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A 'perfect' iTunes equalizer setting
Authored by: DavidRavenMoon on Sep 02, '04 07:50:58PM

The proper way to set EQ curves is keeping everything balanced around 0. You should never boost any bands as high as this. So the 500 Hz slider would be at zero, with the others the same ratio higher and lower.

Really all you are doing is making it louder, and for most people louder sounds better.

I've been using several of my own EQ curves for years. It's a shame that they don't copy over to the iPod though. On my iPod I usually use R&B or Jazz. R&B can get too boomy and make my ear pods clip. A somewhat little known fact is that by setting your iPod's EQ to flat, it will honor the EQ setting from iTunes... so how ever you set a song's EQ (from the preset list) that's what you will get. My big gripe with the built in EQ curves are they are too exaggerated! They are very gimmicky. Good EQ curves are far more subtle.

Another point is don't get hung up on if you use EQ you are not hearing the song the way it was mastered. If you don't use EQ you might not be hearing it the right way either! The correct way is to use a noise generator and a hand held spectrum analyzer to EQ your system for flat response in your listening environment. Speakers do not have perfectly flat response and neither does the amp or playback device. After you do that, you are hearing things as they were mastered... and you might still not like it! Everyone hears differently. Being a musician for the past 36 years has left my hearing slightly worse then when I started! So I need more high end. EQ is our friend! :)

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G4/466, 1 GB, Mac OS X 10.3.5



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A 'perfect' iTunes equalizer setting
Authored by: sjmills on Sep 02, '04 11:48:36PM
Everyone hears differently. Being a musician for the past 36 years has left my hearing slightly worse then when I started! So I need more high end. EQ is our friend! :)

Exactly. After 23 years of playing drums, and a lot of that time having the bass player's amp to my left, I can't stand listening to music unless I can also feel the low end. My EQs usually have a steep low end, depending on the system. And all those cymbals took a small toll on my high end, so the other end of the EQ is steep too. The rest of it gets tuned to the system/room.

While this hint probably got a bunch of people to actually mess with the iTunes EQ, and there were good explanations of how boost causes distortion, I wouldn't really call it an OS X Hint.

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A 'perfect' iTunes equalizer setting
Authored by: MostlyHarmless on Sep 03, '04 12:45:23AM

Re: noise generator and spectrum analyzer

I made an effort at doing that a couple of years ago... with a pink noise .wav file, the built-in mic on my PowerBook, and the spectrum analyzer in Amadeus. It turned out pretty well, actually.

On my desktop Mac I looped the pink noise in iTunes. On my PowerBook I watched the real-time spectrum analyzer and adjusted the iTunes EQ until all the frequency bands were about the same (ignoring the extreme upper and lower frequencies where the built-in mic was obviously not registering).

Once the pink noise looked good in the analyzer I did some listening tests to fine-tune the EQ settings -- since holding a PowerBook in front of my speakers wasn't quite the same as using a genuine calibrated mic. At that point I had a good EQ preset that made the system sound _much_ better.

The next step would be to combine my baseline preset with the official Apple EQ presets. I thought I'd just dig into com.apple.iTunes.eq.plist and add & subtract from each band as necessary to create calibrated "Rock/Pop/Loudness/etc." presets. The EQ property list is kinda scary lookin' though, and I never got around to trying anything with AppleScript -- but after it was calibrated I didn't really use the other presets anyway.

It seems like the easiest way to incorporate a baseline speaker calibration into the other presets, short of an actual hardware EQ, would be to loop through all the standard presets with AppleScript and create new, calibrated versions. If I could work out the proper syntax for "make new EQ preset" I'd be good to go...



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A 'perfect' iTunes equalizer setting
Authored by: DavidRavenMoon on Sep 03, '04 09:09:57AM
I thought I'd just dig into com.apple.iTunes.eq.plist and add & subtract from each band as necessary to create calibrated "Rock/Pop/Loudness/etc." presets. The EQ property list is kinda scary lookin' though, and I never got around to trying anything with AppleScript -- but after it was calibrated I didn't really use the other presets anyway

After I noticed that there is an eq settings plist on the iPod, I thought this would be a great application for some adventurous programer/developer out there. Write an app that would allow modifying the iPod's EQ presets, with some type of GUI, like an EQ.

I haven't really made any tests to see if the iPod can actually copy custom EQ curves from iTunes, but I haven't found any documentation that says it can.

I haven't done any of this in a while, but I always thought you were supposed to use white noise for calibration. White noise has an equal distribution of frequencies, while pink noise has a low pass curve and therefore has less high frequencies. It's warmer, so it's pink. :)

Regarding iPod battery life. Yes, this is true. using the EQ shortens your battery life. But I can't listen to my iPod without EQ! Gotta hear that bass! (I'm a bass player) :)


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G4/466, 1 GB, Mac OS X 10.3.5

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