What I mean by that is - Is there a kind of ‘set of rules’ to follow when tweaking all the audio settings, or is it nearly always about the personal preference and ‘uniqueness of the ears’ of the individual?
I can never quite work out the best bass and treble, so I end up setting them based on the song I happen to be listening to, and there’s no guarantee it’ll be even near right for the next song.
And then to complicate things there’s all these jargony gimmicks that come with some sound setups on PCs in particular. In my case it’s the “x-fi cmss 3d” and “x-fi crystalizer” or wondering what the difference is between the 2 speaker setting and the headphone setting. And wondering if eax effects make it worse.
And on the subject of eax - if you switch it on, but the slider is showing 0db ‘effect’ does that mean no effect is being applied. And the slider has more negative db than positive what the hell is that about?? How can you negatively apply a roomy echo to a sound???
So to get back to basics I’ll say that I usually have all those special gimmicks turned off. What advice do you have for ensuring the best listening experience.
All this has come about because I’ve bought some headphones to replace my earphones (I’m sick of having to carefully insert them into my ear only to take them out again to wonder what the imaginary sound I just heard was. So I wanted to just be able to put-on-take-off) And It’s proving to be a pain to get the sound to be right again.
Normally if you set the bass and treble controls halfway (centered, or “flat”), you’ll reproduce the sound as it was on the recording. The only “scientific” way to adjust them is to turn both up when you’re listening at low volume, in order to compensate for the ear’s insensitivity to the lowest and highest frequencies at low volumes. (This is what a loudness control does.) Anything else is just altering the sound for your own tastes, or to correct the sound of your speakers or a bad recording.
Only if the acoustic environment is neutral. Most home listening rooms are not, so you may have to compensate, and simple bass/treble controls are inadequate if reproduction accuracy is your goal.
I say tweak them as you like and enjoy. Unless you are trying to calibrate something, there’s no “right” or “wrong” setting.
If you want to get scientific, there’s a thing called a pink noise generator you can use. Pink noise is distinguished from white noise in that the signal is of equal strength across the entire acoustic spectrum, while white noise is random.
So anyway, you pump this pink noise though your speakers, and measure the sound through another device – I can’t recall the name, but it’s kind of a reverse graphic equalizer. It measures the sound across different portions of the spectrum and displays the results like line graph. A perfect sound reproduction would display a flat line.
When I was in the biz, 20+ years ago, you would get this device, paired with a graphic equalizer the amplified sound in the same bandwith measurements. So if you had a high or low reading at 400 Hz on the device, you’d step across to the equalizer and boost or cut the 400 HZ pot until the reading flattened out.
AFAIK, there was only one useful application of this process – for a large PA system with live microphones, most often for a concert. You pump the pink noise through the PA and increase the volume until you start to get feedback through the mics, and you can tell from the sampling device in what part of the spectrum the feedback is occuring, and you attenuate that part of the spectrum by dialing it down on the graphic equalizer. The aim was to get the maximum possible volume across the spectrum without feedback. It was quite effective.
In your home, or anywhere else except maybe a lab, you’ll never get a flat line. And even if you do, move the device a couple of feet in any direction, and the reading will change, because the environment has a major impact on sound.
And if you only have bass/treble dials, you have no ability to adjust the sound on anything other than a pretty gross level anyway. It’s not worth the effort.
For all those “special” settings – some may be applicable to particular recording schemes, like DTS or Dolby 5.1. Those would make a BIG difference, and big improvement, if your source material is recorded in that format. Otherwise, they are mostly just equalization schemes that some engineer or marketer back at the factory decided was “nice” for different types of music. You will probably find that switching among them has a greater impact then just turning bass or treble up and down, but there’s no real assurance you’ll like them any more, and there’s not one that will be best with all given recordings.
The EAX settings only apply to computer games*. Basically, its a series of sound effects drivers. Theoretically, EAX enhances the sound effects to better reflect the environment in-game (drippy sewer, stone dungeon, metal space ship, etc.) Most games (I’m talking about the big gaming titles here, not casual games) will include an audio setting to enable/disable EAX effects. Personally, I set EAX for a generic environment in the sound console and then turn the option on in the game settings. The games are programed to use the sound effects appropriately.
It sounds like you’re using the Creative X-Fi card? I don’t own one. You might want to ask in GQ about setting it up. The included Creative software can sometimes be a pain in the neck.
*well some of Creative’s MP3 players do EAX, sort of, but there it’s mostly about reverb.
I know EAX is meant for games. But it can be used to affect normal music. On an older card I actually had eax on all the time with something like ‘concert theatre’. It actually made the music sound better, like it was being heard in a much larger room.
But this time, with the sb x-fi gamer (yes I know… ‘gamer’) I can’t quite get it to sound better on any of the eax settings so I leave it off.
This is horribly, horribly vexing. Our parlor has four speakers placed about the room for a general L/R feel. While it maintains a general stereo (it’s great fun to watch the animals’ heads turn during, say, Dark Side or Unsquare Dance), there are subtle differences that depend on which chair or sofa you’re sitting in. Sound absorption to the point of “hey, where’d that nuance go?” or “you can’t hear that?!”.
At least in the den things are a bit more symmetrical, but there are still two basic seating areas, meaning no one setting is optimal. Bah. Fortunately, though, the differences are only really noticeable when setting things up, not so much during a movie.
With four speakers it’s more likely to be phase interference rather than complete sound absorption of certain frequencies. You have two speakers playing the left signal, and two playing the right. Whenever you have two speakers with identical outputs positioned so that you can hear both, there will be some locations where you’ll get phase cancelling of some frequencies - the analogy is throwing two pebbles into a pond and getting flat spots where the waves intersect.
The device Boyo Jim was referring to is called a Real Time Analyzer. Handy things.
well, yeah, it has an audible affect if you set it in the console on a specific environment. I just never found any of that to make music better - just different. But that’s just a personal taste. It’s all so dependent on room size and speaker arrangements and so on. I have only had small computer rooms so I wouldn’t want to set the sound to be an auditorium or whatever. And I never want to hassle with changing it around. So I set EAX to generic for music listening purposes. I sometimes set the equalizer for “jazz” or “blues” but I like the bass to be noticeable but not overpowering.
Good speakers or headphones and enough amplification so you don’t have to drive anything in your audio chain too hard. Those and your listening space. You shouldn’t need to adjust your bass & treble and other EQ stuff unless there’s something that badly needs fixing.
The best spectrum analyzer for you is your own two ears. If you work with the settings and adjust for your reactions you will be pleased with the results. In the high-end home theater business we make our initial calculations around the “money seat,” where the guy who paid us will sit, and everybody else is expected to say, “Damn fine audio, JC!” But in reality the difference between TMS and three inches to the left or right is so great, to a good listener, that I can only hope that my compromise is close enough to “fantastic audio” to his guests that it won’t jump out at them as a compromise.
