[zybar]

I understand Mike Galusha had your DCX for some time.  His full mod takes a while to install, plus he had difficulties with the audio boards.  It was your unit's vexing problems that led him to stop modding DCX's entirely.

However, you now own a state of the art preamp, digital crossover, and six band parametric EQ that will work wonders with your sound.  Just eliminating primary room modes is a huge step forward and is easy once you familiarize yourself with all DCX modes and functions.

Remember you will still have to adjust levels between bass and treble amps, since the gain of your dissimilar amps is close, but not exactly equivalent. Go slowly in 0.1dB steps for best results.

Have fun and let us know how you're doing.

+1 for the Mike Galusha's modified DCX.

As Brian stated, it is SOTA and highly flexible.

Take the time to learn all of its features and you will be rewarded!

George

[PLMONROE]

I now finally have a few minutes to share my first impressions of my RM V-60s crossed over with Mikes moded Behringer. Several years ago when I bought one of the first pairs of Brains RM-40s he told me that active bi amping would provide amazingly better sound - but I never quite got around to it -  but heck, what does he know about that anyway?  However I did have a barrel of fun helping him set up at the last CES (although I probably was more in the way than being much help) so I had a pretty good idea how the setup would sound, especially since our Behringers are identical with them being modded by Mike at the same time.

Actually I got delayed in posting this a bit due to a slight accident which necessitated my running over to the Emergency Room of the nearby hospital. But I am OK and I digress, so back to my impressions.  I hooked up everything (correctly, I hoped) and turned the system on.  Immediately I got lights on the Behringer and no smoke - always a good sign! But I had no sound. ARAAAGH! Then I remembered Brian had said that the muting had to be turned off.  So I fumbled around, found the mute button and deactivated it.

HOLLY CRAP!!!  I wasn't at all prepared for anything like what I heard. I was so astounded that like a bolt of lightening my jaw fell so fast and so hard that  X-rays at the hospital found it had hit my right knee and fractured the right knee cap. As as if that was not bad enough it looks as if the dentist will find two or three chipped teeth when I make an emergency visit to him Monday. The only bright spot in all this was observed by my wife who remarked that she thought I should consider myself lucky. When I asked why in the world she thought that she shrugged her shoulders and said as she walked away - "Well your jaw cold have fallen a few inches to the left, I suppose"

Brian its all your and Mike Galosha's fault - his for the modifications and yours for the programming! Just look at what you almost did to me!  Be forewarned that I have an attorney who has the legal tenacity of a starving pit bull and from whom you both will be hearing  forthwith!

OK, so how good is it? I am the worlds worst at reviewing anything so this is no review, But my impression of this unit right out of the box, not broken in, not adjusted, and without any room correction, is that beyond a doubt it gives me the most improvement in sound per dollar spent of anything I have ever done to my system -PERIOD!

The first thing that jumped out to me was increased clarity on vocals. Mike refers to it as "inteligibility" and feels it is due to the steep crossover slopes.  I find I now can easily understand lyrics that I could not make out before. And boy does this setup like female vocalists, especially those with low pitched voices. A track by Jacinta, Ertha Kitt, Julie London. or Marlene Dietrich will literally stand up the hair on the back of your neck! Detail and trabsparency are incredible yet completely musical.  The whole sound spectrum is much, much more coherent. Vertical, horizontal and front to back imaging is more precise. Lastly are two things I haven't a clue how to put into words. The first has to do with width of the sound field - sort of. Before on good tracks I had a sound stage within the room from about 9:30 to 2:30 BUT it would start exactly and precisely at 9:30 and stop exactly and precisely at 2:30. Now I have a sound stage that extends far beyond the room boundaries BUT it seems to gradually fade in from about 8:30 and out at about 3:30 without starting or ending abruptly. I have no idea what the term for this characteristic might be or if I am making sense. Maybe I also am suffering from brain damage - humm,  I will have to remember to bring that up with my attorney too. The other change I note with the Behringer is that all my music has more "color" for lack of anything more accurately descriptive. As Steve Nugent would say "its got magic".  The heck with all this. For my knee I am going to take some 21 year old medicine that Tyson would approve of, tell my wife not to disturb me until breakfast, and get back to my sound room.

Paul     

[mgalusha]

Sounds like it's all coming together for you Paul.

The first thing that jumped out to me was increased clarity on vocals. Mike refers to it as "inteligibility" and feels it is due to the steep crossover slopes.

The steeper slopes keep more of the low frequencies from reaching the ribbons but the other benefit of going active is removing capacitors and inductors from the signal path.

I understand Mike Galusha had your DCX for some time.  His full mod takes a while to install, plus he had difficulties with the audio boards.  It was your unit's vexing problems that led him to stop modding DCX's entirely.

Hmm, this makes it sound like I was responsible for much of the period from September until now, this is not the case. Paul's DCX arrived from you on 11/20/2008 and was ready to ship on 12/16/2008. I did not ship it until 1/6/2009 at his request.

[Brian Cheney]

Had Paul just waited faster I'm sure there would have been less delay.

I took my time programming the unit and ended up using most of the settings I devised at CES for the live vs recorded demo.  So Paul was right to wait as slowly as he did.

BTW by the last day of CES, after much tweaking of speaker setup, woofer damping, placement, xover slopes and EQ curves,  we were able to reproduce live sound with full fidelity and exact instrument and voice localization, from just one stereo mic in X/Y, two speakers and four subs all in full dipole configuration.  There was no substantial difference between live music and its reproduction, even with fast A/B switching.  That says something about the quality of the V60's, and even more about the quality and flexibility afforded by Mike's mods of the DCX.

[satfrat]

Hey Paul, you wouldn't happen to have any pictures of your setup available, do you? Thanks.


Cheers,
Robin

[tbrooke]

Paul

I'd be interested in more info too. Are you running three amps or two? Are you using the digilog? How do you have it physically set up is everything in a rack with wires going out to the speakers? Do you have it set up so you easily switch back to analog?

Tom Brooke

[PLMONROE]

Hey Paul, you wouldn't happen to have any pictures of your setup available, do you? Thanks.


Cheers,
Robin

Not yet Robin. I will perhaps be able to post some next weekend

Paul

I'd be interested in more info too. Are you running three amps or two? Are you using the digilog? How do you have it physically set up is everything in a rack with wires going out to the speakers? Do you have it set up so you easily switch back to analog?

Tom Brooke

Lets see .... yes I am using the digilog. It is basically a set of jumpers which ties the neos and the FSTs together and allows a single amp to power both. However you still have a portion of the OXO in the circut so you can use the  L pad to balance the neos and FST. The digilog can easily be removed should I ever want to revert to analog but I can tell you now that hell will be ten miles in ice before that happens!  My 211 tube mono SET amps (17 watts each) power the neos and FSTs above 266 hz. A Parasound HCA-3500  SS amp which has been extensively modded by Steve Nugent puts 500 watts into each of the mid bass units from 266 hz down to 20 hz while a Dayton 1000 watt amp powers each of the VLAs . My rack just holds my TT, CD transport, SB3, Ambrosia preamp. etc. The amps are on stands beside the rack with Crystal Clear speaker cables going to the speakers. As an aside you never seem to hear much about these cables yet in my system at least they are nothing short of fantastic.  aa

Paul

[PLMONROE]

Well it did not take much listening to see that both Mike and Scott were dead right about one thing (Fancy That). Turning up preamp gain so that the DCX2496 runs just short of clipping gives far better sound and a much blacker background! On my Ambrosia a setting between -2.5 and -5.0, depending on the recording, is about right.

Paul