# Understanding House Curve vs EQ settings in REW



## timtango (Jun 26, 2013)

Hi

I'm new to REW but I've made some headway.. have calibrated my FA66 soundcard, bought a UMM-6 from Cross Spectrum, and made some measurements of my setup.
Had to use the LineIn and SoundFlower workarounds to get audio working correctly on my Mac.
I've generated EQ settings and transferred these to a DEQ2496, and this seemed to sort out the booming I was experiencing from room modes around 49 and 57Hz

Discovered pretty quickly that 'flat' doesn't necessarily sound good, and started reading about House curves and about equal loudness contours.
I created a house curve modelled on ISO266:2003 at 90dB (I'm setting up a small PA).
So far so good.. but there seems to be overlap between what I'm trying to do with my house curve txt file, and the EQ slopes available in the REW Target settings...

Is my understanding of this correct?
IOW, if I have a house curve txt file imported for use in REW, I should rather make the LF rise and HF fall slopes equal 0.0dB/Octave, otherwise I'll be putting another slope on top of the slopes I've loaded using my house curve file?
The target line in the EQ interface suggests that this is the case, and that I should probably use the LF/HF slopes, OR a house curve, but not both at the same time.
Assistance is appreciated, and any constructive feedback on what I've learnt so far

Tim


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## Wayne A. Pflughaupt (Apr 13, 2006)

Welcome to the Forum, Tim!

It’s hard to follow what you’re saying, but load the house curve into REW then set the Target Settings for full range. It will work best if your house curve file is positive boost values (e.g. 100Hz/0dB; 30Hz/6dB) rather than negative values (e.g. 100Hz/-6dB; 30Hz/0dB)

Regards, 
Wayne


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## jtalden (Mar 12, 2009)

timtango said:


> ...
> there seems to be overlap between what I'm trying to do with my house curve txt file, and the EQ slopes available in the REW Target settings...
> 
> Is my understanding of this correct?
> ...


Tim,
Yes, you are correct. If you enter a custom house curve you need to also set the default slopes to 0 dB/Oct. This is done in "preferences/Equaliser". The default is set to 1.8 dB/Oct and if it is not changed there the slopes will be added to your custom house curve for each measurement.


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## timtango (Jun 26, 2013)

Thanks John, appreciate the confirmation.
Hadn't thought of making 0.0 the default in preferences, will do that in future rather than changing the values at EQ time


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## timtango (Jun 26, 2013)

Thanks for the tip Wayne, although I would appreciate any more detail you can give me with regard to why the values are better as positive rather than negative values?

It would make sense to me that a curve is simply a curve, and it would not matter to the EQ algos whether the curve was generated with positive or negative values.


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## Wayne A. Pflughaupt (Apr 13, 2006)

Scratch that, it’s what someone who used to post here a lot always said. I just did some double-checking in REW and figured out that it’s bad information.

Regards, 
Wayne


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## timtango (Jun 26, 2013)

Thanks for checking Wayne, aligns nicely with my understanding of how it should work


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