Wotcha.

I've been playing with the Equaliser on my Mark 2 for about 6 months now, and keep getting to a point where I feel its tweaked to perfection, then just for a laugh I change to a flat preset and it suddenly sounds much better. But not quite perfect, so I tweak some more and it almost gets there, then back to flat again etc. etc. etc....

Is there some form of scientific approach to take with getting the equaliser settings to sound nice? Does anybody have a nice simple to understand explanation of how the various Q values and frequency steps interrelate?

I've come to the conclusion that all I need to do is frig the equaliser to provide a 40-50Hz high pass for the front channel (which powers the factory fit speakers) and a 100-200Hz low pass for the rear channel (powers a sealed 12" sub).

I've searched other threads on this matter - Tony mentioned that he'd tried this and it's not the best plan in the world, and that using external X-overs is a better approach. But surely the mighty morphin power DSP in the empeg could do this?

I've been using the X-overs in the amps until now - the 4 channel amp for the factory speakers has switchable 80Hz lo/hi pass filters, but 80Hz is a bit too low for low pass, and a bit too high for high pass. On some tracks it sounds fine, but on others I just get muffled rumblings coming from the boot - it seems I'm missing a huge chunk of mid-bass. Then again if I switch off the hi-pass filters the poor factory fit speakers sound very muddy in the mid range, trying to cope with sub-bass they can't possibly hope to reproduce. It's a company car so fitting new speakers isn't really an option, and I really can't face ripping the dash apart all over again and forking out for external X-overs.

Anybody have any ideas? Do I need to bite the bullet and buy yet more audio kit? Does anybody understand how equalisers work?

Cheers guys,

Andrew.