Who uses a graphic equaliser?

[The Black Adder]

Hi.

I was brought up in the time when the infamous 'Grahpic Equaliser' was starting to become more of a consumer product and not just for recording studios etc.

Thing is, I guess all of those sliders are all in the signal path so is the equaliser (in a way) just adjusting a slightly degraded output? Which is my personal thinking.

My father had one on his Trio hifi and it was always set and I always remember switching it off and the sound was flat and awful. So does a G.E bring anything to the party for audiophiles or does the line 'if you need one there must be something wrong' still stand?

[Reid Malenfant]

Actually all of the sliders are kind of in parallel with the signal, so the nastiness (:eyebrows:) of each one being added isn't cumulative ;)

I have a very nice pretty one here with a spectrum analyser as well....




Needless to say it hasn't been connected for more years than I can recall :scratch:

[Marco]

Joe, we've just had a very similar thread, where the subject of graphic equalisers was discussed in great detail (see my debate with Jerry, therein):

http://theartofsound.net/forum/showthread.php?t=17762

Did you miss that discussion? :)

Marco.

[The Black Adder]

lol... Missed that, Cheers Marco. I'll give that a read.

[jandl100]

Hee hee - Marco and I "agreed to disagree".
Eventually. :eyebrows:

[tommy6206]

I use a Technics SH-9010 and I like what it can do for some recordings.

[Audio Al]

Not me :)

[Werner Berghofer]

I use a vintage Sansui SE-7 and two Yamaha EQ-550 graphic equalizers in my headphone chains and in the nearfield active speaker setup on my desk. I do this to compensate the loss in high frequencies caused by a slightly deformed left ear canal.

Would not want to have to listen without this correction; I certainly would miss at least a quarter from the left channel’s details. On all equalizers the right channel is set to flat.

Werner.

[webby]

I use a vintage Sansui SE-7 and two Yahama EQ-550 graphic equalizers in my headphone chains and in the nearfield active speaker setup on my desk. I do this to compensate the loss in high frequencies caused by a slightly deformed left ear canal.

Werner.
How was this discovered Werner? Was it at an early age? And does it affect your hearing in any other way, or is it just that you prefer, and are able to compensate with listening to music?

Regards,

[Werner Berghofer]

Lee,


How was this discovered Werner?

I can’t tell this reliably. At the age of 18 I probably damaged my left ear. I used to be a very active swimmer and tower jumper (please forgive me if this is not the proper English translation). One day I experienced a loud crack in my left ear as I reached the swimming pool’s bottom after a jump from the ten meter tower. On returning to the pool’s surface I was not able to keep my balance and painfully fell to the tiled floor. (It’s ironic that many years later my girlfriend was a former Austrian tower jump state champion, but I didn’t meet her at a sporting event.)

In my father’s family there has been a long tradition with troubled left ears (otitis, hardness of hearing). While visiting my ear specialist two years ago he told me that my left ear channel was shaped in an unusual way, but the eardrum and other inner parts of my left ear are fully functional.


And does it affect your hearing in any other way

Of course; for example when lying in bed on my right side, I nearly can’t hear the alarm clock’s ticking and any other low volume, high frequency noise or softly spoken words. At least once a year I ask my ear specialist to perform a listening test; I use the plotted frequency chart from the doctor’s equipment to adjust my equalizer’s settings. According to the doctor, for a guy of my age my right ear’s hearing is above average. Since I have been aware that my left ear works different from the right ear, I think I pay much more attention to listening (not only to music) than an average person with “balanced” ears, but of course this “software interpolation” cannot fully compensate for my left ear’s damaged “hardware”. So I am very grateful that I was able to find one Sansui and two Yamaha equalizers in mint condition on eBay; the correction required by my left ear cannot be done by simply adjusting the balance, and none of my headphone amplifiers has a balance control. My left ear is much more sensible to lower frequencies than my right ear, for example.

Werner.

[webby]

Thanks Werner. Very interesting.

[RobbieGong]

I use this one the Vintage Technics SH8055 http://bilder.hifi-forum.de/max/315713/sh8055-2_23030.jpg and it's a beut ! I use it with the vintage flagship Technics SUVX 800 Integrated Amplifier which is a serious piece of kit, twin professional Oxygen Free Capacitors and Transformers as well as a huge power supply. http://www.radiomuseum.org/r/technics_stereo_integrated_amplif_46.html
The sound they make together is beautiful. I use with good interconnects and quality speaker cable (QED Genesis Silver Spiral). CD63 KI Signatures cd player and modded Technics deck with Ortofon 2M Black cartridge with Mission Freedom 752 Speakers. This system is a keeper.
Eq's do impart a small degree of distortion but I find I can only detect low hiss when the voluime is up to about the 10 minutes to point without music playing which is at a point that would be too loud for me if music was playing really so not a problem. I did notice that the low hiss further reduced when I turned off the blue light display for the spectrum analizer which tells me that the lights impart a fair bit of noise. I would now love to somehow disconnect the red lights on each individual frequency slider because I am sure that would further reduce the noise floor. The SU VX800 amp has an external adapter for an eq which is so convenient - Very happy :)

[stewartwen]

Yep I use one in my listening room.
S

[Roy S]

As I've said elsewhere sometimes one of these

http://i562.photobucket.com/albums/ss68/Lodger56/ge.jpg

and one of these

http://i562.photobucket.com/albums/ss68/Lodger56/tone-2.jpg

[RobbieGong]

As I've said elsewhere sometimes one of these

http://i562.photobucket.com/albums/ss68/Lodger56/ge.jpg

and one of these

http://i562.photobucket.com/albums/ss68/Lodger56/tone-2.jpg

:lol: