smiley face eq

Hello All,

I wanted to talk a little about the 'Smiley Face EQ' setting that a lot of people like to use for their mains or any stereo for that matter.

The idea is based off the Equal Loudness Curve or Fletcher-Munson curve.  It is a tool used by Psycho-Acousticians to basically show compression of hearing as the level increases.

A 1k tone was presented to the listener at a certain level... say 20 dB SPL (20 Phons)...  The listener was then played a different frequency and they had to raise the level they were hearing until it matched the loudness of the 1k tone presented as a reference.  As the 1k tone gets louder (100 Phons), you can see that the levels are more consistent across frequency.

The idea of this 'Smiley Face EQ' is that you should match this equal loudness curve... Maybe a good idea in theory, but a terrible idea in practice.  The purpose of the graphical eq is to be able to correct the system to try and match the environment.  For example if the room naturally has a boost at 4k, you should reduce the level at 4k on your graphic eq.

If the room requires a 'Smiley Face EQ', then that is really cool, but most of the time that eq setting is applied pre entry to the room.

So in short, the FFT of the room will show you how the system eq should be set... (well if you can help it, the room should be acoustically treated to have a pretty flat response, but you cant always help that.)

My professors used to hate the fact that people used to fix a room by eqing the system, and had a good reason for it... in another post I will explain why. For now if the only thing possible is to eq the system, do it. lol... it can help provide a more consistent sound and also help reduce feedback in the monitors.

Thank you!

Tom