Equalizers anyone?

What i want to know is why nobody has mentioned that when you EQ a room, you're actually only correcting for the area where the mic and / or readings were taken. Move the mic / point of readings within the room and you may get very different results. As such, EQ can be helpful, but works best for those that tend to sit in one spot and / or listen by themselves mostly. I say this because someone sitting in a chair or even on the other side of the couch from where the "test results" were calculated will be hearing something different from what you're hearing. That's why it is important to get the room and speakeers dialed in as close as possible and then utilize "tweaks" to finesse it from there ( if necessary ). Sean
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Good point, Sean. Unfortunately, my wife almost never listens with me and I only have friends over for real music sessions a few times a year. But you are right that speakers and room have to be physically corrected as much as possible before going to electronic equalization.

Sean...Procedures for room EQ (that I have seen) always call for the process to be done with the mic in several locations, and the results averaged. Some automatic EQ systems store the results of several runs and do the average for you. (But I'm sure you know this).

When I had conventional cone driver speakers I did play around with room EQ, not with a great deal of success. Since I changed over (back) to three planar speakers and three multidriver (large area) subwoofers I find that the soundfield is very uniform throughout the room, and I no longer need EQ.

Sean:

That's sort of true. When you have interacting modes it's a reduction in overall energy. While you do correct for one position (or you can actually do an averaging, but I typically don't recommend this method) it's the overall energy reduction for those modes. Now when you are correcting for things other than room modes, then you are aboslutely right and it's very positional dependent.

A test that we did was correcting room modes at the listening position and then sitting somewhere else and putting the PARC in and out of the circuit. It always sounded better in, but it was also a bit better at the spot where the measurements were done. What I found really interesting was when I would sit in a point that was theorhetically the null of one of the most problematic frequencies it still sounded dramatically improved with the PARC in the circuit.

Yes, Rives' comments match my own using a McIntosh C42 preamp. With the tone controls equalizing the seating position (by the way, I don't walk around much when listening to music so this is fine for me anyway), the sound was better anywhere in the room. The modes don't change abruptly and they influence each other - like Rives found out. It is a complex 3D system with all frequencies affecting everything all at the same time. It is not at all straightforward, but having said that, the McIntosh did a fantastic job at equalizing the room.