Equalizer for McIntosh preamp - advice, please

I meant to comment in Ljgj's point out some of the pro gear he mentioned. The pro audio world has forgotten more about parametric EQ than most people will ever know. It's for this reason the PARC was designed by the engineers that make the Paragon, Legacy, and API mixing consoles. You may not have heard of these (unless you are into pro audio gear), but they are the absolute state of the art consoles, used my NBC studios and a number of very famous recording artists (the ones that can afford it and don't want digital). The boards are generally in the 250k range and up. And I can say working with this caliber of engineers has been an absolute pleasure. Their depth of knowledge in this area is remarkable.

Thanks for the answer Rives. Not really disagreeing with me as I had not come to an opinion on it. As chance had it, it was a statement I had read today right before I saw this thread so I threw it in. Us dablers take a while to reach conclusions about this stuff sometimes.

Cheers,

Actually, Clueless, now that I re-read what you posted the quote is acurate--I would just add ...whenever possible.
The problem is that physical room treatment doesn't work very well below 150 Hz. Our unit works from 350 Hz on down to 16 hz, but we recommend that it only be used from 200 Hz on down. Above 200 you should really use physical room treatment.

Rives said. "The problem is that physical room treatment doesn't work very well below 150 Hz."

That's an intereting one to chew on too. Too put things in perspective, that's about 2 and one-half octaves up on a piano, no? Again, I have scratch for a few on that one.

Thanks again,
I remain

Just to clarify. If you have a bass bump below 150 Hz, it's very difficult (not impossible) to treat it with physical devices. There are really only 2 physical devices for this: absorbers and resonators. An abosber that is efficient at that frequency (say 100 Hz for example) is only as efficient as the area of the space that is accentuating the frequency. So, if 2 parrallel walls are accentuating the frequency and you have an absorver that is 95% efficient at that frequency, but you only cover 5% of the wall space--then you've only made a 4.5% difference on the problem (not even audible). This is why people wonder, when they buy bass traps that are proported as being 90% or greater efficient at their frequency problem--why don't they hear a difference (or very much of one). The other way of dealing with problem is resonators. Yes, these can go to just about any frequency and almost any Q factor. The only problem is expense and size of their construction. They also have to be placed at very critical points in the room, where the peaks are maximized (not the pressure points like an absorber). In addition they re-radiate energy--so the design is critical in that the re-radiated energy doesn't cause more problems than the resonator solves. And yes, it's just under 2.5 octaves, but you can't use the piano as an ear test for this because so much of the energy is higher ordered harmonics. To test this theory you have to use pure tone generators don't have (other than what the room produces) harmonics.