[LAU] M/S EQ in Linux

[Brent Busby]

On Wed, 11 Sep 2013, Ralf Mardorf wrote:

> Some people have got 200 W speakers in their cars and in their 15 m? 
> living rooms, where 20 W speakers already would be more than loud 
> enough. You can not listen in household noise level on a 2 x 200 W 
> stereo, you need to increase the volume to insane loudness, that has 
> nothing to do with the mix, it's related to the speakers. I had a 
> neighbour listening each night 4 to the flour that loud, that I 
> couldn't listen to my music in household noise level. If a car has to 
> stop at the lights perhaps 200 m away and my windows are closed, I 
> anyway often can't hear the music in my flat anymore, because the 
> car's hifis are that loud.
>
> Reconsider that your mixes are ok, but you try to listen to it on 
> stereos of idiots.
>
> I use 20 W speakers and they could be that loud, that it could 
> permanently damage the ears.

The stereo in question will provide reasonable playback of 
professionally mastered music without having to turn the volume up very 
much, even music that has decent dynamic range.  Also, more importantly, 
it will get the right EQ balance at low volume levels too.  My suspicion 
is that although one doesn't want to squash the peaks too much, there's 
still something about my track that is just too spiky to engage the 
woofers of some stereos until the volume is way up, whereas other songs 
get decent bass/midrange/treble distribution right away without needing 
to be so loud.  So these spikes need to be squashed somewhat more than 
they are, even if one can go overboard.

Now that I've determined it's not really an EQ problem, the trick is 
figuring out do I need a multiband limiter, a multiband compressor, or 
both, and what sort of settings will fix this.  I can't figure out if I 
love this process of investigation or hate it.  :-/  It's certainly 
intriguing.

-- 
+ Brent A. Busby	 + "We've all heard that a million monkeys
+ Sr. UNIX Systems Admin +  banging on a million typewriters will
+ University of Chicago	 +  eventually reproduce the entire works of
+ James Franck Institute +  Shakespeare.  Now, thanks to the Internet,
+ Materials Research Ctr +  we know this is not true." -Robert Wilensky