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Benefits of Equalization
Rarely is the room and room decor
designed to get the most out of the
audio system. In fact, almost always the
opposite is the case where the speaker
positions and sizes are dictated by some
factors which are actually contrary to
good sound. This real world situation is
where equalization can provide great
benefits.
Speaker positions, furniture, and general
room layouts may cause peaks in the fre-
quency response. Fortunately these peaks
can be tamed by judicious equalization.
Also, it may be that the client has specific
tastes, such as being the most interested
in hearing voices such as cricket broad-
casts, and you can tailor the sound to
these tastes. Remember there are mem-
ories in The Director M6400 and M6800,
and you could use different settings via
the memories for different sources.
At all times, though, the laws of physics
are hard to violate, although we do try our
best. Equalization cannot make terrible
acoustics sound terrific, only better. If the
room has a tile floor and glass walls for
example, the best case results will still be
pretty bad by most measures. Further,
while equalization can do wonders to help
a less than perfect speaker, nothing will
make a mediocre speaker sound fabu-
lous. In other words, for best results, start
with good speakers and reasonable room
acoustics, if possible.
Note:
For the absolutely best results, the
equalizer
controls on The Director M6400
o r M 6 8 0 0 should be adjusted with a
real time analyzer such as the Audio-
Control Industrial SA-4100i. Visit www.
audiocontrolindustrial.com for more
analysis products.
Equalizing the System
Before proceeding with equalizing the sys-
tem, it is a good idea to make sure every-
thing is connected and working properly.
You know how to check connections, and
here are some reminders specific to The
Director M6400 and M6800, as well as the
steps to equalize.
1. Turn on the system. The Power light on
the left front panel should be blue .
2. Connect to this specific Director unit
over the network by entering its
unique IP address into a browser (Fire-
fox, Safari, Chrome are preferred).
3. Make sure the unit is turned on and
turn off signal sense in the Operation
page on the browser. On the front
panel all zone status lights should start
red and then turn to blue.
4. If any are not blue, check the Opera-
tion page to see if you need to unmute
any zones.
5. Play pink noise through the system
into the zones you are going to adjust.
If needed, there is a pink noise audio
file at www.audiocontrol.com. Search
for “pink noise”. The signal is play-
ing through The Director unit when
the LED’s level meter on front panel
responds to the volume.
6. Assuming you have wireless network
access, now grab your trusty real time
analyzer (RTA) and go into the zone
you wish to adjust.
7. Place the microphone in the middle of
the area of listening at the height of
the typical listeners head.
8. In general, use the equalizer con-
trols to lower peaks in the frequency
response first. Peaks obscure the
surrounding sounds and lowering the
peaks will unleash overshadowed
sounds. There is more information in
the next section on equalization and
Equalization
