Alesis DEQ230D manual Basics of Equalization, Multiple Band Edit, Selecting an Edit Group

3 Basics of Equalization

Multiple Band Edit

Selecting an Edit Group

Pressing a [BAND SELECT] button puts the DEQ230 into Edit mode. And until you press one of the [DOWN/UP] buttons, you can keep pressing [BAND SELECT] buttons until you have several of them selected simultaneously. This is called selecting an Edit Group. An Edit Group can be made up of any number of bands from both channels if the Link LED is not active.

The Relative Gain Display

When you pressed the first [BAND SELECT] button, two things happened: the Numeric LED Display changed to show the gain value of that band, and one of the corresponding Band Gain LEDs started to blink. Then when you pressed the second [BAND SELECT] button, two more things happened: the Numeric LED Display changed to show the number "0," and a second Band Gain LED started to blink. Each additional [BAND SELECT] button you press adds a band and a blinking LED to the Edit Group.

But why did the Numeric LED Display change to a zero? Because, once you have selected an Edit Group, you can cut or boost the gain of all of the bands in the Edit Group at once. They will move up or down in proportion to one another. The zero in the display represents a "benchmark" for the amount of gain change that happens to the Edit Group. The 7-segment LEDs can't display the gain values of each band within the Edit Group all at once, so if you raise the overall level of the Edit Group by 2 dB, that's the number you will see. The function of the display in this case is to tell you the Relative Gain amount.

For the sake of clarity, when this manual is describing what is shown in the 7-segment LEDs while changing the overall gain value of the Edit Group, we will refer to it as the Relative Gain display.

Here’s an example: let's say you have selected the bands at 4k and 5k as your Edit Group. The initial gain value for 4k is +2 dB and the gain value for 5k is -2 dB. The Relative Gain display at this point will read "0." If you press the [UP] button four times, the final value of the Relative Gain display will be a "2." The actual gain values for 4k and 5k are now +4 dB and 0 dB, respectively, which will be indicated by their Band Gain LEDs.

Proportional Gain Memory

It's possible you may see numbers as large as 24 in the Relative Gain display. This is due to a very powerful aspect of the Relative Gain feature, and it will require some careful explanation.

Here's another example. Let's say you have two bands selected. The first band is set to 0 dB, and the second band is set to -12 dB. The Relative Gain display reads "0." If you press the [UP] button and keep holding it, you will see that number change from 0 to 12 (see fig. 1 on page 35). But it won't stop at 12; it will keep racing

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If the Numeric LED Display shows “Li” when you press [BAND SELECT] buttons on Channel B, it means the channels are linked. Either make the edits on Channel A, or return to Program mode and press [LINK/EXIT] to unlink the channels.

In Multiple Band Edit mode, pressing the [DOWN/UP] buttons at the same time will reset the Relative Gain Display to 0. This resets the bands within the Edit Group back to their original values. From this point you can change the Relative Gain of the Edit Group in 2 dB increments by holding one of the [DOWN/UP] buttons and pressing the other one repeatedly.

For maximum preservation of fidelity of the input signal, the largest number of bands in a channel should be set to 0 dB. For example, if you have more than half of your bands set to some cut amount and the majority of those cut frequencies are at -4 dB, then select all bands and compensate by +4 dB.