While some people enjoy cranking up the bass on their home or car stereos, it isn't a good idea to do the same with an audio file for the Web. Most computer speakers can't handle bass very well. In fact, sound files that contain only bass or only treble frequencies rarely sound as good as a file that contains both frequencies together.

One way to tone down the bass, and assure that the bass and treble match each other in the level and strength of sound, is to equalize your files with an equalizer.

An equalizer is a flexible, precise tone control located in an audio editing application that contains bass and treble controls.

An equalizer divides bass into specific frequencies that you can boost or decrease. Each of these divisions is called a band. Some equalizers have 512 or more bands of control. You use your sound application software to adjust these levels.

You can, if you wanted to, increase the bass on your sound files, but for the Web, your files will sound better if you tone down the bass. Equalizing your files can also help bring out a certain part of your sound file, such as a voice, or one particular instrument.