It's been at least a month since I finally implemented The Button (the Listening Position EQ button).
I keep The Button next to the listening position chair. When I sit down in the chair, I can press The Button and it enables the special Listening Position EQ which has much too much deep bass content to be used when I'm playing the system as background music (which is what I do most of the time).
So, when you press the button, you start getting the Full Effect at the listening position, which otherwise sounds very bass shy compared to the rest of the room (and the entire house).
Last year as I was doing some listening position EQ adjustments by ear and measurements, I decided that a Listening Position EQ was absolutely necessary to restore the missing "punch" in my system. One problem is that there most of the notching out of room modes benefits the sound in the rest of the room. At the listening position, these modes cause cancellation instead of augmentation. So two EQ's are necessary if you use the system for both background and serious listening, especially for my problematic room set up.
(Why didn't I fix this by "fixing the listening position and speaker location(s)"? Because my living room is decidedly a multipurpose room I also use for parties, and the only real solution to getting the bass right in a small lengthwise room like mine is to put the speakers in the middle of the room and listen at the back, as suggested by local late audiophile and engineer Alan--and what he did in his dedicated upstairs listening room, which had similar dimensions. Putting the speakers in the middle of the room just wouldn't work for me.)
So last year I created two different EQ's. "Listen" for the Listening Position and "Back" for Background. I could fairly easily select them with the chairside EQ I was using for level and EQ adjustments, using stored memories.
But in December, the particular EQ unit that I was using as my chair side EQ died. It is still on my bench awaiting repair. The key stumbling block is that I have to deal with lead-free solder for the first time, and to do it right I also have a new powered solder sucker that may take some getting used to. So while there has been one urgent thing to do after another here at the palace, otherwise known as Peterson Studios and Laboratories, that particular project of repairing the EQ has been procrastinated on time and again. Which is not unlike many such things in the past.
Meanwhile I was forced to recall, guess, and scrape my blog for hints as how to recreate the "listening position EQ" using my Bass EQ unit, since sadly it was one photograph I never took before the chair side EQ died. I did that in January.
But the truth is, I wanted to have The Button even when I also had the Chairside EQ working, simply as I believed it would be more convenient to use the button than fiddle with the memory menu on the EQ.
In one fantasy, I'd just sit down in the listening chair and The Listening EQ would automatically engage, then disengage when I got up. That *would* be nice. But even just having a simply "On/Off" button to press would be pretty close.
I finally got to it during a particular stretch of wintry weather. The basic technology is stuff I'd used before, but had to refamiliarize myself with.
I used an Midi Solutions Footswitch Controller (which I originally purchased many years ago for controlling a Behringer DCX crossover unit to change the absolute polarity, for absolute polarity blind testing. It was controlled by the line level path of my ABX switcher). I programmed the Footswitch Controller to send Program Change 2 when the circuit is made, and Program Change 1 when the circuit is broken. The Midi Solutions app strangely doesn't code this from any menu option. The only menu option available is to send a Program Change when contact is made, but nothing when contact is broken.
Meanwhile, the "circuit" is made and broken using an Insteon IOlink, same as I used for other automation tasks in my living room stereo. (This is the 4th IOlink in use for the Living Room stereo). The IOlink conveniently has connectors either for turning an internal voltage on or off, or making or breaking an external connection.
So then the IOlink is controlled by my Insteon system, which itself is controlled by my Universal Devices ISY994i home controller. The Button is linked to control the IOlink.
It all works, but apparently (and strangely) the Insteon RF is a bit weak at the listening position, so sometimes I have to press the button more than once. It's obvious when the Listening Position EQ is turned on, because a message temporarily pops up on the DEQ screen, the Memory light turns on, and also a light on the IOlink lights up (I could turn that light off, but I've decided to keep it as an additional indicator light), because if I were fiddling with the memories beforehand the Memory Light might not correctly indicate the Listening Position EQ, whereas the light on the IOlink is unambiguous.
I also have home control system automatically return the EQ to Background EQ when I press the Bedtime button at night, which also turns off the stereo. So in the morning when I turn on the background music (the local FM classical station KPAC) from the bedroom it doesn't start blasting bass because I had been using Listening Position EQ the previous night but never turned it off. This is important. Automatic resets are important when an automated system is restarted.
[I plan to add pictures to this post. But lack of pictures was what delayed me from posting about it for over a month, so I decided to proceed without them at first, which has been my usual approach anyway.\
