You Can't Cut Your Way To Flat

Living room system now has a chairside Behringer DEQ 2496 for fine tuning EQ and level.  This is heavenly compared with the old getting down on my knees and squinting to adjust the stack of DEQ units on the floor.  It's also wonderful to be able to change the level so easily, rather than fumbling with the universal remote to control the Tact digital preamp.  Now I can just twist the knob (though I have to select the proper Utilities page) which makes changes in fast 0.5dB increments (great for fast level adjusting, though not perfect for real adjustments and tests...which you would have thought more like the intended purpose).

I had long intended to have something like this, but my "extra" DEQ unit kept getting called for something else.  So this unit was only last month "liberated" from the bedroom system, replaced by a miniDSP OpenDRC, which is my new go-to EQ device for permanent settings.  The Behringers are nicer for on-the-fly adjusting, where you can monitor and see what you are doing quickly.  It's sad if they are now as it seems being discontinued (though Adorama seems to be taking pre-orders) and not replaced by something.

Anyway, while it lasts, I now have a long time dream, chairside volume and EQ.  Too bad it doesn't also do absolute polarity, L-R, and a few things like that.  (It does do mono, which the miniDSP's don't.)  But what it does do will allow infinite tests and potential improvements.  And since the DEQ has full digitial I/O (in AES no less) there is zero noise and distortion.

I had hopes and dreams like this as a kid.  I lusted over equalizer laden preamps like the Soundcraftsmen, Citation Eleven, and Phase Linear 4000, and ultimately the Cello Audio Pallette which was designed by Dick Burwen.  I imagined having the controls chairside, which never happened.  (Now, I have no need for analog Preamps, except in the limited domain of LP playback, where the preamp is near the turntable.  And I didn't like the Soundcraftsmen or Citation Eleven much either, and they certainly weren't zero noise and distortion.)

Not long ago I came across an Audio magazine interview with Dick Burwen back in 1976 which I read back then.  He has long been a believer in many daring kinds electronic processing, only starting with EQ.  Even then, 1/3 octave graphic EQ was long available for professionals and I had lusted for it, and Burwen has always had his own EQ and other processors, he could do everything possible on his home system.  Now almost anyone can do the EQ and other stuff fairly cheaply, but far more money is wasted on tweaks doing nothing.  (Burwen used to have a whole bunch of new software solutions...at the link above....but no longer available.  Sound interesting.)  Burwen's new thing, BOBCAT, if you could even get it, requires a dedicated PC and audio interface (which I happen to have, for experimental purposes, and I wouldn't want to have the laptop fan running all the time during listening, and IMO PC's are a bitch to deal with because of updates and crap...one of my continuing accomplishments has been keeping a "computer" and it's world of nonsense out of the living room, except indirectly through Roon controlled by phone, etc).

The only question then was where to start?  I have a long list of issues I'd like to investigate and/or correct.  I pondered that on Sunday "Father's Day" morning, even before my cats were thanking me.  I decided I'd take an audio holiday, and tackle big projects.  But the Lenco setup still looked too difficult, and now buried in "laboratory" "junk."  So I just did the simple thing, setting up the EQ, which had been waiting a week.

I still didn't know what to do, but the obvious thing was to investigate if I could "correct" the depressions in the bass by using boost.  Heretofore, in my Bass EQ, I use only parametric cuts, designed in particular to cancel out room modes, or perhaps other issues of that kind.

My philosophy generally is to not cut "too far," yielding over-corrected boring.

So don't blame my lumpy bass for resulting from overcorrection, but, if anything, undercorrection, though sometimes modal corrections were found necessary by resonances elsewhere in the house, such as by the back door.  I'd like to revisit my whole set of bass EQ's, the last time I did that was a couple years ago or more, and I wasn't satisfied then.  It seems like I have a lot of weird corrections.  But removing, or weakening, any one of them makes it sound worse.

And the effect at the listening position, despite almost being in the near field of the woofer, is somewhat weak sounding bass.

OK, so I'd long thought, why not fix the bass by raising the level, and increasing the cuts of nodes.

That doesn't work, or maybe I haven't tried enough.

Anyway, even with all the cuts you can find time to make, you still end up with lumpy bass because the underlying non-model response is far from flat also.  Sooner or later you are going to have to do what I did last month in the midrange but used to think was verboten.  Boosts, up to 3dB in that case.

Here in the bass it seemed I needed and could do much more, up to 6dB across notably weak ranges like 100-200 Hz and 32 Hz and below.

The result is mind bogglingly more bass musical detail that can be followed mostly without effort.  Bass lines have become transparently meaningful and clear.  I was noting the difference on The Beatles, Klaatu Hope, and others.

The measured response doesn't look "boosted" at all, it looks like a slowly rising line from the minimum response around 500 Hz before an early midrange rise starting at 600 Hz which needs to be investigated, or maybe I just need to fill in another rangel.

It still looks like flat-ish "electrostatic bass," in fact it looks much flatter, but sounds more full, without exaggerating any of the bothersome nodes.

Starting Response..Bass sounding weak despite still bulging

Ending Response after GEQ 1/3 octave boosts...flat yet powerful sounding

New Graphic EQ boosts (only)