My question is: are equalizers really used any more. Would it be of any use with my 990, being fed into two Rotel Amps? I remember my father's top of the line system in the late 1970's early 1980's. He had an equalizer that he painstakingly set. I couldn't adjust the equalizer under penalty of death or something far worse. Now of course systems have changed so much. I haven't noticed equlizers being a product that is pushed or has much demand. Is anybody using them? Do you find them necessary of valuable, if so what are you looking for your equlaizer to do. Just something I've been wondering about lately.

My opinion, but unless you need it for some correction due to non-linearity of your speakers, it will degrade your sound more than it will help.

Things like built in room correction or even stereo to surround processing take a small but noticeable toll on sound quality even in the digital domain, so adding two more sets of connections and all the circuitry in an EQ unit are going to probably do more. And I would imagine there are few high quality units available, since, as you note, they are no longer widely used. Plus good luck finding a 5 o 7 channel model, unless you are only thinking of doing L&R mains.

Really, these are from the era of "hand tuned speakers", as opposed to today where even cheaper speakers built to a price point have at least gone through some level of measurement and engineering to have linear response.

Speakers are "hand tuned" just as much today as they were in the 1970s, 80's or whatever - that procedure is called voicing, and is a routine step in the development of a new loudspeaker system.

It is worth mentioning that the Audyssey and Trinnov processing schemes incorporate equalization as part of their processing, so yes, equalization is still alive and well.

Outboard equalizers are still mandatory in systems such as mine which use active crossovers instead of the passive crossovers in conventional systems. In this case, equalization takes the role of the voicing which would normally be part of the transfer curve of the passive crossover network inside the speaker.

Personally, I have never heard a system equalized by the Audyssey scheme which sounds nearly as good as a system utilizing a conventional graphic equalizer in the hands of an experienced tuner using good RTA and other hardware / software. In the hands of an average consumer however with no training or lab gear, equalizers are pretty much guaranteed to mess up the sound more than help it, which is why the compromise of the Audyssey system is taking hold.