Recording - November 2015 - 50

BY SCOTT DORSEY

Back in the 1970s, third-octave equalizers became available
and everybody started installing them in their monitoring chain,
then setting everything so that it measured flat on a third-octave
analyzer. The end result was a lot of control rooms that sounded
really, really awful. Almost always, bypassing the equalizer would
improve the sound dramatically, and if you ever complained
about a room problem, the house engineer would just say, "Oh,
the equalizer fixes all those problems." Well, it doesn't, and
nobody would be complaining about it if the equalizer fixed it.
In point of fact, an EQ on your monitors fixes only a very tiny
subset of listening problems. This doesn't mean it's useless,
though-it just means you have to use it carefully. Here's an
eight-step path to using corrective room EQ, well, correctly.
1. Fix the room problems first!
You need to start out with a room that sounds really good;
don't make the mistake of assuming the equalizer will automatically fix anything at all. It can hide some things, but for the most
part if you want a room to sound good, you need a goodsounding room. That means that the reverberation time for all frequencies should be about equal. It's cumbersome to talk about
reverb time in small rooms, but the point here is that all frequencies need to decay equally and evenly. You don't want trebly slap
echoes or boomy low end. I'm personally a believer in LEDE systems (live end/dead end, where the front of the room is relatively dead and the rear is more live), although I have heard control
rooms designed around other methods that worked well.
In a small room, you will almost certainly need bass traps;
things like furniture and people absorb high frequencies, and you
need corresponding absorption of bass frequencies to make
everything match. In a small room, you might need diffusers so
that you get lots of little echoes that blend together instead of one
big one. You also might need absorption (especially bass absorption with traps) in the front of the room. Clap your hands-how
does it sound? Strike a drum in the control room-how does it
sound? Are all the notes on the piano scale the same level?
This magazine has had a lot of articles on acoustical design
for control rooms, most recently in March 2015. In addition, my
colleague Bruce Black has provided a large number of practical
acoustic DIY articles in many issues over the past year or two.
50

RECORDING November 2015

Go find them, read them, and apply them. But do that first; don't
assume that equalization is going to fix everything any more
than just randomly putting foam up will.
2. Ignore everything above 250 Hz.
Well, don't ignore it, but don't try and equalize anything above
that point. The problem is that as the frequencies go up, the wavelengths get shorter and shorter, and once you get up to maybe
250 Hz you are in the region where moving your head even a little bit moves you in and out of individual peaks and dips in the
room. Trying to equalize out something that changes as you move
your head is like trying to paint an airplane while it's in flight. So,
measure everything, but if you see real aberrations above 250 Hz
then it's time to go back to Step 1 and fix the room physically.
3. Avoid third-octave analyzers; they do way more harm
than good.
Third-octave measurements are looking at a fairly wide range
of frequencies, especially down in the bass region. Maybe you
have a room resonance that is one note wide, and when you measure it with a third-octave analyzer you find that one band is up 6
dB. The problem is that what you are seeing is actually a narrow
resonance that is up maybe 12 dB or so, but because it was averaged across a third-octave band, you only saw a 6 dB peak.
Now, when you bring that band down by 6 dB, so that it looks
flat on the analyzer, you now have two 6 dB dips, with the same
peak you had before (now "only" 6 dB above nominal!) stuck
between them. This looks better on the analyzers, but the overall
response sounds much, much worse than it did before. [See Figure
1 on page 52 for a rough illustration of this in iZotope Ozone 6
(review forthcoming).-Ed.] This was one of the most severe problems that caused such disastrous sonic damage back in the 1970s,
and yet I am still seeing a lot of automated equalization software
out there that does precisely this.
First, do no harm-do not make EQ changes unless you can
be absolutely sure you aren't doing harm. Second, listen to each
and every change for a little while, switching the filter in and
out, until you can really assure yourself that it's actually an
improvement. Be skeptical. If you can't tell a difference after a
while, leave it out.



Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - November 2015

Contents
Recording - November 2015 - Intro
Recording - November 2015 - Cover1
Recording - November 2015 - Cover2
Recording - November 2015 - 1
Recording - November 2015 - 2
Recording - November 2015 - 3
Recording - November 2015 - 4
Recording - November 2015 - 5
Recording - November 2015 - Contents
Recording - November 2015 - 7
Recording - November 2015 - 8
Recording - November 2015 - 9
Recording - November 2015 - 10
Recording - November 2015 - 11
Recording - November 2015 - 12
Recording - November 2015 - 13
Recording - November 2015 - 14
Recording - November 2015 - 15
Recording - November 2015 - 16
Recording - November 2015 - 17
Recording - November 2015 - 18
Recording - November 2015 - 19
Recording - November 2015 - 20
Recording - November 2015 - 21
Recording - November 2015 - 22
Recording - November 2015 - 23
Recording - November 2015 - 24
Recording - November 2015 - 25
Recording - November 2015 - 26
Recording - November 2015 - 27
Recording - November 2015 - 28
Recording - November 2015 - 29
Recording - November 2015 - 30
Recording - November 2015 - 31
Recording - November 2015 - 32
Recording - November 2015 - 33
Recording - November 2015 - 34
Recording - November 2015 - 35
Recording - November 2015 - 36
Recording - November 2015 - 37
Recording - November 2015 - 38
Recording - November 2015 - 39
Recording - November 2015 - 40
Recording - November 2015 - 41
Recording - November 2015 - 42
Recording - November 2015 - 43
Recording - November 2015 - 44
Recording - November 2015 - 45
Recording - November 2015 - 46
Recording - November 2015 - 47
Recording - November 2015 - 48
Recording - November 2015 - 49
Recording - November 2015 - 50
Recording - November 2015 - 51
Recording - November 2015 - 52
Recording - November 2015 - 53
Recording - November 2015 - 54
Recording - November 2015 - 55
Recording - November 2015 - 56
Recording - November 2015 - 57
Recording - November 2015 - 58
Recording - November 2015 - 59
Recording - November 2015 - 60
Recording - November 2015 - 61
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Recording - November 2015 - 70
Recording - November 2015 - 71
Recording - November 2015 - 72
Recording - November 2015 - Cover3
Recording - November 2015 - Cover4
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