Gentlemen and ladies, Thought I would bring up this topic after having a long discussion last night with one of my sons, Would love to get your thoughts and opinions on this subject. So I will start by giving my take on this topic and let you know where I land
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Bought my first system in 1980 ( man that seems like ages ago). Shortly there after, hearing a cousins almost identical system began my journey into equalizers. I have had some that were ok, some that were down right terrible and one that turned out to be just the ticket. Most imparted a sound signature and usually not for the best. Seems many people analog gives a warmth to the tone and digital can sometimes seem to thin out the signal or seem just a bit to cold.
After all the different ones I have tried, I fell back on keeping and using a RadioShack dual 15 band analog EQ. Like most of you right now I would probably be saying what, a RadioShack EQ. But i'm glad I tried this one. I would say this was purchased around the mid 80's. This unit is well built, single ended and balanced connections. And has an absolutely dead quiet noise floor. Does not impart any sort of tonal characteristics to the audio signal. Which is why I have kept this thing now for almost 35 yrs.
Seems like now a days, equalizers get a bad rap. I honestly think this is because most or should I say a lot of people are just not using them correctly. They seem to want to just start boosting everything up or making that smiley face on the settings. When in reality there should only be minor adjustments and sometimes (a lot) they are attenuating adjustments.
So I am in the camp of saying they are a very useful to and almost necessary tool for 2 channel (or 2.1) music listening. I say this because I have yet to hear that perfect speaker that doesn't need just a little tweaking. OK, feel free to chime in and beat me up on my analysis of the whole eq debate. Nothing said will hurt my feelings one way or another. All comments are welcomed and appreciated.