No matter how good your headphones and computer sound card are, the sound itself will not be perfect. When recording a piece of music, the sound of each element is rendered as it sounds on its own, without regard to other sound sources nearby. The type of listening room is not taken into account at all: the studio absorbs all unnecessary sound vibrations, leaving only the original source.
When you listen to music in a real room, you unwittingly create positive and negative effects due to the configuration of the room. Why does this happen?
Objects in the room amplify or muffle sound waves of certain frequencies. The result is an unnatural picture of the music. To compensate for the influence of the room, as well as to correct flaws in the sound recording, a system for selectively changing the amplitude of frequencies has been invented: the equalizer.
Content:
Equalizer principle and types
The signal with the help of audio frequency filters is divided into several bands. The more of them, the more accurate the tuning will be. The usual number of sliders is at least 10. By setting the sliders to the "0" position, you get the original sound of the music.
By moving each slider to plus or minus values, you can amplify or completely eliminate any frequency from the range grid. For example, you can remove the voice from a song. True, this will "catch" a musical instrument playing in the same frequency range.
A software equalizer that controls digitized sound in a computer or other device (smartphone, mp3 player) has a similar principle.
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This method is not as advanced as the hardware unit as part of the music center, but at the level of computer sound quality, the software equalizer works effectively. There is such an option in the operating system itself (playback device settings).
In addition, there are many third-party sound control programs that have EQ as part of them. Some of them allow you to tune frequencies at a professional level, of course, within the capabilities of your sound card.
Equalizer and headphones: why do you need it?
It would seem that if there is no room, and the music is coming directly to your ears (from the ear cushions), then what to compensate for?
1. At the very least, the music itself. It's hard to assume that the original recording (the master) was done poorly. But the copy you got to listen to could be flawed in any way.
2. Your musical ear. It's not about the abilities you develop in music school. Each person perceives the sound of the voice and musical instruments differently. The equalizer allows you to adjust the "orchestra" to the listener's taste.
3. Your preferences at a particular moment of listening. For example, if you're sitting in your headphones and you want to be in a concert hall or a stadium. The EQ settings help you create a sense of presence.
Any software equalizer has a list of average presets. You can cycle through them by pressing the appropriate button on the control panel and memorizing a few appropriate choices. This applies mainly to the types of music: classical, rock, disco, etc.
Some advanced programs have preset settings for different listening conditions: room, concert hall, open space. Of course, when using headphones, we are talking about simulating the effect of presence.
Steps of tuning headphone EQ
Method #1 - using a reference piece
1. Make a selection of music of different genres with a reference sound quality. Ideally, these would be licensed CD digital audio, or digitized songs in uncompressed high resolution Hi-res format (FLAC).
2. Set the EQ to the "default" mode, with each frequency control at zero.
3. Enable the EQ mode to view bandwidth levels (available in many programs). If the built-in EQ does not have this feature, it is recommended that you install a program with a visual display.
4. Perform a test listening and, if necessary, adjust the controls in each band.
5. Record the picture in the form of screenshots, save the images for each type of music track.
6. After that, you can run the music pieces whose quality you are not satisfied with. For each type of music, set the frequency levels so that the picture of the frequency diagram is as similar as possible to the saved screenshot.
7. Good equalizer programs necessarily have a function to remember their own settings. Save the selected settings under the correct names (to make it easier to find them in the list later).
8. When listening to your favorite music, you simply turn on the saved settings, and you don't have to struggle with the frequency selection every time.
Method #2 - full manual tuning.
1. Reset the equalizer settings to "default" mode.
2. Play the piece of music you want to adjust the frequencies for.
The best option for manual tuning is to divide the procedure into two steps:
- First, remove the peaks in each frequency. By alternately lowering each slider below the zero mark, we remove unpleasant frequencies, the level of which is greatly exaggerated.
- Then compensate for the dips. One by one, raise only those sliders that remained at zero (the sliders that you used to remove undesirable frequency peaks are not touched).
3. When you get a comfortable sound picture, be sure to save the settings.
4. After that, fine-tune the settings and save them under a different name.
If you have many different songs that require EQ adjustments, try to divide them into groups. Assign a conditional name to each group, and save the settings under the appropriate categories. Then you can quickly turn on the desired preset.
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