Beats Audio EQ Setting/ General Sound Advice

[eternlrayne]

first off, i need to know what kind of speakers you are looking for. are you looking for speakers that you plug into your laptop and it plays through that, speakers that plug into your laptop and are powered by usb, speakers that you plug into your laptop and are powered through an electric socket/ outlet or speakers that you run through a receiver that is plugged into a laptop using a HDMI cable or 2-channel rca plug. which are you interested in? 

Hz's and Db's are relatively easy to learn so i encourage everyone to try and learn if they are interested in music. Ohms, Amps, watts, RMS, and voltage are a little more complicated but if you consider yourself an audiophile you want to learn those as well and if you find those subjects interesting you may want to consider a career path in electrical engineering, but i digress.

[abbeyroad119]

I was thinking of getting speakers that run through an external power source. I'm not sure if usb is the way to go beause i'm already running a mouse and a chill mat when necesary therefore using both usb ports.  

[eternlrayne]

In general, externally powered speakers are the way to go over usb. while usb is best for convenience, external powered speakers sound better. as for which speakers to chose, it depends your budget. if your not limited, i suggest anything Bose as they reproduce music excelently (but generally sacrifice bass). if you are limited, there are excellently speakers for $30-$50 depending on if you want a multimedia speaker system that comes with a small subwoofer for added bass. if your on a budget then you have to settle for speakers around $20. there are a million of these crappy sounding speakers.

i suggest you do a little homework on bestbuy.com, walmart.com, or where ever you wish to buy the speakers from so you can see what others had to say about them. if you buy a set of speakers and they do not meet your standards then simply return it and maybe spend a little bit more for a more expensive kind that will most likely sound better. cheap $15-$20 speakers are made for those who simply want sound out of their computers. they are not made to play music well, just play sound. so if your looking for high end speakers to really enjoy music, you gotta shell out some money 

If i had to recommend one it would be the Bose companion 5 speaker system, as a good friend of mine has it and it still the best computer speakers i have ever heard. on the other hand they are $400, so....

[weli]

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@eternlrayne wrote:

This is just a post on how to get the best sound out of  your Beats Audio notebook. first a bit about me and my "credentials" As an extreme sound enthusiast, with an audio company of my own. i bought my Dv7 in september and subsequently bought the Beats headphones to fully experience what the notebook has to offer. as a personal rule, i compare every "system" to my car, in which i have 13 speakers, 2 amps, and about $2,000 fully invested in sound. as you can imagine, the car sounds excellent, so this is the closest i was able to get my Dv7 to sound equal.

Beat Audio Setting 

first of, use the Beats Audio EQ, its there for a reason and if you don't adjust it, music just sounds terrible. to get to it, just search of HP beats audio control panel. you may want to add a shortcut on you desktop for easy access. click on equalization under speakers and headphones. now here is where your personal preference takes note, i tuned my eq to best compliment every type of music i listen to (dance, rock, hip-hop, classical, scores, and vocal) depending on what type of music you listen to, you will adjust the raise or lower the Db according to the Hz's. as a rule, the lower the Hz's, the more bass is played and the higher the Hz's, the more vocals/ highs are played. Subsequently, knowing what Hz's affect the notes in a song also helps. 31-62 Hz's are bass. 125-250 bass/mid. 500-KHz are where most vocals are heard. 15khz is where most notes to high to clearly hear are played. although you can hear them, only a few songs have important notes that go that high.

31hz-  -1db          

adjust to how much bass you like without interfering with vocals

62hz   -3db

adjust to how much bass you like without interfering with vocals

125hz   -14db      

this should be very low. at 0db, the mids overwhelm every other note, to the point it truly disrupt the music. its important to drop this, it muffles vocals severely

250Hz   -4db

just like the mid bass above, but not as disruptive, so you can leave this at a higher db. note that both mid bass contain important notes in music, as such having them down lessens some notes, but it does far more good down than harm

500hz   2db

1khz      3db

2khz      3db

4khz      3db

8khz      4db

16khz    8db

adjust slightly to your preference, but this is a good place to set it. don't forget to SAVE IT! play different songs from different genera and tweak it till you find a good spot for all your music. but realize that rap songs will always have more bass than classical music, so you may have to raise and lower the two left markers depending on what your listening to, but the rest should be fine regardless of genera.

Computer Setting.

your computer has a different setting than that of beats audio, as such you may want to address it too. search for sound, click on speakers and headphones and select properties. tone should be 4 bass and 4 treble. now enhancements. they are all off and include bass boost, virtual surround, room correction, and loudness eq. in my opinion, they should all stay off. bass boost adds bass, but severely sacrifices clarity and vocals. virtual surround and room correction don't do much, and loudness eq raises and lowers volume depending on the song playing. it makes one song louder and clearer, then diminishes the next and muffles it. its very inconstant and as such should stay off

Itunes setting

If you are like me, you use itunes to listen to music. Subsequently, it also has an eq. first, click on edit and select preferences, then playback. turn on sound enhancer, it helps slightly, and leave it in the middle. now the itunes eq can stay where it is. it does not enhance the music that much to really worry about it, but you can tweak it if you wish, just leave the markers close to 0db and adjust it by 1db or less. also be aware that itunes has a slight eq delay.

Final Thoughts

A good music setting does not necessarily make music louder. it makes it clearer, it brings out the vocals while helping all individual instruments shine, instead of clumping them together. when every instrument is heard, every vocal is prominent, bass is complimentary, and they all work together, you have achieved true music. the Beats Audio chip does enhance music as long as your willing to be patient enough to tweak it, and in my opinion, computers with the Beat Audio chip are an excellent advancement in music listening experience.

Note. This post is about the Beats Audio Eq Panel on a DV7, if you have a Dv6, please read the post on pg. 2

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[forthose]

Hi, this may sound like a stupid question but I can't seem to find any Beats software whatsoever on my DV6 Beats Audio laptop!

I was actually quite surprised at first not finding any graphic equalizer and my surprise is even greater now that I found this post.

Am I looking in the wrong place? It's my first Win7 so maybe I'm missing something.

Can anyone give me an "open beats audio EQ guide for dummies"? 🙂

Thanks

for those...

[eternlrayne]

I aologize for not answering your question quickly and will try to help you the best i can. first of all, congratulations on your first Win7 pc, i hope you enjoy it as much as many of us do. to find the beat software, just type in "beats" in your search bar. click the windows button on the bottom of the sreen to the very left. in the search bar, type in "beats" and it should be the first option. drag it to your desktop to access it easy later. if you searched for beats and still cannot find it, let me know

[forthose]

No problem! Thanks for your help. FOund what I was looking for.

rgds

[slhelton]

Hey,

I stumbled on your post and it helped a lot! I previously had no idea what all those things meant and had just messed with the settings on the left (bass, def, center, space, focus) while leaving those settings on Beats Active NR for my Beats Studios. I wanted to know if you could explain def, center, space, and focus. Also, in the speakers and headphones properties there is a tab for advanced where you can change default format. It has options such as 16 bit, 48000 hz (DVD quality) all the way up to 24 bit, 192000 hz (studio quality). Could you please explain what that means?

[eternlrayne]

First i need to know what computer you have. Pavilion Dv7's and Dv6's have different Beats Audio software installed so i need to know which your using.

As for the last question i had to do a lot of research and the best way i can answer it is: Default format and Exclusive mode are used by your computers playback programs (Itunes, Zune, Windows Media Player, etc) to determine the best sound quality that should be played when using said music program. in Shared Mode, you tell your computer what bit and hz to use when you play music (or record using the computer's recording device). in Exclusive Mode, the playback program determines what bit and hz to use when playing music. you can chose Exclusive Mode and let itunes or Zune decide for you, or use shared mode in which you tell your computer what hz to play at.

I recommend you leave everything at default. for Shared Mode, unless you recorded or play music at that specific hz you selected (unless you purposefully play a song recorded at 96,000 hz, for example), your computer automatically converts it to the closest bit and hz that the song was recorded (or is stored as) which can have the undesired affect of diminishing the sound quality since your computer has to convert it down (or up). for Exclusive Mode, your music player decides so it is generally OK to leave it on. your computer automatically has Shared Mode set to DVD quality which is where most of the music we listen to, rip, or download is set at. it does not help to turn this higher unless you know for a fact the music played back is higher in Hz.

I have a program that tells me the sample size and bit rate of the music i have, and although some songs had 24 bit sample size, the sound processor that comes with your laptop automatically converts it to 16 bit so no dice there. as for the bit rate, not even the largest 5.1, surround sound, lossless (not compressed) song that i have (which is 190 Mb!) even passed the 48,000 hz that DVD quality uses, so there is no point in changing that either. the program i use (db poweramp) can convert music to 5.1 channel 24 bit, and as high as 96,000 hz. but doing so turns that alredy 190 Mb song to 342 Mb! (I cant imagine the file size if you had a song that was all the way at 192,000 hz). i mean who has enough memory on their computer to have one song be over 1/4 a Gig in size. if that was the case i would need over 800 Gigs just to hold the music i have on itunes. its impractical and a waste of space. you cant convert a 10 Mb song to 100 Mb, it would sound exactly the same, and almost all mp3 capable devices (ipods and cell phones) automatically compress songs down to save space. it is almost (il'd say 99.9%) pointless to have a song at 24 bit 192,000 hz, so don't leave your computer on that setting, you'll just be wasting resources

To summarize, unless you know exactly the sample size and bit rate of the song you are playing or recording is going to be higher that 16 bit, and 48,000 hz (which most people, not even my self do) don't change anything and leave everything at default. 

Hope that helped, and if you want to know more, just look it up online. im not a sound recording expert, nor do i work in a music studio so some parts of what i posted could be off, but hey, unless you are a sound recording expert or do work in a music studio, you don't need to worry about Shared or Exclusive Mode.

[slhelton]

Thank you for the quick and detailed reply! It was very informative. As for the computer I have, it is the Envy 14 Beats Edition (Sandy Bridge, if that matters). I meant to put that in my original post, it must have slipped my mind. I primarily use my Beats Studio's to listen to music through iTunes, so I am mainly concerned with improving the sound quality for that purpose.