How to Control or See Impulse Response Headroom

[Hastings014]

Hi, I'm doing some additional eq stuff on top of the Impulse Reponses generated by AutoEQ. It would be very helpful to be able to see or find out how much normalization db is being subtracted from the IR in question. Is there a way to do that currently either in AutoEQ or with a DAW or something? If not, is this something that would be added? Thanks.

[jaakkopasanen]

FIR filter headroom is a tricky thing. AutoEq normalizes FIR filters in such a way that no frequency is amplified above 0 dB, but this doesn't guarantee that there will never be clipping. See #388 for more.

What are you looking to achieve?

[Hastings014]

I'm hoping to create stereo impulse response files that have different responses per channel. In order for this to work L and R have to be normalized to each other, but it's difficult to get that to work if I don't know how much headroom they have.

[jaakkopasanen]

That is unfortunately not possible at the moment and I'm not too keen on adding this since it's very niche use-case and would complicate normal usage.

I suggest adjusting the channel balance by ear. Once you've found the level, you can bake it in to the FIR filter with Audacity for example.