The Equalizer: An Audiophile’s Best Friend

December 15, 2014 12:03 am Published by Leave your thoughts

You don’t have to be an audio whiz to understand what an equalizer is and does: it’s essentially your control interface for how the audio you’re listening to sounds. For most people, the equalizer is something they tend to stray away from or touch sparingly for one simple reason: they’re not quite sure exactly how it works and the prospect of messing up their audio quality is much more daunting than the prospect of improving it!

We’re here to tell you that your equalizer is not the enemy—in fact, it’s your best friend when it comes to high end audio in Chicago. Knowing how your equalizer functions, what it can do, which settings are ideal for the type of music you’re listening to and what you shouldn’t do with it are the keys to truly improving your audial experience.

The basics

The first thing you need to know about your EQ is this: it can be adjusted for any type of music. If you’re listening to EDM and want a crisper bass or your 80’s arena rock needs just a bit more treble, the EQ is your gateway to improving the sound quality of anything you’re listening to—all it takes is some fiddling.

At its heart, your EQ manipulates frequencies and as it stands, virtually every component of an audio track has various frequencies that make it sound the way it does. By manipulating certain frequencies, you’ll have the power to enhance or dull certain sounds so that they affect the entire track. Now, this has a limit based on human hearing capabilities: the 20Hz-20kHz range, which is what most equalizers will exhibit.

Playing with your EQ

Now that you understand your equalizer, it’s time for the fun part: playing with it! That’s right, one of the best ways to gauge a feel for how your EQ affects music is simply by playing with it. And, in doing this, you’ll also get a feel for the different ranges of your EQ: bass, upper bass, lower midrange, midrange, upper mids, presence/sibilance register, brilliance/sparkle register and open air. Each range has its own frequencies and changing them will serve to affect how music sounds to you—adjusting the right range with the right music will yield tremendous results in terms of clarity, accentuation and crispness.

As you get more and more of a feel for how your EQ works and which ranges are more likely to coincide with certain musical genres, you’ll be come more adept at making finely tuned enhancements to your music!

Presets and tinkering

You may notice that your EQ has presents associated with it, such as “rock” or “instrumental.” These presets are a quick way to get your music into the range that it likely should be at, but most times a preset isn’t going to be anywhere near perfect. Tinkering with presets will help you to get closer to your end goal of exceptional high end audio in Chicago.

Don’t be afraid of your equalizer the next time you’re playing music. In fact, embrace it! By familiarizing yourself with your EQ and taking the time to tinker with your sound, you’ll find yourself experiencing whole new levels of pristine audio.

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