How to best use it
How to best use the
Peace EQ - Tool for calibration
Peter’s Help file, Peter Verbeek, the creator of the Peace EQ, is a bit dry for my taste but not only that: I’ve used this tool many times and I clearly remember how my understanding of its usage, making the best of it, evolved. And so here is what I learned, it might help you to quickly get to what you want: a good result.
Choose the “Headphones and Hearing Test” from the “Configurations” list on the lower left side of the screen.
Click “Test” on the main screen and then “Proceed” in the next pop-up screen
Set the volume of your amplifier to your normal listening level, perhaps a little under that. The new EQ curves will give you a better presentation, everything will be in a better balance than what you hear now and so you will not need the volume you use now. Usually we adjust the volume not only for how loud we want everything to be but in order to hear the bits of the music we don’t hear as well and so the volume is often higher than it needs to be. By the way: although not very likely, you may find that what you are used to is “better” than what you’ll be hearing after creating the new EQ curves. That’s OK, keep listening to the new way. Once in a while switch the Peace EQ off and compare. I simply refuse to believe that anybody will still prefer the old way.
In the “Human hearing curve” you’ll most likely want to choose the 60 or the 80 Phon. That would be the equivalent level in dBs of what you’ll be hearing. If you are interested in learning more about Phon, dBs, and all the other concepts, Wikipedia is a good place to start.
Choose the “Left ear” and move the Testing frequency to the lowest level: 32Hz.
Start the test.
IMPORTANT: if you don’t hear the frequency, any frequency, move the “Sine volume” slider to the right until you hear it. During the test for each frequency you may need to do that a few times so you remember what frequency you’re trying to listen to.
Notice that the “Sine volume” slider has some marks on it. I found that the best way to identify your hearing threshold is to first narrow down the marks between which the threshold is. To do that, move the slider between marks situated 2 spaces apart so that you will clearly hear the signal at one end and you don’t at the other. Then narrow the playing area to one space between the marks.
Do not try to go too “fine” when looking for that threshold. Move the slider decisively between the 2 states: you hear the signal and you don’t hear it. After you do this a number of times, you’ll find that the distance between the 2 states gets smaller and smaller. I remind you that you may need to go where you can clearly hear the signal because you may simply forget what you’re chasing.
Repeat for all the frequencies.
IMPORTANT: if you really don’t easily hear above 11 or 13 kHz - not very many do, especially if you lived a while and/or you exposed your hearing to stresses (loud music, work noise, etc), I would suggest do not try too hard to bring those frequencies into the curves. If the headphone drivers you use are good then it shouldn’t be a problem pushing them, but they will not be as “happy” to play there, at many dB higher volume than they do in the middle range of the audio spectrum. You will not lose much, at all.
Once you save the curves and create the EQ based on them you will see something like this:
As you can see, the “Select a speaker” is on the Left channel. The right channel will show something similar - your Right ear, but the “All” option will show a flat curve. This is where you can play with the bass and the treble to your own liking. Do not touch the midrange, between say 125 and 7000 Hz, but you can adjust the sliders outside this range if you feel you’d like that. Pick one or two of the tracks you know very well where these 2 extremes of the spectrum are richly represented and play.
Save and enjoy!