Music

As you probably know, I am a musician and I also listen to a lot of music (including my own) on my Hi-Fi system.

Over the years, I have invested in quality equipment and I now have a good streamer (a WiiM Pro Plus), a good integrated amplifier (an Audiolab 6000A) and a good speakers (a pair of Elac Debut Reference DBR62). I generally listen to music in a small room with one side open.

While I was very happy with the sound (compared to what I had before), I knew that it could be made better by EQ, a process which is called Room Equalisation. As a matter of fact, there are resonances in all rooms. As explained in this article, “these are standing waves that primarily affect bass performance, which result in pronounced or boomy bass notes due to a room’s architecture and geometry.”

These resonances can be identified using a free software called Room EQ Wizard (REW) using a relatively inexpensive calibrated microphone such as the UMIK-1 I own.

The screenshot above is what I get when attempting to correct the resonances in my listening room. Six EQs are needed.

As I use Roon to listen to music, I initially used the parametric EQ which is built-in and it worked great. The screenshot above is from an old REW measurement and therefore the EQ settings do not match.

Since investing in the WiiM Pro Plus, the device has been getting updates after updates and, these days, it has a very good parametric EQ with up to 10 bands. Unfortunately, the gain is +12dB / -12dB max (which is a problem) and Q is 24 max (which should not be an issue). To solve the gain issue when, say, cutting by -15.3dB, I just use two EQs in a row, hence using -12dB followed by -3.3dB as seen at 61.9Hz above and this works great.

The result is a fantastic sound when listening to music. In fact, the soundstage becomes wider and the speakers kind of disappear (in the sense that the music does not seem to originate from the speakers but rather from wherever the mixing engineer has decided).

Interestingly, as a lot of bass is being cut off (the bad bass due to room resonance), initially, the sound feels lacking something but, within one minute, our ears settle to the new sound and everything feels right.

(PS: I am doing room correction on a WiiM Amp connected to a pair of Pioneer SP-BS22-LR in another room with excellent results too).