My sacrilegeous question to audiophiles out there regarding parametric equalizer.

@tubelvr1

I see you received the typical assortment of comments, mostly from the "real audiophiles" out there. I’d say, you are the one that wants some changes and so I’d do just that. Don’t listen to all the naysayers, you are not playing music for them, you are playing it for yourself. Be happy however you do it.

Full disclosure: I’ve had a number of graphic EQs over the years. But haven’t had one for 12-13 years. I recently bought a new system and it has no tone controls but the system it replaced did have them and I used them often. And to tell you the truth, occasionally I wish I had them now. Playing music is supposed to make you happy so play it however and with whatever gear you want. Cheers

Musicians spend their entire lives learning how to play their respective instruments, and then they get with other musicians who are compatible to make music; when all are satisfied they lay down tracks of recordings.

You buy this music, and screw it up with an equalizer; like Pokey says "It's your show, run it any way you want to"

Of course you want some EQ. It is happening anyway, with your choice of source, amp, speaker and room. So as you are talking streaming here, use Roon’s parametric EQ filter, which is brilliant.
If your ears have become attuned to vinyl, with vinyl’s known signature, then EQ might help. But it won’t help reproduce vinyl’s inability to handle stereo bass properly, or the de-essing the mastering engineer did when cutting, or the fact that quality worsens as you get nearer the hole!

Although the bulk of this discussion took place more than 18 months ago, this is the first time I've seen and read the thread.  I am surprised that no one defined the function of a parametric equalizer.  In the best of all possible worlds, it has the job of either boosting or attenuating the signal over a narrow band of audio frequencies, through the use of filters.  How narrow the bandwidth will be, and how many filters are inserted between 20Hz and 20kHz (the audio spectrum) is a determinant of cost and complexity.  Each pass band requires two filters, hi-pass and lo-pass that flank the central frequency of interest for that particular pass band.  In theory, this device is completely transparent, does not at all affect "tone". 

However, it's obvious that it would be impossible to build an equalizer that did not also affect SQ, one quality of which is tone, due not only to inherent phase alterations that are introduced, but also to the fact that the signal is diverted through a slew of "parts".  Resistors, inductors, and capacitors needed to build filters with the desired steep slopes inevitably add colorations, and so do tubes and/or transistors needed for gain and buffering functions.  So, you cannot have an analog equalizer without an effect on SQ, however you want to define that.  For that reason, most of us have built our home audio systems to taste, such that we can be happy without an equalizer.
In recent years, the notion of equalizing the signal in the digital domain has become at least modestly popular among those who can afford the considerable expense of the best such devices.  I am surprised no one mentioned this in the foregoing discussion. I have never heard any of these in operation, but TACT Audio is one company that makes such devices, and a few well heeled audiophiles do like them.  From what I read above, a really good digital equalizer is beyond the price range of the OP.  Cheap digital equalizers exist but are not a way to go for audiophiles, based on my brief experiences with a few of them.

Do you want to listen to the band, or do you want to be in the band?


Ages ago those were the rage; if you didn't like how the music sounded you could change it, but you always kept changing it until you had no idea what the original record sounded like.


If you're a music lover, stay as far away from those things as you can get; however, if you want to change the sound of every record to suit your personal taste, by all means get one.