you may have heard of sonar works or products that promise to correct frequency imbalances in your system leaving you with optimized sound quality without the need for expensive speakers or acoustic treatment but do these products really deliver on that promise okay maybe that intro is a bit harsh in fact I like sonar works and I see a lot of value in software like sonar Works sound ID reference and other system correction Solutions I've just found that many people misinterpret the promise of these sorts of products and usually because they simply don't know any better so I want to share what I've learned to help you understand what these things actually do products like sonar Works can definitely help improve the frequency response of your headphones and speakers as well as counteract some of the acoustic problems in your room but they are certainly not a replacement for highquality speakers and acoustic treatment here's why so our works and other products like it start by performing a transfer function measurement on your sound system in room a transfer function is the effect that a system has on the signals passing through it it's performed by playing a test signal like a frequency sweep through your speakers recording the sound of the sweep and then comparing that recording to a reference signal a test like this can yield data that tells us several things about the system and the room sonar Works focuses on the frequency response once sonar Works has a frequency response curve for your system it applies a correction filter you can think of this correction filter as the inverse of the frequency response curve where the frequency response has too much energy buildup sonar Works removes energy and where the system lacks energy sonar Works boosts sonarworks was able to improve the frequency response of my room but they weren't able to make it completely flat this is because EQ correction alone simply cannot solve the most significant problems we deal with in room acoustics that's why it's really important to invest in acoustic treatment if possible if you're working with a tight budget I'd recommend building your own panels and I want to show you how to build them go to audio University online.com acoustic panel blueprint and download a free step-by-step guide in addition to the fact that some speakers just can't produce sound accurately at some frequencies even with corrective EQ there are also a few room Acoustics problems which are particularly problematic and impossible to treat with EQ correction alone standing waves comb filtering and Decay time any room will exhibit standing waves which are resonations at specific frequencies determined by the dimensions of the room the most powerful of these so-called room modes are the axial room modes that occur between two parallel surfaces such as walls ceilings and Floors this is especially problematic in smaller rooms where the frequencies of these room modes is pushed higher into the spectrum because the wavelengths are shorter at first you might think if the room resonates at 80 HZ won't the software just cut 80 HZ and fix the problem in some cases yes EQ can be used to treat buildups of energy but the intensity of the resonance will still vary throughout the room and you can't account for the resulting in consistencies throughout the space with EQ alone even more importantly what happens if there there's a cancellation at 880 HZ at the listening position this means that there are equal but opposite forces working against each other at 80 HZ and the EQ could try to boost 80 HZ but this would just mean that both forces would be equally boosted which would still result in a cancellation a similar limitation of room correction EQ can be found when dealing with comb filters especially those caused by early Reflections when sound from your speakers bounces off of the sidewalls Sealing in and floor it interacts with the direct sound at the listening position if these two waveforms were aligned in time they would add together but the indirect sound will take longer to reach the listening position which means it mixes with the direct sound at a slight delay and this causes cancellations at some frequencies and summations at other frequencies again you can try to mitigate the summations at that position by using EQ but there's nothing EQ can do about a strong cancellation boosting the frequency in the direct sound would result in an equal boost of that frequency in the indirect sound which is just plugging bigger numbers into the same formula that ultimately results in the same answer the real solution is to use acoustic treatment to reduce the level of those Reflections all of these problems so far are just dealing with the frequency response of your system but transfer function measurements can also give us insight into the time domain for example here's a waterfall graph that shows the frequency response over time you can see that each frequency takes time to fully Decay within the room ideally the frequencies would Decay somewhat evenly but this is not the case in most rooms some frequencies linger in the space long after others have disappeared and this can change the listener's experience to something other than what was originally intended the ultimate solution would be to use acoustic treatment where possible and then to use sonar works or something similar to fine-tune as a final touch download the free acoustic panel blueprint with the link below and join me in the next video where I'll show you the first thing you should do with acoustic treatment in your space I'll see you there