[Empeg-general] Re: Question about the EQ visualizations...

[Tony Fabris]

This is simply the nature of the human hearing spectrum. The lowest frequencies are the ones best heard, and the ones most saturated by modern music.

You might think that a high note hit by a singer should show up on the high end of the scale, but actually even when a singer hits a high note, it's generally towards the left or middle of that scale. You'd be surprised how low on the scale the human voice registers.

Only the highest frequencies of cymbals, certain kinds of rhythm instruments like castanets, and certain filter sweeps on synthesizers will make the upper registers move visibly on a spectrum graph. The upper spectrum is active at all times, it's just not active at a very high volume.

Another factor is your MP3 encoder. Most encoders will roll off high frequencies above 16-18k because it makes the file easier to encode. Most folks don't notice the rolloff unless it's too overt. So a lot of the high frequencies are lost on MP3 encoders. But even if you use an encoder that encodes the highest frequencies (or you play WAV files), you will still not notice anything on the right end of the scale very often.

I have been meaning to ask Toby for a "human hearing scale" spectrum display. One that stretches out the lower frequencies, and squishes the higher frequencies over to the far right end of the scale. That way, we'd see more detail in the range that tends to be the most active.