Peace Equalizer for Windows - wow, suddenly my ears are younger

[Ozpeter]

Borderline relevance for this forum but I guess I'm not the only member in their seventies... hopefully...

By sheer accident I came across a free and reputable package for Windows which allows one to test one's hearing and then set up an equalizer that runs in the background all the time to help compensate for one's hearing imperfections.  I have to say that once I had invested the time puzzling it out (brain gone as well as ears) and getting it properly configured and running, it was transformative.  Disabling it and going back to how audio has been sounding to me for probably a few years was a horrible experience in comparison.  And an embarrassment.  I'm so glad I'm no longer trying to be a professional! 

It basically works all the time - but sadly not when editing using an ASIO driver.  But one can still check mixes after rendering them, to ensure that any EQ applied in the DAW wasn't a bad choice.  There's lots more to it than hearing compensation - that's almost a peripheral function.

Here's a link.  Needless to say I have no financial etc interest in this.  In fact, it cost me money as I sent off a small donation as soon as I heard the result.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/peace-equalizer-apo-extension/

[hoserama]

Use this program as a baseline, but I'm doing it more for some EQ on my headphones to closely align with the harman target. Although I adjust to flavor. Very nice program, easy to use, etc.

[Rairun]

I've just given it a try, but I'm not sure it worked properly for me. The resulting EQ curve made everything sound extremely thin. From EQing music, I know how boosting higher frequencies can make it feel closer/more present, and the idea of compensating for hearing loss sounded good to me, but here the high frequencies turned out painfully loud, and the bass (and even mid) frequencies almost non-existent. Not sure what went wrong.

[Ozpeter]

I've just given it a try, but I'm not sure it worked properly for me. ...

I have to admit that I have now repeated the hearing test five times, as I learned how to get the most ear-acceptable results a little more each time.  The final time, I kept an eye on the curve I was creating, and perhaps was less honest about the point at which I could no longer hear each tone - I tended to more the slider a bit to the left of the point at which my ears told me the tone was inaudible.  Otherwise the created curve was rather drastic-looking.  And I left the extreme high frequencies unboosted, as with my ears that's a lost cause and could even damage my headphones!  Lastly, I save three versions of each test, using the drop down box which allows you choose full, weak, weaker - and then when applying the eq, I find the "weakest" version tends to be less of a shock to my ears.

What it has revealed is that a recording from the past which I recently uploaded to YouTube having applied some EQ to the high frequencies should have had its EQ left alone, now that I have replayed it with my hearing-adjusted headphones!  Oh well...

The creator of the app has made a slew of videos about its general use on YouTube.  Worth checking out to grasp what else it can do.