125 Hz peaking eq
Boosts or cuts a band around f0 and leaves both ends of the spectrum at unity. Solved at 8 sample rates, with the poles, the real −3 dB point and the word length it stops working at.
Magnitude response at 48 kHz
Every vertex is 20·log₁₀|H(ejω)| evaluated on the unit circle — not a sketch of the filter's shape. The faint traces behind it are the same corner at every Q in the sweep below.
Gain at f0 (125 Hz)
+6.00 dB
exact at every sample rate — the bilinear transform maps this value, not just the frequency
Pole radius at 48 kHz
0.9942251
conjugate pair at ±0.88°, 0.00577 from the circle
−3 dB point
77.1 Hz
0.617× f0 at Q = 1.0000
16-bit fixed point
holds
largest pole 0.9942154 in Q1.14
Coefficients, at every sample rate
The cookbook computes w₀ = 2πf₀/Fs, so the same filter is a different set of numbers at every rate. Rates whose Nyquist limit is at or below 125 Hz are absent because the filter does not exist there — equivalently, the f₀/Nyquist column never reaches 100%. That is why this table is 8 rows and a 20 Hz page is 8.
| Sample rate | b0 | b1 | b2 | a1 | a2 | Pole r | f₀/Nyquist |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 kHz | 1.033373 | -1.923628 | 0.899563 | -1.923628 | 0.932936 | 0.965886 | 3.1% |
| 16 kHz | 1.016991 | -1.963488 | 0.948865 | -1.963488 | 0.965856 | 0.982780 | 1.6% |
| 22.1 kHz | 1.012390 | -1.973850 | 0.962713 | -1.973850 | 0.975103 | 0.987473 | 1.1% |
| 32 kHz | 1.008571 | -1.982179 | 0.974204 | -1.982179 | 0.982776 | 0.991350 | 0.8% |
| 44.1 kHz | 1.006235 | -1.987156 | 0.981237 | -1.987156 | 0.987471 | 0.993716 | 0.6% |
| 48 kHz | 1.005731 | -1.988217 | 0.982753 | -1.988217 | 0.988483 | 0.994225 | 0.5% |
| 96 kHz | 1.002874 | -1.994158 | 0.991351 | -1.994158 | 0.994225 | 0.997108 | 0.3% |
| 192 kHz | 1.001439 | -1.997092 | 0.995669 | -1.997092 | 0.997108 | 0.998553 | 0.1% |
const float b0 = 1.00573098f, b1 = -1.98821730f, b2 = 0.98275250f;
const float a1 = -1.98821730f, a2 = 0.98848348f; // a0 == 1What word length this filter survives
The fixed-point rows round all five coefficients to one shared scale, which is what a q15/q31 biquad section does with its post-shift.Pole radius is solved from the quadratic, not taken as √|a₂| — once rounding pushes the poles onto the real axis those two disagree, and the convenient one reports a comfortable margin on a filter that has already left the unit circle. Error is the worst deviation from float64 across frequencies where the response is within 40 dB of its own peak; below that it is measuring the −200 dB floor.
| Word format | Q format | Largest pole | √|a₂| says | Stable | Worst error in band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| float64 | — | 0.9942251 | 0.9942251 | yes | reference |
| float32 | — | 0.9942251 | 0.9942251 | yes | 0.0009 dB |
| 32-bit fixed | Q1.30 | 0.9942251 | 0.9942251 | yes | 0.0000 dB |
| 24-bit fixed | Q1.22 | 0.9942250 | 0.9942250 | yes | 0.0020 dB |
| 16-bit fixed | Q1.14 | 0.9942154 | 0.9942154 | yes | 0.4439 dB |
What Q does at 125 Hz
f₀ does not move with Q — the −3 dB point does. They are the same frequency only at Q = 1/√2, which is why a Butterworth corner is the one people quote and why every other Q surprises somebody.
| Q | At f₀ | Peak | −3 dB | Pole r | Group delay at f₀ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.5 | +6.00 dB | +6.00 dB @ 127 Hz | 302.6 Hz | 0.988483 | 0.897 ms |
| 0.7071 | +6.00 dB | +6.00 dB @ 127 Hz | 242.1 Hz | 0.991843 | 1.269 ms |
| 1 | +6.00 dB | +5.99 dB @ 127 Hz | 202.7 Hz | 0.994225 | 1.794 ms |
| 2 | +6.00 dB | +5.98 dB @ 127 Hz | 160.5 Hz | 0.997108 | 3.588 ms |
| 4 | +6.00 dB | +5.92 dB @ 127 Hz | 142.2 Hz | 0.998553 | 7.169 ms |
| 10 | +6.00 dB | +5.51 dB @ 127 Hz | 132.7 Hz | 0.999421 | 17.810 ms |
What gain does at 125 Hz
A peaking filter puts its full gain at f₀ and returns to unity at both ends of the spectrum.
| Gain | At f₀ | b0 | a1 | a2 | Pole r |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| -12 dB | −12.00 dB | 0.987973 | -1.967615 | 0.967878 | 0.983808 |
| -6 dB | −6.00 dB | 0.994302 | -1.976888 | 0.977152 | 0.988510 |
| -3 dB | −3.00 dB | 0.997188 | -1.980476 | 0.980741 | 0.990324 |
| +3 dB | +3.00 dB | 1.002820 | -1.986062 | 0.986327 | 0.993140 |
| +6 dB | +6.00 dB | 1.005731 | -1.988217 | 0.988483 | 0.994225 |
| +12 dB | +12.00 dB | 1.012173 | -1.991567 | 0.991833 | 0.995908 |
Questions this filter answers
What are the biquad coefficients for a 125 Hz peaking EQ filter at 48 kHz?
b0 = 1.005731, b1 = -1.988217, b2 = 0.982753, a1 = -1.988217, a2 = 0.988483, with a0 normalised to 1 — the RBJ Audio EQ Cookbook form at Q = 1.0000 and +6 dB of gain. Every other sample rate in the table above gives different numbers for the same filter, because w0 = 2πf0/Fs and every cosine and sine downstream of it moves.
Is a 125 Hz peaking EQ filter stable in 16-bit fixed point?
Yes. Rounding the five coefficients to a shared 1.14 scale leaves the largest pole at 0.9942154, against 0.9942251 exact, and the response drifts by at most 0.444 dB inside the band. 24-bit takes that to 0.0020 dB.
Where is the real −3 dB point of a 125 Hz peaking EQ filter?
77.1 Hz, which is 0.617× the 125 Hz corner. f0 and the −3 dB point are the same frequency only at Q = 1/√2; this page is designed at Q = 1.0000, and the Q sweep above shows the point moving from 302.6 Hz to 132.7 Hz across the sweep while f0 never moves.
How close to the unit circle are the poles of a 125 Hz peaking EQ filter?
0.9942251 at 48 kHz, as a conjugate pair at ±0.88°. Pole radius rises toward 1 as the corner frequency falls relative to the sample rate — the same filter at 192 kHz sits at 0.9985531 and at 8 kHz at 0.9658861. That distance is the whole story of the fixed-point table: a pole a few parts in 10⁵ from the circle has nowhere to be rounded to.
The neighbouring corners
One third-octave either side, and the same 125 Hz corner as every other filter type.
- Low-pass125 Hz
- High-pass125 Hz
- Band-pass125 Hz
- Notch125 Hz
- All-pass125 Hz
- Low shelf125 Hz
- High shelf125 Hz
Method and limits. Coefficients follow the RBJ Audio EQ Cookbook, the bilinear transform of the analog prototype prewarped so the corner lands exactly on f0 — which is why +6.00 dB at 125 Hz holds at every sample rate in the table rather than only at low f0/Fs. Shelves fix the slope at S = 1, matching Web Audio's BiquadFilterNode, so Q is not read for those two types. Pole and zero radii are the roots of the quadratic, not sqrt(|a2|). The fixed-point rows model a single shared coefficient scale and no other quantisation: they say nothing about signal-path headroom, limit cycles or the accumulator width your implementation uses, all of which can make a filter that passes this table still misbehave. Nothing on this page is fetched or estimated — it is solved from the type and the frequency in the URL.