All of you realize, I hope, that any room correction EQ curves should be applied to your monitoring of recorded signal and not to the source signal for recording itself.
Why? Room correction EQ curves are to flatten the frequency response at the listening position you will be sitting at within your room with a particular set of monitors.
No matter how acoustically treated your room is to achieve flatness of response and eliminate modes/nodes, there is still a curve based on the monitors used that needs to be accounted for.
Even if you perfectly flatten your room & monitoring frequency response, you need to take yearly trips to the audiologist to have your hearing tested because your hearing is anything but flat. Knowing that curve will let you know your perceptual shortcomings, so that your eq choices will hopefully translate well in any listening environment.
Remember that listening environments can vary greatly for those who consume your mixes from cell phones to air pods to computer speakers, tv, to consumer grade speakers, to auto speaker environments, to audiophile stuff, to other studio environments. Add to that the variables of streaming encoding, satellite radio encoding, radio/broadcast encoding and its a maze of variables to keep in mind.
I say this as someone who used to work in an Allen Sides designed room with Al Fierstein from Sorcerer Sound NYC coming in every so often to measure and flatten the room.
The best thing you can do so as not to drive yourself mad is to find a curve for your monitoring that allows mixes done in it to translate with pleasing frequency response across environments.
Then when you have sweated all the details of getting something you feel is flat, listen to the difference between the following albums off of CD that were recorded in top notch environments to see how your curve translates:
- Peter Gabriel- So
- the first Wilson Philips album
- Toad the Wet Sprocket - Fear
- Gretchen Wilson - Here For the Party
- Metallica - Black album
- Tool - Ænima
In each recording certain frequencies should jump out at you even though things are "flat" in your room. It will help educate you how things should jump out at you if you want mixes to translate across environments.
.
