I’ve spent years testing wireless speakers and I’m always struck by how methodically and incrementally brands seem to add new features. You’re lucky if you get a new line of speakers every five years from many companies – and that means there’s not quite the same arms race to develop new features that you see with gadgets such as phones.
But when testing the WiiM Sound Lite recently, there was one hidden feature I stumbled upon that seriously piqued my interest: parametric EQ.
Unless you buy one of the best wireless speakers, not many devices have absolutely spot-on sonic balance out of the box. As a result, I’m always keen to experiment with EQ to even out errant frequencies.
However, I often find the tools provided slightly blunt instruments – at their best they offer a limited number of bands for you to adjust; at their worst they only allow you to boost or reduce the bass and treble.
Compared to some of these basic options, WiiM’s parametric EQ is like being handed a scalpel after trying to practice surgery with a flint axe. It’s a genuine breath of fresh air and a far better instrument for audiophiles looking to give their listening experience a bit of a nip-tuck.
What is parametric EQ?
To understand why parametric EQ is such a game changer for your audio devices, it’s first worth explaining how traditional graphic EQ works.
Perhaps a familiar sight to those of you that grew up using hi-fi and stereo, a graphic equalizer splits the frequencies of your music into a number of different bands at different frequencies. Increasing or decreasing that band raises or lowers that frequency, so it’s easy to boost or duck sections of the mix that don’t sound right. However, the drawback is the frequencies are set by the manufacturer, meaning that you can make tweaks to any narrower frequency ranges than that.
As its name suggests, parametric EQ instead allows you to change multiple parameters to each band. So rather than just altering the volume of a given band, you can also set the precise frequency you’d like to change as well as the bandwidth it affects. In practice, this allows you to create a number of wider or narrower curves that alter whole ranges of frequencies with far greater precision than a graphic EQ can.
So why do I find this improved EQ to be such an invaluable feature? Because it makes it significantly easier to correct flaws in your speaker’s sound or tailor its sound profile to match your tastes . If your audio gear goes too hard in the upper bass, you can simply shape a curve to duck the errant frequencies. Even better, the fact that these bands can overlap each other means you can easily boost whole areas of the mix, while removing tiny notches that you find problematic.
In fact, this kind of detailed control is much more akin to the way sound engineers tune speakers in the first place and how the tracks you listen to is produced. I’ve been producing music in my free time for years and parametric EQs are an essential tool for perfecting the sound profile of tracks and balance of competing elements. So putting that kind of detailed control in the hands of audiophiles wanting to get the best out of their gadgets can only be a good thing.
And that’s why I’m confident you’ll be seeing this feature hitting more of your audio gear as time goes on. Already I’m seeing hints of this: not only has WiiM rolled it out to its wireless speakers but Sennheiser has already been adding it to some of its high-end headphones, such as the recent hi-res Sennheiser HDB 630.
So if you’re an inveterate audio tweaker or just want the option of being able to polish up your speakers sonic profile, parametric EQ is definitely a feature worth keeping an eye out for.
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