This article is provided by Bartlett Microphones.

 
Suppose you’re listening to the house sound system reproducing a play or musical.

Some of the actors’ voices sound “puffy” or “muffled,” as if they were covered in a blanket. Other actors might sound “spitty” or overly sibilant.
 
Fortunately, those problems can be fixed with the equalization knobs (EQ) in your mixing console.

EQ adjusts the bass, treble, and midrange of a sound by turning up or down certain frequency ranges.

To do that, EQ operates on the spectrum of the sound source—its fundamental and harmonic frequencies.

The spectrum helps to give the instrument or voice its distinctive tone quality or timbre.

If some of these frequencies change in level, the tone quality changes.

An equalizer raises or lowers the level of a particular range of frequencies (a frequency band), and so controls the tone quality. That is, it alters the frequency response.

For example, a boost (a level increase) in the range centered at 10 kHz makes voices sound bright and crisp. A cut at the same frequency dulls the sound.

Figure 1: Click to enlarge.

Types Of EQ
Equalizers in a mixing console range from simple to complex. The most basic type is a bass and treble control (often labeled LF EQ and HF EQ).

Its effect on frequency response is shown in Figure 1-A.

Typically, this type provides up to 15 dB of boost or cut at 100 Hz (with the low-frequency EQ knob) and at 10 kHz (with the high-frequency EQ knob).

You have more control over tone quality with a 3-band or 4-band equalizer: you can boost or cut several frequency bands (Figure 1-B).

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