Oland E-660 parametric equalizer: usable in a hi-fi system?

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I am not at all familiar with this equipment.

Is it usable in a hi-fi system as a parametric equalizer / notch
filter, fo room and speaker equalisation?

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In article <auo5g01jnvvsr1h3k5n9elmjsml721fhbg@4ax.com> passerbydeletethis@myrealbox.com writes:

> I am not at all familiar with this equipment.
>
> Is it usable in a hi-fi system as a parametric equalizer / notch
> filter, fo room and speaker equalisation?

Sure. It's a great equalizer. But if I remember it correctly, there's a
companion remote controller, without which, it's a bit of a pain. Not
as much of a pain as the companion reverb without its remote, however.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers (mrivers@d-and-d.com)
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

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The E-660 is very easy to use from the front panel. I used to own an
E-660 and thought that Roland did a great job of making the user
interface as "analog" as possible. The frequency, Q, and gain for each
band has their own individual controls. I'm not aware that there was
ever any remote for it, and it certainly didn't need one, at least as
far as ease of use.

Albert

> Sure. It's a great equalizer. But if I remember it correctly, there's a
> companion remote controller, without which, it's a bit of a pain. Not
> as much of a pain as the companion reverb without its remote, however.
>
>
> --
> I'm really Mike Rivers (mrivers@d-and-d.com)
> However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
> lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
> you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
> and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

RLS <passerbydeletethis@myrealbox.com> wrote:
>I appreciate the advice (and even understand it) even though I
>disagree -- until I learn about "tube traps", that is.

If you don't know about room acoustics, you CERTAINLY shouldn't be thinking
about equalization.

>As for e-bay, it was the other way around: I was looking at this
>Roland equalizer on ebay.de ... and didn't buy it. (It went for 121
>euros, less than $150)

That seems about fair. You can probably pick up an Orban 622 for that
too if you are willing to look around for a while.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

"Scott Dorsey" <kludge@panix.com> wrote in message
news:ce3d31$pqv$1@panix2.panix.com

> Arny Krueger <arnyk@hotpop.com> wrote:

>> "Scott Dorsey" <kludge@panix.com> wrote in message
>> news:ce3835$lmg$1@panix2.panix.com

>> I found that. 5 wasn't enough, but by the time I got to 10, I was
>> into diminishing returns. But, parametric come in certain sizes and
>> 5 sections is a real common number.

> Right, but you don't have to use them all. If you bypass the last
> few, does it sound better?

No.

> It may well.

I guess I wasn't that deep into diminishing returns! ;-)

I was enjoying the use of those bypass switches early and often.

>>> Equalization is just fudging around room modes.
>
>> Right, and this approach identifies the largest additive ones without
>> wasting time or effort on the subtractive ones that you shouldn't
>> try to fix electronically, anyway.

> Note that you're also going to find a lot of things with this method
> that are not room modes. You'll find weird peaks due to the
> microphone response,

IME the mics (Behr ECM8000, MXL603 and CAD95) are pretty smooth on the scale
of say, SM57s. The mics were spread around - no place on the front area of
the stage that was out of arm-stretch range from a mic.

>and you will find a lot of resonances that are
> the result of direct sound from the speaker to the microphone (or
> sound reflecting off a nearby object into the microphone).

The sound system is highly directional w/r/t the stage for the midrange and
up. The stage is in a dead spot, relatively speaking. This used to be
enough.

>Most of
> these are going to be lower midrange ones in the area where the
> speakers are becoming omnidirectional, but not all of them.

There's only one speaker array, composed of two EV bass boxes and two
non-overlapping, very large JBL horns.

The EV woofers are just as omnidirectional as you suggest at 110 Hz and that
was the frequency of the first ring point. That 110 Hz ring point sponsored
the whole trip, so to speak. It was a monster! I don't have the list of ring
points before me, but they were fairly well distributed. The highest was
like 5 KHz, and there was another at 3.5 KHz. The rest were in the 500-1500
range.

> And these things are often worse than the actual room modes, although
> they are going to change a lot more as the stage mikes are moved
> around.

There were something like 8 open mics, spread pretty uniformly over the
stage.

>>> In a huge
>>> auditorium, you can't easily go in and actually fix the room
>>> acoustics easily. But in a far smaller room, you can deal with the
>>> problems at the source.
>>
>>> If you thing the EQ helped, just imagine what actual room treatment
>>> will do.

>> Yes, and when we sell a few 100,000 $$$ worth of bonds...

>>> Sadly, it's out of the question in most large halls. But EQ
>>> is a bad idea when it's possible to actually fix the problems.
>>
>> The room is roughly 40 w by 100 l by 30 h. I get over a 16,000
>> square feet, with zero sound absorbent material anyplace.

> This is bad.

You're telling me? ;-)

>Have you considered putting cushions on the pews and
> possibly some carpet down?

For about 20 years, no make that 30. We had two well-known choir directors
tell people about then that we had one of the finest rooms in the city for
music at that time, and nobody in power has listened to any complaints about
the sound since then. But, now I'm one of the three trustees, as it were...
I have pretty good credibility with the other two. So, the crank is turning.

> This will at least help deal with some of
> the higher frequency stuff (where EQ is totally ineffective).

Interestingly enough one of the things that popped-in with the eq was
natural amounts of sibilance. Nobody in the back half of the room has heard
much sibilance in the room for about 50 years, until last Sunday. The
sibilance came back with nothing but nulling - no boost added whatsoever.

>>>> I'm thinking of using a really flat omni in the part of the
>>>> room.where people listen from.

>>> For what?

>> Stimulating feedback in a room where there isn't any SR equipment in
>> place or needed. Identify the biggest additive modes, zero them out,
>> and see if sound quality goes uphill.

> Try it and see. You'll find some of the peaks change considerably
> when the mike is moved, and some don't. You'll find a lot of it is
> going to have to be done by ear, and you'll find almost anything over
> 2 KC or so is going to do as much harm as good.

I'll report back.

The point to all of this is that I feel that coming up with a eq strategy
(yes eq is evil but there are helpful evils when things are bad enough)
should be based on collecting evidence. Right now the classic evidence
collection methodology is to use your ears, and a RTA. People lack
confidence about being highly dependent on their ears, often for good
reason. But, basing the whole shooting match on a RTA is not exactly a
position of strength. So, I'm thinking that an evaluation of the biggest and
most important ring points could be another piece of evidence that it would
be good to collect, if there were a good representiive way to collect them.

....just noodling about...