House Curves - what is your take?

[A.wayne]

My apologies guys , i will have a more detailed response later, I'm on my dreaded I-phone ..

 

[DonH50]

Heaven help the "no EQ" crowd if they ever see the inside of a recording studio, or compare the response of their room to the studio, or stage.

 

[A.wayne]

Rooms are designed first and then treated passively, this is the best way imo. Bad speakers in a bad room requiring EQing = bad sound, regardless if its a studio or playback suite ...

Regards ,

 

[DonH50]

EQ is used for more than room control in the studio, and not everyone has he option of designing or choosing an optimal room, but I see I have stepped into a religious debate and will withdraw.

 

[microstrip]

I have never heard the term "house curve" before. (...)

We can solve it easily. Quoted from my preferred book at these subjects:

"In professional audio, things started off quite differently. Sound reinforcement loudspeakers for auditoriums are large, heavy, and used in arrays, aimed in different directions to cover a widely distributed audience. Measuring them is a physical and acoustical challenge; the far field of an array is a long distance away. Consequently, room curves (or “house curves” as they are known in proaudio) were really all that could be measured once a system was assembled, usually at several locations throughout the audience. Early instruments permitted only steady-state measurements, using warbled tones and, later, bandpass filtered pink noise."

Sound Reproduction, F. Toole.

 

[edorr]

Rooms are designed first and then treated passively, this is the best way imo. Bad speakers in a bad room requiring EQing = bad sound, regardless if its a studio or playback suite ...

Regards ,

There are four parameters, the room, the passive treatment, the speakers and the EQ. In an optimal room with good passive treatment and very good speakers you may not need EQ. I have an OK room (dedicated, but not designed for audio), OK passive treatment (corner traps and panels), and very good speakers. In this scenario, I benefit from EQ. The sound is pretty damn good.

 

[LL21]

With decent room, lots of professional help, and Velodyne DD18...i have reasonably flat response, and then purposely boosted roughly 3db in the lower ranges and it felt much better. Particularly kick drums felt more real with the kind of gut kick you get when being in a room when one is playing.

 

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

And the 10 band equalizers, how long does that take? Typically about two years to get it right.

No kidding? How long would it take you to set up a couple of these?

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

 

[A.wayne]

EQ is used for more than room control in the studio, and not everyone has he option of designing or choosing an optimal room, but I see I have stepped into a religious debate and will withdraw.

Huh..
some serious Irony there Don , my apologies to the EQ gods....

 

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

Huh..
some serious Irony there Don

Care to explain? ‘Cause it ain’t jumping at me...

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

 

[A.wayne]

I did apologize to the EQ gods ....

On topic, how can a system reproduce the natural decay of instruments when it has an additional 5 +db of electronic boost to give it the same level at 30hz as 80 hz. It doesn't sound natural to me when i hear it , its the same when you listen to some servo controlled woofers , theres an artificial pumping on bass passages ...

Its also academic to recognize that some systems will benefit from electronic EQing , but in absolute terms there were too many compromises to begin with , i wont even get into the additional distortion , slewing , noise , amp and speaker demand added ..

Build full bandwidth speakers to begin with, the difference is staggering when compared to doing it electronically, just listen to the comments of those listening to DEQX type setups ...

Then again if you like that kind of sound , go for it ....

Regards ,

 

[A.wayne]

There are four parameters, the room, the passive treatment, the speakers and the EQ. In an optimal room with good passive treatment and very good speakers you may not need EQ. I have an OK room (dedicated, but not designed for audio), OK passive treatment (corner traps and panels), and very good speakers. In this scenario, I benefit from EQ. The sound is pretty damn good.

Where are you applying EQing , full bandwidth or just in the bass ....?

Regards,

 

[edorr]

Where are you applying EQing , full bandwidth or just in the bass ....?

Regards,

Full bandwidth

 

[edorr]

Build full bandwidth speakers to begin with, the difference is staggering when compared to doing it electronically, just listen to the comments of those listening to DEQX type setups ...

Then again if you like that kind of sound , go for it ....

Regards ,

I have the Evolution Acoustics MM3. 2 x 15" woofer on each side. Down to 10 Hz. It does not get much more full bandwidth than that.

 

[c1ferrari]

Hey Don!

Heaven help the "no EQ" crowd if they ever see the inside of a recording studio, or compare the response of their room to the studio, or stage.

Direct-to-two track, baby

 

[JackD201]

The goal of a “proper” house curve, IMO, is to have all bass frequencies sound like they’re being generated at the same volume level, irrespective of what response measures.

I share this opinion. In the last concert I watched, I was seated behind the FOH engineer's desk. The slope from bass to treble was at almost 45 degrees for a basketball arena.

As far as I know, links to other forums are fine Wayne but better yet it would be nice if you posted the content here.

 

[primetimeguy]

A house curve is not a means of compensation for the ear’s decreases sensitivity at low volume levels, and has nothing to do with old-school loudness switches (which was a fix of sorts to compensate for the same). Rather, a house curve is compensation for the room. Every room is different so there is no “right” or universal house curve, but generally speaking smaller rooms sound better with a steeper low-end boost, whereas larger rooms can get away with less. A room has to be pretty big before it sounds natural with flat- or virtually-flat response. We’re talking small public auditoriums here.

The goal of a “proper” house curve, IMO, is to have all bass frequencies sound like they’re being generated at the same volume level, irrespective of what response measures. With measured flat response, a 30 Hz sine wave probably won’t sound as loud as one at 80 Hz. A little trick I came up with for determining a suitable house curve for a room is to play a sine wave at the crossover frequency of your subwoofer – 80-90 Hz typically – and a second at 30 Hz or so. If the 30 Hz signal sounds weak compared to the higher one, increase the level of the 30 Hz signal until it sounds like it’s the same volume as the higher frequency signal. At that point, the difference in measured SPL between the two signals is your house curve. E.g., 78 dB measured for the 90 Hz signal and 83 dB for the 30 Hz signal gets you basically a 5-dB slope. At that point, you would want to equalize response reasonably flat so that it slopes up 5 dB from 90 Hz to 30 Hz. The popular Room EQ Wizard program has a function that adds a house curve slope to your target curve for equalizing a subwoofer.

I’ve found that with the proper house curve in place, the only adjustment needed for different volume levels is to basically turn the sub up or down as needed. There’s no reason for a separate “low level” house curve and an “ear-bleeding loud” house curve. As I mentioned, the house curve is compensation for the room, not the ear.

The house curve shown in the first post didn’t sound good in my system. It’s not an upward slope from the high frequencies to the low, but merely an overall volume boost of a sub that’s equalized flat. Still, the main objective is coming up with something you think sounds good in your system. At the end of the day, it's purely subjective.

I wrote a treatise on the topic a number of years ago that might be of interest. I’m not sure if we’re allowed to post links from other forums here, but if you search “house curve” it should come up on the first page of most search engines.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

I'd say the goal of the house curve is to make what we hear more similar to what is heard in the mix studio/stage. If the source isn't mixed with a curve, so that all freq "sound" the same, then we shouldn't either.

I do think it is needed more because of our hearing deficiency because of the fact the source (for movies anyway) is typically mixed much louder than we listen to at home. And when we turn the volume down some frequencies (lows) drop off faster than the middle frequencies because of how we hear. The roll-off in the highs is needed in our homes because of the much smaller rooms than movie mix studios.

So I think a curve is needed, both because of how we hear changes in volume as well as to better replicate the source sound stage.