EQ games: shelves, low cut, two moves

The EQ row on the dashboard holds four games: EQ Recognition (a bell), EQ: Shelves, EQ: Low Cut and EQ: Two Moves. Each keeps its own history, level and card. In all four you hear a stem with an EQ move on it, place your guess on a 20 Hz–20 kHz graph and press Confirm guess. The reveal draws the true curve next to yours, and ♪ Hear your guess plays your move after a miss.

All four run on the eight-level ladder with pre-listen on levels 1–3 — the switch Original / Question / Yours lets you hear your own move while you place it. See The level ladder and pre-listen.

Where the moves sit

A move is only asked where the stem has something to change. The stems were measured band by band: a bell centre is drawn from the bands the stem carries, and a shelf or low-cut corner needs at least two of them on the side it changes. You won't be asked to find 60 Hz on a vocal.

On levels 1–4, bell centres and shelf corners stay between 100 Hz and 6.3 kHz, where most speakers and ears are reliable.

EQ Recognition (bell)

You hear one bell boost or cut. You place its centre.

Cuts never go below 5 dB: a dip is much harder to hear than a peak of the same size.

EQ: Shelves

You hear a low or a high shelf. The prompt tells you which side and whether it lifts or lowers — "Everything above a corner frequency has been lifted." You place the corner, where the shelf turns.

• Gain: 12 dB on levels 1–2 (boosts only), then 10, 9, 8, 6, 5 and 4 dB on level 8, boost or cut.
• Corners: low shelves 60–500 Hz, high shelves 2–12 kHz.
• Points: 100 within half an octave, 80 within one, 50 within one and a half. A shelf corner is vague to the ear, so the buckets are wider than for a bell.

EQ: Low Cut

You hear a high-pass filter rolling off the bottom end. You place where the low end starts to fall away.

• Corners: 40–400 Hz; on levels 1–4 from 80 Hz.
• Slope: 12 dB per octave up to level 5, 24 dB per octave from level 6. The prompt names the slope.
• Points: 100 within a third of an octave, 80 within two thirds, 50 within one octave.

EQ: Two Moves

You hear two EQ moves at once. The prompt names both, for example "1 Bell boost · 2 Bell cut". You place two nodes, one per move. The two moves sit at least two octaves apart, and each is at least 6 dB.

• Levels 1–4: a bell boost and a bell cut.
• From level 5: any two of bell, shelf and low cut, each a boost or a cut. A low shelf or low cut is always the lower move, a high shelf the upper one.
• Gain: 12 dB on levels 1–2, down to 6 dB on level 8.
• Points: SoundSense pairs your two nodes with the two moves both ways round and keeps the better pairing — the node numbers don't have to match. Each node is scored like its own game (bell, shelf or low cut), and you get the mean of the two. An answer is exact only when both nodes score 100.

On a phone speaker

In phone-speaker mode (see Listening devices and phone-speaker mode):

• EQ Recognition asks between 400 Hz and 10 kHz; from level 5 between 800 Hz and 10 kHz.
• EQ: Shelves asks only high shelves, with corners from 2 to 8 kHz.
• EQ: Low Cut is hidden — a phone speaker is a low cut already.
• EQ: Two Moves keeps both moves at 400 Hz and up, with no low cut and no low shelf.

On laptop speakers, centres and corners start at 200 Hz.

Blind mode

At Advanced, 👁 Sighted switches to 🙈 Blind ×1.5 in all four EQ games. The bonus counts only on answers without pre-listen, from level 4 up.