Equator Audio Research Q8 Review

Jun 1, 2009 12:00 PM, By Brian Smithers

           
 

BIG SOUND FROM A COAXIAL CUBE

FIG. 2: Equator Room Analyzer automatically compensates for the room’s primary modes and secondary reflections. It can save settings as presets to tailor the monitors’ response to different circumstances.

The Q8s' imaging continued to be their strong suit on contemporary music. The phantom image was more convincing, sounding less like two speakers working together and more like an independent sound source. Lead vocals and other center-panned elements sounded solid, clear, and natural. On Donald Fagen's “H Gang,” the group vocals blended together the way all good singers accustomed to working in good acoustics like to hear themselves. Their sound was rich and exceptionally well integrated.

If I could combine the Q8s' imaging with a frequency response right between theirs and the JBLs', I think I'd be very happy. Equator Control's Tone Contour page offers high- and low-shelving filters with adjustable corner frequencies to achieve such fine-tuning. You can save all the room-correction and tone-contour settings as presets for convenient retuning of the system to suit particular genres or clients.

Tuning Up

The Equator Room Analyzer package includes a microphone and automated room-response-compensation software (Mac/Win; see Fig. 2). In addition to a tone sweep to find and compensate for your room's primary standing waves, Analyzer emits a series of short noise bursts to identify secondary reflections. These reflections, such as those from a console or computer display, are strong enough to interfere with the direct sound, impairing your monitors' frequency response and blurring their imaging.

Because my JBLs also offer integrated room-response compensation, I ran both sets of monitors through their respective calibration routines to see how much difference either made. To my surprise, neither made a big difference. Equator's analysis found only two small bumps worth fixing, one of 0.7 dB at 96 Hz and the other of 0.1 dB at 95 Hz. Likewise, it found only one secondary reflection that was worth compensating for.

On my PC, Equator Room Analyzer didn't get along with my Hammerfall, so I had to do the analysis on my Mac. Although Equator was very helpful in trying to resolve the conflict, it remains an unsolved mystery. Luckily, once I had the analysis complete on the Mac, I was able to save the settings to the monitors' flash memory (and to a file for backup) so my PC was able to take advantage of the room correction. One word of caution about the Equator analysis procedure: Wear earplugs! For setting the microphone gain, the speaker emits a pink-noise test tone that's 104 dB SPL (C-weighted) at 4.5 feet with unity gain.

Although I can't extrapolate too much from calibrating a single room, the room-correction kit worked exactly as advertised on my Mac. For a more troubled room, however, it might prove invaluable. After calibration, my impression of the Q8s was unchanged: They still sounded very even and natural, with good imaging and a wide sweet spot. I recommend them to anyone who places a high value on neutrality and imaging.

Brian Smithers is department chair of workstations at Full Sail University.

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