Modern equalizers on screen are most often parodies of the original they were designed from. How can you get excited about photorealism and shiny looking knobs and 'skins' when it's 'grab with grabber hand, hold mouse and lift or lower then drop' 30 times? Like a dumb child's simulation game.
I love EQs with many bands. In the real world I used to drag across the row of sliders with the knobs between two fingers setting a general curve during the first second of a song... in a single motion. Without looking. Graphic designers want rectangular EQ knobs. DJs want round ones. I wanted to manufacture round ones with spinnable outsides to max the speed of the curve-swipe.
Love it, beyond the Baxandall I kinda sort miss just a single passive "tone" treble-cut control, often found on low-end cars like the '92 Tercel I drove into the ground. It's not the same as having bass/treble/loudness, but to boost bass you learn to turn up the overall volume and then take off enough treble so that it's bassier overall...same exact scheme as on a passive electric guitar/bass. Also, for any car with speakers in the trunk, fade toward the rear a little to boost the bass naturally.
I'm really a one knob per function kinda person when it comes to audio, and IMO burying digital tone controls in multi-level menus in cars is user-hostile and unsafe.
> IMO burying digital tone controls in multi-level menus in cars is user-hostile and unsafe.
Forget the tone. The other day I was in a Renault Megane with two friends and the radio's F/R balance was out of whack, with the rear speakers, placed near my ears, going full tilt. We had to stop the car and figure how to change this, since the controls were not at all intuitive, including for the car's owner of multiple years.
People did not mention the "presence" button back in those days, either, as this article does not. It's seemingly a lot more forgotten than even a "loudness" button is.
Now that I'm pushing 60 it's clear my relative perception of tones has shifted somewhat. Although I've had no reason to have my hearing formally tested, as someone involved in video and audio production (as well as being a long-time home theater enthusiast), I have enough digital media samples with which I'm intimately familiar I can tell the sound I'm hearing has shifted from what it once was.
I've been thinking about trying one of those mobile phone apps which give you a test of different frequencies and then provides and EQ preset to correct signals (as much as possible). This seems like a good idea and conceptually no different than the hardware I use to create screen profiles for displays and the calibrated microphone I use to adjust my home theater. However, I haven't done it yet because so far I've yet to find any tool that discloses much technical detail about it's doing and how. Being familiar with high-end audio DSP processing from the production side, I'd like visibility into what it's doing so I can assess how much theoretical support and/or rigor there is behind it. Would love any suggestions...
While I do like tone controls, I'm skeptical of the argument of adjusting bass/treble based on volume, e.g. the likes of 'Dynamic EQ' in D&M receivers. It has always sounded like it is doubling up something that my brain is already doing
That's definitely a thing in portable speakers! In this case though the amplifier won't really know what it's powering, and different drivers have different sensitivity. The resulting volume will also be affected by the cabinet the driver sits in as well as the placement of the speaker in the room.
I wanted to hack something around this, since my amp, speakers, speaker placement, room and listening position are constant. But I have no idea how to actually go about this.
I can fetch the pre-amp level, but the actual sound level will be dependent on the source's actual volume which isn't constant (see: loudness wars). I could react according to a "measured" level, but how should I deal with a quiet portion (think classical music)? The closest I came was to use replaygain, but then that won't work with spotify...
I wonder if anybody came up with a solution to this.
Modern equalizers on screen are most often parodies of the original they were designed from. How can you get excited about photorealism and shiny looking knobs and 'skins' when it's 'grab with grabber hand, hold mouse and lift or lower then drop' 30 times? Like a dumb child's simulation game.
I love EQs with many bands. In the real world I used to drag across the row of sliders with the knobs between two fingers setting a general curve during the first second of a song... in a single motion. Without looking. Graphic designers want rectangular EQ knobs. DJs want round ones. I wanted to manufacture round ones with spinnable outsides to max the speed of the curve-swipe.
Love it, beyond the Baxandall I kinda sort miss just a single passive "tone" treble-cut control, often found on low-end cars like the '92 Tercel I drove into the ground. It's not the same as having bass/treble/loudness, but to boost bass you learn to turn up the overall volume and then take off enough treble so that it's bassier overall...same exact scheme as on a passive electric guitar/bass. Also, for any car with speakers in the trunk, fade toward the rear a little to boost the bass naturally.
I'm really a one knob per function kinda person when it comes to audio, and IMO burying digital tone controls in multi-level menus in cars is user-hostile and unsafe.
> IMO burying digital tone controls in multi-level menus in cars is user-hostile and unsafe.
Forget the tone. The other day I was in a Renault Megane with two friends and the radio's F/R balance was out of whack, with the rear speakers, placed near my ears, going full tilt. We had to stop the car and figure how to change this, since the controls were not at all intuitive, including for the car's owner of multiple years.
People did not mention the "presence" button back in those days, either, as this article does not. It's seemingly a lot more forgotten than even a "loudness" button is.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presence_(amplification)
Now that I'm pushing 60 it's clear my relative perception of tones has shifted somewhat. Although I've had no reason to have my hearing formally tested, as someone involved in video and audio production (as well as being a long-time home theater enthusiast), I have enough digital media samples with which I'm intimately familiar I can tell the sound I'm hearing has shifted from what it once was.
I've been thinking about trying one of those mobile phone apps which give you a test of different frequencies and then provides and EQ preset to correct signals (as much as possible). This seems like a good idea and conceptually no different than the hardware I use to create screen profiles for displays and the calibrated microphone I use to adjust my home theater. However, I haven't done it yet because so far I've yet to find any tool that discloses much technical detail about it's doing and how. Being familiar with high-end audio DSP processing from the production side, I'd like visibility into what it's doing so I can assess how much theoretical support and/or rigor there is behind it. Would love any suggestions...
While I do like tone controls, I'm skeptical of the argument of adjusting bass/treble based on volume, e.g. the likes of 'Dynamic EQ' in D&M receivers. It has always sounded like it is doubling up something that my brain is already doing
If tone needs to be adjusted according to listening volume, why not have psychometric EQ that achieves that adjustment automatically?
That's definitely a thing in portable speakers! In this case though the amplifier won't really know what it's powering, and different drivers have different sensitivity. The resulting volume will also be affected by the cabinet the driver sits in as well as the placement of the speaker in the room.
I wanted to hack something around this, since my amp, speakers, speaker placement, room and listening position are constant. But I have no idea how to actually go about this.
I can fetch the pre-amp level, but the actual sound level will be dependent on the source's actual volume which isn't constant (see: loudness wars). I could react according to a "measured" level, but how should I deal with a quiet portion (think classical music)? The closest I came was to use replaygain, but then that won't work with spotify...
I wonder if anybody came up with a solution to this.