I am sorry if this is very basic. I was fooling around with the EQ and found a setting that sounded very good. Do I have to be careful with the gain not to damage my equipment ? I read something about clipping ? Please see picture with the details.
You increased the volume above 0dB nearly across the whole band, so it’s probably going to clip.
You can either move the whole band down below 0dB (see the slider on the right) or enable the Headroom Management filter and reduce by 6dB or a little more.
The clipping indicator is only active if Headroom Management is enabled. (Even if the reduction value in its settings is set to 0dB). Then the signal path „light“ in the play bar at the bottom will turn red whenever there is clipping. Increase the headroom (or move the whole band down in the EQ) until it stops doing that.
That is interesting as this shelve filter is basically just reducing all bass frequencies by -6dB. Is it sounding good on loudspeakers or headphones?
As the bass - which you have not boosted - is in most of cases carrying the chunk of energy, you might notice clipping only occasionally (e.g. during level peaks, midrange-heavy and loud recordings, recordings compressed beyond reasonable leveling or alike). Nevertheless it is advisable to normalize the overall level after setting the EQ filter manually using the black master fader on the right. In your case it might look like this:
This -4dB overall leveling should ensure you will not have clipping while not overly wasting headroom.
My speakers are Triangle Magellan Quatuor. My amp is Musical Fidelity Nu Vista 800. I dont have headphones. What do you think about underneath EQ ?
If any of these EQ settings reducing bass by -6dB sounds better in your room, it is a strong hint your room and loudspeaker create a mismatch in the bass region as well as in treble or you have significant problems with resonances, room modes or booming.
As these problems are usually very narrow-banded and depending on room size, speaker placement and alike, reducing them with a broad-band filter like a shelve would milden the annoying effect but cutting off other bass frequencies as well which are not affected. It is strongly recommended to do an in-room measurement to find out at which frequency the problems exactly occur and how to counter them.
PS: In this case you have reduced the master level to a degree that all filter stay below 0dB which means you are guaranteed to avoid clipping yet wasting a few dB of dynamics (not a big deal with a 24Bit DAC or better).
Can I have your advise for underneath. I like accentuated highs and not too much bass. I dont see any clipping.
I have quite large speakers in quite a small listening room indeed.
My advice would be: try blocking bass reflex ports with a foam plug, move speakers away from the wall and listen again. To precisely understand what is going on, the dimensions of your room would be helpful, and doing an in-room frequency response measurement should give clarity.
If I am not mistaken, these speakers are equipped with a rear-firing tweeter creating additional diffuse treble in the room. It appears to be unlikely they are creating an overly dull tonal balance in the room. So I rather suspect there is lots of unwanted bass boost and bass problems in that particular situation which means the situation should be analyzed.
Even without EQ it sounds very good. Its just that I like to emphesise the higher frequencies like with a monitor. The speaker are about 6 meter a part and the distance is no more than 3 meters from my sitting position. I dont live big. I dont have too much bass possibly because I live small.
Thank you for your advise. I will continue to experiment with MUSE. As of now the best soundquality is when everything is unchanged. I also replaced my cables with Wireworld. Theres a big difference.
You would probably get a much better stereo image with more depth if your speakers were closer together. Try having close to the same distance between your speakers as you have to your seating position. It doesn’t need to be exact, but it can certainly make a difference. Once you’re happy with the position, you can try and tweak the speaker toe-in slightly. Now toe-in does need to be accurate.
Also, move your speakers away from the front facing wall a bit, as this can help with eliminating SBIR. Room modes is a whole different can of worms that I won’t go into.
While doing all this, make sure you don’t have any EQ going on. Only when you’re happy with how the speakers sound at the new location you should mess with EQ.
I spent a couple of weeks getting my speakers set in what I consider the perfect position for my listening room. It might be the speakers that emit the sound, but the room will shape it. You will not regret putting some work in to get the correct placement for your speakers.
This is very useful. It enabled me to EQ very effectively and transform the sound of my system. Vocal EQ Chart: The Ultimate Vocal EQ Cheat Sheet (2024) EQ Frequency Chart: The Ultimate EQ Cheat Sheets (2024)
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