you’re worried about the room’s and your equipment’s limitations with respect to frequency response, you ought rather be worried more about the contributions room distortions impose to a messed up phase and timing response, no? Or both?</p>
<p>How much do you think a 1/8<sup>th </sup>inch offset on the baffle of your loudspeakers, one driver in relation to the other, will contribute to perceived sonic purity and accuracy (after the speaker’s output is merged with a plethora of room-and-equipment-caused FR issues) when you sit ten feet from your speakers? You got it. 1/8<sup>th</sup> inch. Better put, none at all. You will hear though, a 1/8” movement of your speaker’s positioning…or you should hear it. Even better put: snake oil is being sold for $5000 and up – and the buyers are lining up. Are you one of them?</p>
<p>Indeed it is likely – not “possible,” but probable – that you can make a decent $1500 loudspeaker sound as good or better than a good $5000 loudspeaker after you had carefully, using measurements, DSP equalized the output of your amplifiers and other gear and taken some reasonable steps to treat your rooms. You can make a $500 earbud sound better, clearer, more transparent, more dimensional, more “real,” than the current fave $1000 and $2000 planar headset. Yes, you can! And the last is so easy to accomplish that you might say: WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT?</p>
<p>Well, the reason you didn’t think of that is because, well, here it goes: I had.</p>
<p>The other reason is that the audio manufacturing community doesn’t want you to understand the math and fact that:</p>
<h4>Accurate FR = Accurate PhR</h4>
<p>Down the road I will show you how to do your own experiments to achieve what is possible today, do it on the cheap, do it on the fly, and to test the thesis outlined above.</p>
<p>And when someone who disagrees with you about it all because they have an investment in their own narratives, belief systems and incomes, just tell them:</p>
<p><strong>FREQ YOU TOO!</strong></p>
<p>To be continued…</p>
<p>Andrew G. Benjamin © All Rights Reserved</p>
<center><a href="http://www.pstracks.com/opinions/freq-too/11453/emailpopup/" onclick="email_popup(this.href); return false;" title="Forward to a friend and help us engage more readers" rel="nofollow"><img class="WP-EmailIcon" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-email/images/email.gif" alt="email Freq you too!" title="Freq you too!" /></a>*<a href="http://www.pstracks.com/opinions/freq-too/11453/emailpopup/" onclick="email_popup(this.href); return false;" title="Forward to a friend and help us engage more readers" rel="nofollow">Forward to a friend and help us engage more readers</a></center><br /><!-- // MAILCHIMP SUBSCRIBE CODE --><center><a href="http://eepurl.com/eSzBY">Get new and fresh stories like this each morning by joining the folks reading Paul's Posts. Click here </a></center>
<!-- MAILCHIMP SUBSCRIBE CODE // -->
[Source: http://www.pstracks.com/opinions/freq-too/11453/]