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I really want to set my equilizer correctly. I have a powered mixer with a 8 band equilizer. Right now it is set sort of like a smiley face. I have searched the web looking for information with no luck. Please help  :D

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8 band is not the best but it's better than none. To properly set an eq one would use a spectrum analyzer and high end condenser microphone. In your case as a mobile kj it is best to start out each night at all 0. When you set up put on a familiar song and then make minor adjustments to the eq. Walk the room and repeat. until you are happy with the overall sound. I'll admit unless I analyze a room I generality have close to a smiley but there may be a few up frequencies from room absorbtion.

A smile on an EQ is the sign of disaster waiting to happen. Especially on a dinky little powered mixer EQ....And especially on an EQ with so few bands of adjustment.

As soon as you boost the lows on a full range pair of tops, you set yourself up to starve the highs....and the highs then require you boost them too. You end up draining the mixer amp and clipping it....Clipping it will cost you the horns or builtin crossovers in your tops.

The amp drains attempting to produce the lows you desire, and then it can't properly provide for the peaks that the highs demand....So it clips.

But let's say you ain't cranked it up yet to the point it's clipping.....The smile you see in an indication of just how poorly your speakers are performing at reproducing the signal you send them...Ideally, speakers should have a very flat response across the freq rance they claim they can handle.....But you have to look closely at their claims before you buy them.

If the speaker maker says their speaker is rated down to 47Hz @ -10dB, then it ain't nothing to brag about.  That means it will not produce 47Hz at an SPL that is really effective....-10dB is a huge reduction in loudness or volume.

Really pro speaker makers will publish specs and graphs that show their actual responce levels where freq VS dB can be examined.....Those graphs allow you to see exactly what you can expect to boost and cut at the EQ once operating.

But let's say you looked at those graphs and saw your cabs can't give you 45Hz at 0dB, but you want them to try so you boost the EQ there anyway.....Then you ain't happey when the horns now ain't as bright so you boost them at the other end of the EQ....And after all that you discover that for some reason it just ain't loud enuff anymore so you twist up the masters.....OOOPS, why did one speaker suddenly crackle and then go out?

Try this tonight.......Set your EQ flat and crank the masters till you like the overall SPLs'....Now instead of boosting the lows and highs, instead cut the mid ranges on the EQ.....Then ease the masters up to make up for the lost overall SPL's....You are still flirting with death, but maybe not as close as before.

If your EQ is grinning at you, then you need to first add subs with a separate amp, then maybe biamp the tops too....As you properly outfit your system the grin will begin to flatten to the point you are only using the EQ to adjust for room acustics.

Then, and only then will an RTA do you some good.

Agree with & also to add to what Keith stated, most of your vocal range works around the 250 hz- 3Khz frequency with the most pronounced frequency around 1K.  When you are "smiling" your eq, your are effectively pulling out ALL your vocal frequencies in favor of the deep bass & piercing treble.

With a small eq like that, I wouldn't add anything but run it flat & CUT some of the muddy &/or harsh frequencies usually (not always) a little 250 hz & a little of either 2K, 4K or 8K - depending on the room.  A little being just under the flat line to 1 full step - generally don't need to cut more than that.  Use the channel eq's to add a little bass or treble to the music, but don't overdo.

Here is a little article you can read that may help a little.  http://www.stage-directions.com/backissues/oct02/eq.shtml

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Yup the original purpose was to compensate for the high frequency roll off in the human auditory system. And they were used with low quality amps..  At a low or normal volume they can be somewhat effective but at the volumes most pa's are run at, the main use is attenuating certain frequencies causing feedback.... Anybody that tries to adjust the architectural acoustics with a 5 or 8 channel eq is on a wild goose chase ....You can adjust the overall gain structure in a linear fashion with the eq...  And sometimes compensating for low bass .. if your amp has headroom you should be to run the eq at +5.......

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Babs, if you don't know exactly how to use an EQ properly, don't use it. With the correct settings on your bass, mid's and top's settings, you would rarely use an EQ, unless you are in a recording studio. Now of course if you were a multi million $ performer, with your own sound engineer, that would be different.

Of course everybody else here will disagree with me, but I have been in the KJ business for quite some time, have been a musician for many moons, and have never used an equalizer. You see, I know how to use my build in 3 band EQ for live performances.

I agree with that part, but you see, not every local KJ has a spectrum analyzer. Most people here probably don't even know what a spectrum analyzer is.

This links may be of some use. http://members.cox.net/pasystem1/
http://www.colomar.com/Shavano/pa_page.html
They both contains more info than just eq.

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This Is a very helpful Thread (to me)..

..I  used to allways run Flat (with my old Peavey X600G) and see others creating all kinds of curves and wondering why they cant sound as good as my system.

I am so glad I asked - I spent so much time trying to figure it out on my own. I should of known to ask here first. You guys rock!!  Thank you

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You ran flat and sounded good cause that old Peavey powered mixer had lots of amp guts and plenty of headroom. You also had well matched speakers where you didn't ask them to produce deep bass.

So the credit goes equally to you and Peavey. You had a decent powered mixer AND you knew how to use it.

I find myself tweaking an EQ all the time.  Reason being room acoustics. Carpeting,curtains,room size, shape, the inability to optimally place speakers, and to even compensate for my own hearing problems, a few of us did some significant nerve damage in "the old days", but even as we age, we still search for frequencies that our ear's just can't hear that well any longer, so to try to create a more spatial sound, and a brighter sound; we tweak. I probably do some boosting and cutting to compensate for what I'd like to be hearing above 15,000 Hz, In essence, We have two choices, hearing aid, or crank the phone WAY up, I'm probably using my EQ to compensate for some degree of aging, and shot hearing and "cranking the phone way up" so-to-speak.  I wasn't aware that on lower volumes such tweaking was detrimental to a 15inch 3-way pair of speakers. If I'm trying to get "more life" out've my systems sound, by attempting to add more dimension to either my voice, guitar, bass, keyboards, I certain DO NOT want to do-so at the expense of causing equipment damage... I have some questions regarding this, however I won't bother taking up space here asking them.  Like Michael, I found this thread quite informative.

It's probably common knowledge, however how any of us hear, or perceive sound is subjective. Depending on our sensitivity, and  our own hearing EQ'ing sound has definate advantages. Many enjoy using gimmick to play with the imperfect aspects of the human ear.  Depending on so many factors, our ears can really mess with us too..  Thing is, it's the best we have.  Ever try tuning a tempered instrument (such as a piano) with just a strobe ?  You can't. Mechanical equipment can't accurately achieve a decent relative pitch over that range of notes. Mechanical equipment might work for guitar and bass, yet it won't for a 7-8 octave range such as a piano.  The extreme ranges will sound so far off pitch it'll be horrendous to the human ear, yet the strobe will show the piano to be in perfect tune. The tuner relies on his ear to compensate and tweak, methods such as just tuning using a circle of 5ths, or different pitch relationships, even beats, all need to be fine-tuned to compensate at some point..  Concert Violinsts often play an ascending scale with a slightly different fingering than the descending scale. Often they will lower the 7th and 3rd fingering positions just slightly when playing a descending scale, to accomodate aspects of the human ear, (or mind). (We tend to be conditioned to hear the descending 3rd and 7th as being slightly lower than the ascending pitches). Many beginner guitarists will also notice how much of the time, when their upper strings are dead sounding,  especially the E, they will attempt to achieve "brightness" by raising the pitch, going slightly sharp. The ear is imperfect, it get's fooled quite abit.  I like to take advantage of my foolish ears using equalization.

Yep, you are most correct that your/our ears fool us...Otherwise MP3's would sound full of holes when compared to full wave files....But they don't because the guys who developed MP3 compression took all that into consideration.

Take care when EQing your mix for your damaged ears. It might offend those with better ears. I too have lost a great deal of my high range hearing. My ears suffered 20 years of machinery noise and submarine pressure extremes. I have noticed that I tend to mix too high for the normal person...They complain that the horns are too brite and brittle while they sound just fine to me...So don't trust your ears there.

Thanks Keith.  It can get tricky. I'm at a point where I must ask other's their opinions, because as you correctly stated, what sounds preferable to me, might be extremely harsh to someone else. My own hearing isn't representative of "mainstream" aesthetic preference. (At least I don't think)


(you should hear the neighbor's dogs when I tweak my PA for the Arp Omni-2 analog synth, and start playing.  Worse than the violin )  Poor things have lousy taste in effects obviously     Nah, it really must hurt their ears.  :(

I still got my highs and lows but I do have "holes" in my auditory range from shore bombardment aboard ship,  shooting various guns without ear protection and from my ex hitting me along side the head with a frying pan....

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That can become problematic I suppose.  In the 60's and 70's we'd just crank up the SVT's, and Marshall stacks..heck, used to stand in front of stacks that'd blow out a match. I think I even rearranged my anatomy somewhat with the DB-level's we'd play at as young'uns. High enough of a DB level day-after-day, a person can really develop $h8^ for brains.

Steve did you ever wake up the next morning with 2 filters off of cigs stuffed in your ears?  Gals would say wat are you doing with those in your ears..  LOL

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My first Navy tour was aboard tin cans during Nam where we made "John Wayne" runs at the beach. We would run in fast while tossing big projectiles and dual .50's at them and then continue firing as we turned away for the next run. It made standing topside a religious experience. It was so much fun to watch the fireworks that we said screw our ears and remained on deck so we could watch the shells and tracers impact. Very often the shock of the big guns would knock us to our knees, but the thrill was worth it.

Can you imagine a bunch of young sailors tossing finger gestures at the enemy while bleeding from the ears and reeling from the deck gun blasts...If gung-ho was gunpowder we would have killed all of them in the first run.

I may not be able to hear well today, but I can still hear those days perfectly....I figure it's was a fair trade. I have no regrets.

My goal now is to build a bass end that can equal the thump and whump of a big bore deck gun.

Keith have you googled any of your old ships most have a web site now the rock

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I haven't.  Just haven't met the right woman yet I suppose.



Sorry Karyoker, I'm slow here...  I never resorted to using ciggy filters as ear-plugs. Usually enough substance dampened any symptoms to acute abuse I put myself thru back in those days. I smoked Camel and Lucky non-filter's anyway in those days,  I did try to improvise with kleenex, or a napkin once..  That resulted in a trip to the doc...had to wash the thing out  Hard to tell now-adays. I probably have a few Zig-Zags in there someplace.  Xrays might show interesting things, one never know's.

I certainly can hear you !    Whenever I want a date, I head out and go to the 1970's.