To Equalize or Not to Equalize

@cathat What speakers are you running?  Edge diffraction and some tweeters can cause brightness and harshness.  Treating the baffles and areas around the tweeters can help if those are causes.  Other sources can be poor quality connections and crossover parts...tougher to fix, but possible if you're ambitious.  Cleaning up the signal path is worth pursuing IME vs trying to just EQ the problem up or down. 

Many DSP units offer both graphic EQs and parametric EQs, along with a bunch of other useful features.  I use DSP with a PEQ on my subs and woofers in a bi-amp setup to cut room nodes only in the lower regions, but it’s not even in the signal path for mid and high frequency at all.  

to add on, I have B&W speakers, most of my system is tube based, so I feel like I have a good balance where a set of bright speakers are tamed with warm tube glow. I did have a glare issue where it was more of a ring in my ears at higher volumes. Culprit...leather couch. I put a throw blanket over the couch behind my head and like magic, ring, glare - non existent. So, everyone above mentioning room treatment first are on the right track.

When I first got into this hobby back in the mid 1970's graphic equalizers were very popular. By the early 1980's as audio boutique stores selling astrobuck audio gear began to emerge, using a graphic equalizer became frowned upon; so much so that IME they were no longer offered in most audio companies' product lineups. 

It seems that over the past decade as the headphone hobby began to expand and more quality  audio gear was offered  to the headfi enthusiast, that the graphic equalizer began to experience a Renaissance. 

I think that Schiit Audio has had a lot to do with this Renaissance, given the company's first offering, the Loki Mini, followed by the Lokius and Loki Max. 

I use a Loki Mini in my headfi system and a Lokius in my two channel system, and find them to be very beneficial in tailoring the sound to my personal taste. 

I truly cannot envision any audio system that I use, not having a graphic equalizer.

👍

I try not to introduce any eq but in a couple of cases it’s worth it.

I just use the Roon eq.

Roon has suggested eq for every headphone and I find it worth it. I travel with earphones and headphones for my daily music fix.

I have some open baffle speakers (2nd system) without subs so I boost the low end some with good results. With a sub that would probably go away.

I have a lot of room treatment in my listening roon so it sound good without EQ.

Hope that helps.

There's an interesting thing I see happen with most people when using an EQ. They create, visually, a Fletcher-Munson curve. Whether they need it or not. Boost both ends. It just looks good. Clueless to the added distortion by boosting. (they could put in the curve by cutting instead of boosting but they don't) The smoother the curve the better. 

My son works at an Audi dealership. Almost every car that comes in for service has this curve boost put in the EQ. Almost every system is way overly bright and bass boosted. NOT good sounding at all. This is what they do with an EQ.