Sansa Clip Zip rockboxed: Sound settings plus parametric equilizer

[mcc01]

Hi,

If I (for example) tweak bass and treble and manipulate
the paramtric sound settings then: Are both influence
the sound then?
Or does the "more advanced" manipulator overides
all less advanced ones?

Thank you very muich in advance for any help!
mcc

[saratoga]

They stack:

http://download.rockbox.org/daily/manual/rockbox-sansaclipplus/rockbox-buildch6.html#x9-1110006.9

[mcc01]

Hi saratoga,

thanks again for your reply!

...the parametric equilizer is hard enough for a
beginner in this kind of field of sound optimizations...
but each sound setting type is influencing the next...
I think I get confused here...

Best regards,
mcc

[[Saint]]

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking or saying with that last comment.

The easiest way for us to sum it up is that if you are unaware of how a parametric EQ operates, you probably shouldn't be using it. It is possible for you to massively task the CPU on the target device with incorrect or improper parametric EQ configuration.

The parametric EQ offers 10 bands (well, 8 bands, plus high and low shelves), but the intention is simply to make it so that users don't have to manually edit the frequency response of a given band to suit their own needs, making it somewhat simpler for medium-to-advanced users to operate. The intention is certainly not to use all 10 bands offered by the EQ at once, as since this is a full parametric equaliser, even complex equalization curves should require only 4 to 5 bands in a worst case scenario (for example, precise flattening of a particular output device with specific response characteristics).

We do offer the 'Simple EQ Settings' option, but this carries with it the same flaws as above, it merely provides a slightly less daunting interface to the user where the only tuneable asset is band gain. However this presents the same issue as the full parametric EQ if used improperly.

In short unless you are intimately aware of how a full parametric equalizer operates, you should restrict your usage to the bass and treble settings (equivalent to the high and low shelf filters of the full parametric EQ), and if need be adjusting the bass and treble cutoff steps if the scope of the gain increase or decrease is too wide or shallow (equivalent to the 'q' function of the full parametric EQ).

An equalizer isn't necessarily designed to colour the sound to a users preference (though many people use it this way).

As the name implies, the intention of an equalizer is to flatten, or equalize, the output. Ideally, the device should be outputting a perfectly flat signal. If you do want to colour the sound to your preference, use the bass and treble settings provided.

This should provide the average user with more than ample influence over the output, and has the added benefit of being a lot less resource intensive (to the point of being almost "free" in a computational sense), as opposed to the parametric EQ which adds several MHz of additional computational overhead for each active EQ band.


[Saint]