Target curve maker

What a target curve is

Room correction (REW's EQ, Dirac Live, miniDSP and others) adjusts the sound at your seat towards a target. A flat target is rarely what sounds best in a room: research at Harman (Olive and colleagues, AES convention papers in 2009 and 2013) found that listeners preferred room corrections with a smooth downward slope towards the treble and more bass than a flat line, and that preferences varied from listener to listener. Harman publishes no numeric curve, so the Harman-style preset here is our approximation of that shape, 4 dB of bass lift and a 0.8 dB per octave tilt above 1 kHz; adjust it to taste.

How it is drawn

Every preset is the same shape the REW Analyzer draws as its target: flat up to the knee, then the tilt in dB per octave; below 100 Hz the bass lift, easing out on a logarithmic scale by 200 Hz. The curve is relative to 0 dB at 1 kHz, because room correction lines a target up with your measurement's level: only its shape counts. The X-curve is a cinema standard for large auditoriums (3 dB per octave above 2 kHz) and usually sounds dull in a home room.

Using the files

• REW: load the .txt file as a house curve. REW reads the lines of frequency and level and skips the first line, which is a comment.
• Dirac Live: import the .targetcurve file in the target curve step. Dirac does not publish its file format; this one copies the layout of a target file Dirac Live itself generated, with the correction range you chose. Check the curve looks right after importing it.
• Our REW Analyzer: "Use this curve in the REW Analyzer" makes it a target choice beside your measurements, and its Suggest EQ works towards it. New to measuring? Start with how to measure your room with REW.