Reply To: Ringing Out The Room – Channel or Overall PEQ?

[Dick Rees]

Consider this: You can stop feedback by turning down the system gain. That says that the feedback at any frequency is dependent on the level of that frequency in the room. If the room tends to feedback at, say 10 kHz, a female vocalist is more likely to generate sound at that frequency than a baritone.

The first sentence is true.

The second sentence does not follow from the first as implied and is misleading in that it is the sound at the microphone, not the sound in the room that is the determinant. For a good part of the sound spectrum the propensity for feedback at a specific frequency can be reduced simply by moving the mic a few inches one way or the other toward an anti-node.

The third sentence is just a poor example for a variety of reasons, primarily that 10kHz is far above the point at which room resonances occur and any sonic anomalies in this region are due to sound reflected directly into the microphone from a mains or monitor speaker or an extremely unfortunate microphone placement.