Home Audio Equalizers

Getting your home stereo or home theater system sounding great can be frustrating, but there is one component that can really help make your music and movies sound magical...the audio equalizer. An equalizer gives you control over different parts of the frequency spectrum. Having the ability to adjust certain "bands" or groups of frequencies allows you to adjust the sound in relation to the system it is played through or the room it is played in.
An equalizer is just like the tone control on a home or car stereo. In fact, the tone control IS and equalizer. The bass adjusts the low frequency level, the mid adjusts the mid range frequencies, and the treble adjusts the high frequencies. It that instance, the tone controls make up a 3-band equalizer...low, mid, and high.
Most separate audio equalizers will have 7 bands, 15 bands, or even 31 bands of equalization. The more bands, the more control you have over the sound. In most instances, 7 or 10 bands is plenty for a home stereo equalizer. Keep in mind, an audio equalizer will typically have separate controls for the left channel of audio and the right channel of audio. So a 15-band stereo equalizer will have 15 bands for the left channel and 15 bands for the right channel. Given that most music and movie audio has already been mixed and mastered, any adjustments you make on the equalizer should be made to both channels to maintain the proper stereo image.
The room your stereo system or home theater is in and how your system is set up will determine what the best equalizer for your system is and what the best equalizer settings will be. A well designed room and proper speaker placement can sometimes eliminate the need for an equalizer at all. But most home stereo systems and home theaters will need some equalization.
Sometimes a room will sound too "boomy". In this case you would want to reduce the low frequencies that are causing the boominess. Try taking out a little 250 Hz or 400 Hz and see how it sounds. The frequency bands will be labeled on the equalizer. Each slider will have a number which is the frequency band that slider adjusts. After just a little time spent listening and adjusting, you will be able to identify a problem frequency and make a correct adjustment on your equalizer. Do the vocals sound a little funny? Try a dip at 2.5 kHz to smooth out the vocals and get rid of that "honk" you sometimes hear in the vocal frequency range.
Of course the sound will change with every song and every movie will sound a little different, but adding a home audio equalizer can effectively "tune" your system to compensate for any acoustic problems in the room and shape the sound of your other components to help keep the audio as natural sounding as possible, which should be your main objective when setting up a sound system.