Have your say & ask the experts

My cousin, way back in the 70's, had an Akai receiver, Wharfedale bookshelf speakers (Denton's, I think), phoned me up one evening and told me he'd purchased a graphic equalizer for his receiver. I went round there on numerous occasions and yet I can't remember whether it was any good. Other friends used to rave about them, but I can't really decide whether they were worth their sort?

Does anyone here have any memories of GE's?

I used to have a Kenwood one back in the days when I started out. I used to love fiddling with those settings and watching the various towers flash up and down.

Then I read What HiFi and they said they were detrimental to the sound. The Graphic Equalisers days were numbered from that point. To be fair though I do realise that I have no need for it but it was fun.....

I think that's the point, Messiah - although the sound quality nowadays is far better, I believe the stuff of today has denied us of our juvenile fascination with slidey, switchy things. . . .

The new Arcam AV receiver doesn't even have a volume knob, albeit it's great sounding. Maybe I'm yearning for the retro days. . . middle-age, eh? 

Well a lot of stuff 'from back-in-the-day' gets a retro revamp so maybe the Graphic Equaliser will have its own comeback..........

As for the missing volume knob - this afflicts my ADMs as well. Bit hard to just crank something up for that short burst when you have to keep pressing buttons to increase the volume. (Although I have fixed this problem with the addition of the DAC)

Itunes and ipods have lovely graphic equalisers to play about with. I used to use jazz, but with changing kit I now find turning it off is best. But I can do that as I have the choice, which is good. My Yamaha KX390 cassette had 'Play Trim' to adapt the sound to your own taste. All it did was move the head up and down and change the contact with the tape. But the effect was to boost bass, treble as you wanted. I think it was a Denon amp I had, had tone controls and tone bypass. What Hifi recommended using tone bypass, I preferred it with both bass and treble almost to the max.

Considering how many people come onto the forum and say 'my kit is too bright', 'I have no bass' and then get recommendations for different cables, new amps and discussions about synergy, it makes me think. Would that not all be redundant if all amps had tone controls?

So to anyone who thinks that ipods sound rubbish. Play with the eq settings.

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Andrew Everard:

*shudder*

Either your not a fan of GE's, or have you eaten a kebab flavoured Pot thingy?

I have no recollection of their sound, apart from a mate who bought a JVC receiver with a built-in equaliser.

Isn't room equilisation the new phrase for graphic equilisers? Most av amps have them.

An ex-colleague used to have some huge Japanese 'rack system' and it included a big fancy equaliser with 24 (I think) sliders on it.

He took this bit of kit very seriously. Every time he bought a new record he would spend ages playing and replaying it tweaking the equaliser settings until he had found the best ones.

Then he got out the cardboard and stanley knife and cut 'templates' from the card. He printed and photocopied paper templates with columns spaced to correspond exactly with the spacing of the slides and had marked the + and - db range as a scale. He would paste the paper template onto the card and cut out a customised template to match every slider setting for each and every album in his collection and kept each one in the LP sleeve cover labelled.

Whenever he played an album he would then simply zero'ise all the sliders on the equaliser and then 'shunt' them into the correct position with the corresponding card template. He would spend hours with each new album preparing it's own custom template.

I should not mock. He was convinced of the benefit of what he was doing and thoroughly enjoyed the whole process and was meticulous in his efforts to get the best sound. 

At that time I was using a QED A240 SA amplifier that did not even posess tone controls so I could not share enthusiasm for such a rigmarole but I admired the sheer effort and involvement.

There was a ten year age difference so I guess I started out in hifi at the beginning of the 'flat earth' era and he came from the mega-Japanese rack system era. (I seem to remember he had some huge Jamo speakers.)

Andrew Everard:

Not really, as room equalisation tends to work in both the time and frequency domains.

Agreed - though it seems some equalisation systems are more equal than others.... We've got some interesting findings in our next issue's Group Test of AV amps re the performance with/without Room EQ on. Issue with subscribers from Friday week (24th); in shop by 29th July.