800 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 (800 Hz)
+6.00 dB
exact at every sample rate — the bilinear transform maps this value, not just the frequency
Pole radius at 48 kHz
0.9636596
conjugate pair at ±5.61°, 0.0363 from the circle
−3 dB point
493.5 Hz
0.617× f0 at Q = 1.0000
16-bit fixed point
holds
largest pole 0.9636648 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 800 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 | 1.171411 | -1.339366 | 0.484136 | -1.339366 | 0.655547 | 0.809658 | 20.0% |
| 16 kHz | 1.098131 | -1.714567 | 0.704671 | -1.714567 | 0.802803 | 0.895993 | 10.0% |
| 22.1 kHz | 1.073719 | -1.803951 | 0.778141 | -1.803951 | 0.851860 | 0.922963 | 7.3% |
| 32 kHz | 1.052220 | -1.871732 | 0.842844 | -1.871732 | 0.895064 | 0.946078 | 5.0% |
| 44.1 kHz | 1.038517 | -1.910123 | 0.884081 | -1.910123 | 0.922599 | 0.960520 | 3.6% |
| 48 kHz | 1.035511 | -1.918075 | 0.893129 | -1.918075 | 0.928640 | 0.963660 | 3.3% |
| 96 kHz | 1.018102 | -1.960932 | 0.945520 | -1.960932 | 0.963623 | 0.981643 | 1.7% |
| 192 kHz | 1.009137 | -1.980959 | 0.972501 | -1.980959 | 0.981638 | 0.990777 | 0.8% |
const float b0 = 1.03551103f, b1 = -1.91807457f, b2 = 0.89312883f;
const float a1 = -1.91807457f, a2 = 0.92863986f; // 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 | — | 0.9636596 | 0.9636596 | yes | reference |
| float32 | — | 0.9636596 | 0.9636596 | yes | 0.0000 dB |
| 32-bit fixed | Q1.30 | 0.9636596 | 0.9636596 | yes | 0.0000 dB |
| 24-bit fixed | Q1.22 | 0.9636596 | 0.9636596 | yes | 0.0000 dB |
| 16-bit fixed | Q1.14 | 0.9636648 | 0.9636648 | yes | 0.0044 dB |
What Q does at 800 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 @ 812 Hz | 1928 Hz | 0.928545 | 0.140 ms |
| 0.7071 | +6.00 dB | +6.00 dB @ 812 Hz | 1546 Hz | 0.948974 | 0.199 ms |
| 1 | +6.00 dB | +5.99 dB @ 812 Hz | 1296 Hz | 0.963660 | 0.281 ms |
| 2 | +6.00 dB | +5.98 dB @ 812 Hz | 1027 Hz | 0.981668 | 0.562 ms |
| 4 | +6.00 dB | +5.92 dB @ 812 Hz | 909.7 Hz | 0.990792 | 1.123 ms |
| 10 | +6.00 dB | +5.51 dB @ 812 Hz | 848.9 Hz | 0.996307 | 2.807 ms |
What gain does at 800 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 | 0.929287 | -1.801212 | 0.811133 | 0.900629 |
| -6 dB | −6.00 dB | 0.965707 | -1.852298 | 0.862501 | 0.928709 |
| -3 dB | −3.00 dB | 0.982920 | -1.872718 | 0.883033 | 0.939698 |
| +3 dB | +3.00 dB | 1.017377 | -1.905260 | 0.915755 | 0.956951 |
| +6 dB | +6.00 dB | 1.035511 | -1.918075 | 0.928640 | 0.963660 |
| +12 dB | +12.00 dB | 1.076093 | -1.938272 | 0.948949 | 0.974140 |
Questions this filter answers
What are the biquad coefficients for a 800 Hz peaking EQ filter at 48 kHz?
b0 = 1.035511, b1 = -1.918075, b2 = 0.893129, a1 = -1.918075, a2 = 0.928640, 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 800 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 0.9636648, against 0.9636596 exact, and the response drifts by at most 0.004 dB inside the band. 24-bit takes that to 0.0000 dB.
Where is the real −3 dB point of a 800 Hz peaking EQ filter?
493.5 Hz, which is 0.617× the 800 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 1928.4 Hz to 848.9 Hz across the sweep while f0 never moves.
How close to the unit circle are the poles of a 800 Hz peaking EQ filter?
0.9636596 at 48 kHz, as a conjugate pair at ±5.61°. Pole radius rises toward 1 as the corner frequency falls relative to the sample rate — the same filter at 192 kHz sits at 0.9907766 and at 8 kHz at 0.8096585. 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 800 Hz corner as every other filter type.
- Low-pass800 Hz
- High-pass800 Hz
- Band-pass800 Hz
- Notch800 Hz
- All-pass800 Hz
- Low shelf800 Hz
- High shelf800 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 800 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.