any tips for a light stand-alone parametric EQ software? It should affect everything you hear much like built in soundcard FX would, neatly hidden in the back without any extra hassle - as a temporary quick-fix for an unbalanced room sound. Some sort of simple insert/bypass option would be sweet so it wouldn’t interfere with recording etc.
Smaller control rooms and asymmetric monitor placements near corners (…and tight budgets) are common problems and sometimes it’s what you just have to work with for the time being, so I thought it was strange I didn’t seem to find any good programs for it. Needless to say “fixing” room acoustics like this is not ideal, but just until a better control room comes along it would be better than nothing. Of course I’m talking about a small fade in the most problematic area, not an attempt to tweak a perfectly flat room sound with EQ.
Googling often points to Room EQ Wizard and such but I’d love to find something even more simple and light-weight, without any need to start buying measuring mics etc. Of course this alone wouldn’t result in a flat sound but I’m so used to my speakers by now and regularly check mixes in different enviroments it would suit me, and likely others with a similar problem.
In my previous place I used my EMU’s built-in FX to make a little 2.5dB fade at 120hz and 1dB below 90hz which were problematic there, but the FX only work in 44.1kHz which I no longer use, darn. I’d rather not stuff my bass-ports with socks either, to prevent an already looming overheating problem with my monitors and yes - a hardware EQ is just too much hehe… If noone knows of such software, someone should propably code it… ;D
The best solution i found to my room was in-ear canal headphones.
I run them through a crossfeed and eq plug in. And nobody complains about the noise !
A friend of mine made himself two panels from rockwool (he had the space and it was also ok for him to fix these to the wall and the ceiling)
For about 60 uk pounds its amazing - and you can always take these panels when you move rooms.
I often see rockwell offcuts in skips but my flat is rented so i also can’t do any acoustic treatment.
i think if you have a bad room and then alter a speakers flat frequency response you’re just throwing more chaos into the mix. No pun intended After all - EQ correction does not take into account the fact that reflections resonate more for longer bass notes compared to short kicks. (a kicks reflection may not swell till after the kick has finished - so 2.5dB inaccuracy would lead to mixing a short kick 2.5dB to loud or too quiet dependind on whether you cut or boosted your corrective eq.
Well you’re absolutely right of course, it’s generally not a great idea to attempt fixing a room sound by fiddling around with an EQ.
Anyhow with rooms that have a distinct boost at a specific problem area, you’re quite lost at those frequencies and certain bass notes tend to jump out etc. So I’d love to have an option to compensate by fading a bit from the most difficult area - as a lesser-of-two-evils compromise. Keeping in mind it’s vital to check with reference music and different speakers and rooms etc.
Headphones can be great but with them alone I find it’s difficult to make a mix that translates well to different speakers etc. Thanks for the rockwool tip and that link btw, useful stuff there!
yea headphones are kinda useless for mixing, i suppose there is too much psycho-acoustic or whatever.
anyway, bout’ the “special” spots in the room. I think its not realy possible to fix that stuff with hardware. to skip that problem I use near-field monitors with a behringer ultragraph pro eq, not the best hardware EQ but kinda cheap to buy. that got 31 ±6 db, switchable to ±12db bands with bypass option, low+high pass and realtime freq. feedback.
After all - EQ correction does not take into account the fact that reflections resonate more for longer bass notes compared to short kicks. (a kicks reflection may not swell till after the kick has finished - so 2.5dB inaccuracy would lead to mixing a short kick 2.5dB to loud or too quiet dependind on whether you cut or boosted your corrective eq.