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Free EQ room correction in a small room, Room EQ Wizard Rocks!

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brett:
This is a mac only tutorial:

my room is 11x14. I have posted previously about trying to tame a null at 70hz. I had twelve  4" panels placed mostly near the front wall.  Fran and Ethan and others recommended placing more absorption on the rear wall.  

I moved my desk forward to the front wall so the speakers were about 6" from the front wall/window. I placed 1 panel on each front corner and 1 on each side and 2 above me. Then I placed the remaining 6 panels on the rear wall corners. Scoped the room with EQ Wizard and it fixed the 70hz mode. Now I had a more usable roll off below 100 down to 30 with no deep nulls.

I have seen so many talks about people using the audyssey eq. Ethan has done an excellent write up on how it just doesn't work. There are also so many products on the market as well. Ergo, ARC, and the JBL 4300 series etc. Do they work? I set out to find out. Following Ethan's Advice I downloaded Room EQ Wizard and looked into the Behringer eq's etc, but I had a problem with that. I use Adams and an apogee converter. I certainly didn't want to go through another stage of low end conversion and DSP. I also didn't want to drop money on a suitable parametric and be limited to 4 or 5 bands.

I thought what can I use to be able to insert plug-ins into my bus and be able to use the same eq plug-in to listen to my Itunes library and other media sources?
I would also need to be able to send Room EQ Wizard into logic and then back into the built in line input.

ARC ($500) does this inside of Logic or other DAW, but what if you want to hear your bounce or other media through it?

The trick would be then to get my systems output into Logic and then to my apogee.

Solution (Free):

1 Download Soundflower from cycling 74.
2. Set the System preferences to output to Soundflower 2ch. Set the input to Built in Line Input.  
3. Go to Audio Midi and create an aggregate device and add Soundflower to it after your sound card. Make sure the built in lines are not used in the aggregate.
4. set the default input to built-in line input and the default output to soundflower 2ch and the system output to soundflower 2ch
5. open logic set the i/o to aggregate device.
6. create a stereo audio track and set the input to the soundflower channels. they will be the ones right after you main I/o on my symphony system 1-32 are for that and ch33-34 are for soundflower.
7. connect your measurement mic to your preamp and then output the pre to the built-in line input on the back of your mac. I use a xlr to 1/8 cable I had to buy.
8. open room eq wizard and go to the preferences. under soundcard set the output to default device and input to built-in line input. back in logic insert 3 linear phase plug-ins on the master bus and lower the fader to about -4.
10. open soundflower. it does not have a GUI but a flower will be up on the top task bar with a drop down list. set its output to none.
9. go back to logic. on the sound flower channel hit the "I" when it lights up yellow/orange the audio from your system including itunes will input here.    

you now have your system setup so that all sound is routed through logic. This will allow you to measure your room. enter your eq settings into the Linear phase eq's and re-measure. this will also allow you to monitor all of your other media through logic so you can take advantage of the EQ Correction.

I was able to dial in an almost flawless low end response curve in my room with 12 bands of eq and a low shelf boost of 6db. All this was free and it works, in my opinion better than adding additional conversion.

I would like to point out that I did not eq anything over 500hz. will post more on my mixing results and graphs later.

Regards,
Brett

brett:
room with all panels in the front of the room.

brett:
room after moving half the panels (6) to the rear of the room. notice the null at 70hz is gone. But now there is a mode between 100-200.

brett:
room after applying EQ.

brett:
 
As could be seen, the biggest improvement was evenly placing the acoustic panels in the room first. Then the eq allowed me to shape the low end from there with subtle cuts and boosts. Its not perfect but its pretty good considering the size of my room.  I am happy with the results.

Hope this will be helpful to some of you.

-Brett

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