FIR Designer EQ Modes: Audio Brand Lookup
Brand-specific IIR modes in FIR Designer
Design custom speaker and system EQ that matches your processor & control software.
FIR Designer includes dedicated IIR filter modes for many professional audio brands, substantially speeding up the design of accurate, brand-specific EQ.
Each branded IIR mode accounts for differences in how brands interpret and implement IIR filter parameters, which eliminates the adjustments usually needed to match EQ designs to the destination processor.
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Design Custom EQ for brands without a built-in EQ mode
Using branded IIR modes is optional for EQ design within the IIR Filters tab.
You can design EQ if your processor/amplifier brand doesn’t have its own IIR mode in FIR Designer.
Firstly, select the Generic mode & create your filter set using the available options – choose from any combination of parametric, bandpass, notch, low and high shelf, low-pass and high-pass Bessel, Butterworth, Chebyshev I & II, Elliptic, Linkwitz/Riley filters, as well as Neville Thiele notched crossovers – and compare the filter responses with the plots generated by the processor control software. (The Generic mode uses the Robert Bristow-Johnson Q & BW definitions for many filters.)
If the initial response match isn’t ideal, try experimenting with other branded modes & again compare plots with the IIR plots generated by the control software. (You may find one of the other branded modes provides a closer match than the Generic mode.)
In this room tuning case study, FIR Designer was used to EQ a church sound system by selecting the Q-SYS filter mode as a match for filters in a QSC PLD amplifer.
IIR Mode Options in FIR Designer M
Brand EQ Modes & IIR Filter Design FAQs
Can I convert EQ in FIR Designer (i.e. an IIR filter set) from one audio brand to another?
You can convert a set of IIR filters in FIR Designer from one brand’s IIR settings to another using the IIR Reference Editor, available on the IIR Filters tab.
Set the current filter brand as the Reference, then click Convert to convert the IIR filter settings to other brand’s settings, while maintaining an exact response match that accounts for differences in brand-specific IIR filter interpretations.
For example, if you’ve been building IIR-filter-based EQ using the the Powersoft IIR mode, you can convert the EQ filter set to Linea Research mode so that it will perform identically in Linea Research amplifiers.
Where two products don’t have equivalent filter types, additional filters can be added & adjustments performed manually to achieve an exact match.
See a video demo of the IIR Reference Editor.
Can I match EQ across different brands of loudspeakers, without having the original EQ settings?
Yes. You can match an EQ response across different brands without having the original IIR filter settings. Measure the response from the first processor (using measurement software like Smaart), then use that measurement as a target response in FIR Designer to create matching EQ (IIR filter sets) for other processors.
In FIR Designer, clear any measurement/s from the Import tab, then load the measured IIR response into the Target tab. Then, on the IIR Filters tab, set filters to match the target using any of the IIR filter modes (branded or generic). If the Target response is quite detailed, first match any high-pass or low-pass regions using high-pass and low-pass filters and shelf filters, then use the AutoIIR tool to automatically set parametric filters to match the target. Once you have a IIR filter response in one brand, use the Reference Editor to convert the response to other brands.
As an example, the measured response from a PowerSoft processor running specific EQ can be loaded as a Target in FIR Designer and used to create matching EQ for a Marani amplifier.
EQ matching isn’t limited to IIR filters. Learn how to use FIR filters for EQ matching.
Can FIR Designer be used for system EQ using only IIR filters, without FIRs?
Yes. FIR Designer can be used to design IIR-only EQ for loudspeakers and sound systems, without using FIR filters. See this room tuning example.