[DVV]

DVV,

If you do the correction in the digital domain you don't have the issues you are raising.

George

True George, but I'm not in the digital domain yet. I don't think it's ripe yet, but of course, this is just a matter of time. The way it's developing now, it won't be long.

I'd also like to remind you that the humble turntable and vinyl are just undergoing a revival; some folks think they are still unbeatable for absolute fidelity. Although, in all truth, the prices for that fidelity are far from humble.

Cheers,
DVV

[DVV]

The last one I made I was stupid enough to sell off to a good friend, and now I don't have the time to put together another one. My choice is always the parametric kind; this allows you to adjust, in three bands, the volume, Q factor and turnover frequency of each band. So, you can slide the bass from 20 to 800 Hz, mid from 800 to say 5,000 Hz, and the rest is high.
...

The last one I made was a 4 band parametric using ladder DACs as variable resistors, no pots! Wish I could sell that thing...

steve

Wanna meet some of my friends? They'll take it off your hands, but make sure you count your fingers on the way out.

Seriously though Steve, that sounds really wild! In the positive sense. Using DACs as variable resistors? And for a moment, I though I was the only freak out there ...

Cheers,
DVV

[zybar]

DVV,

I owned a Linn LP12 for almost nine years so I totally understand where you are coming from.

Right now I am on a temporary hiatus from analog, but will get absolutely get back into at some point.

There are a few analog domain tools out there, they just seem to be more expensive.

George

[sonicboom]

G, with a parametric eq all 3 parameters are adjustable, boost/cut, frequency and the width for each band. With a graphic eq, the width and frequency are fixed, though usually there are more bands to play with.

The most significant advantage of a parameteric is if it is a symmetrical Q type that can provide a notching response in cut mode. In other words the shape of the curve is the standard "bell" in boost mode, but in cut mode as the bandwidth is reduced you get a "notch" looking curve as to eliminate the undesired frequency without affecting the surrounding ones.

steve

Steve,
Thanks for your clear and concise explanation.  I sort of had a suspision as to what the parametric eq is, and now I know.

As stated here before: If the deq2496 doesn't do much harm to the signal itself, its overall contribution to the spectral balance of the sound in a real acoustic environment should be tremendous.  And all for less $$$ than what is considered a good set of interconnects these days (not to mention that they happen to be much less efective as a tone control; cause that's exactly what many of us use them for)

[DVV]

On a general level, I note that this discussion, whether one is a proponent of analog or digital, is injecting some good sense into the whole deal.

I refer to the fact that it seems to me more and more people are turning their back on the idiot thesis that less is more at any cost, whereby we dump out the baby with the dirty bath water. It appears people are slowly going back to one or another form of "tone controls", and equlizers, no less, because they realize we do not have linear hearing (as it greatly depends on overall volume, room, speaker acoustics, interfaces, wife nagging intereference, etc).

In all honesty, this is very satisfying for me, because I never abandoned the old fashoned tone controls as the very least resort. True, I always believed in gentle slopes and small, but precisely defined and repeatable steps (fixed resistors in steps of +/-1 dB, to +/- 5 dB max), which is what my ancient ReVox A78 (or was that A76?) integrated amp used to have and got me hooked on.

Cheers,
DVV

[Rob Babcock]

I haven't screwed up the courage yet to try EQ full range.  I'm pretty happy just using parametric EQ on the low pass feeding the subs.  Not that EQ/Room Correction/Speaker Correction can't be done well in the digital domain- I think Tact & Perp Tech have both showed us a glimpse of what's to come.  For me it's been an issue of budget & inertia.  I'm too broke right now to blow a load on a bunch of gear and I'm just plain too lazy to mess with a good thing!  

[DVV]

DVV,

I owned a Linn LP12 for almost nine years so I totally understand where you are coming from.

Right now I am on a temporary hiatus from analog, but will get absolutely get back into at some point.

There are a few analog domain tools out there, they just seem to be more expensive.

George

George, I still own a Philips N4520 open reel deck, purchased in 1981. It's a behemoth weighing in at around 58 lbs, quartz locked, three speeds (3.3/4, 7.5, 15 ips) with top speed with switchable NAB/IEC equalization, true LED peak meters, digital tape readout, external calibration controls, winding speed control, two separate mixable stereo inputs with master control, line overload marghin of 60 dB (no misprint - 1,000:1, a Philips patent), etc, etc. I love that machine dearly and service it myself.

Now, it has been compared to digital recording media ever since digital came along, and while I'll gladly agree that digital has progressed tremendously, I have yet to hear a digital recorder beat that tape deck at 7.5 ips. And it's a four track machine, too.

But God bless digital for DVD movies, if nothing else, and quality digital audio will be along sooner or later.

Cheers,
DVV

[mb]

Bill,

When I get my Ultracurve 2496 later this week, I can test and see how the dac compares to my Electrocompaniet ECD-1.

Although I would love for it to be equal, I have little hope that it will be.

George

Yes, you have little hope

To my ears, the DEQ2496 has a reasonable dac section that sounds like a moderate pro audio dac -- clean, quite fast, clear, but lacking in low-level detail and transparency. It took a lot of work on upgrading the power supply, swapping the surface mount opamps, etc, to get it sounding closer to my CI-A VDA-1 dac (also modded). It will now stand it's own against <$1k cdps and dacs, but to I'm pretty sure it will not threaten your ECD-1.

The a-d section is the one to be wary of. I did not spend a whole lot of time comparing it vs. the digital input, because using digital in instead of the analog input was very clearly more transparent.

IMHO, the mods I put into my DEQ2496 have helped the digital-in / digital out chain sound somewhat cleaner, even though most of the benefit was in the dac section. Have fun when your unit arrives. My DEQ2496 is certainly a permanent fixture in my main listening room.

[RussKon]

it seems that no one here is paying attention to what is happening to most of the high end receivers out there....

pioneer elite, yamaha, and denon offer digital eq on every channel.... you place an included mic (denon charges extra for the mic) in your listening spot and start the calibration..... after about 7 to 8 minutes of tones played through your speakers - the delay, equalization, and level is set for all of your channels....

the top line pioneer unit (59txi) offers nine bands of fixed equalization... the yamaha and denon systems are very similar.... the yamaha also has some parametric bands included...... my pioneer elite 55txi has five bands of fixed eq....

the result is pretty astounding!!!! the soundstage increased in size as well as making the stereo image lock in even on poor recordings..... this auto eq/delay/level system adds absolutely no noise to the signal..... you can bypass it with one push of a button on your remote to compare the direct sound to the processed sound.....

you can also play around with all of the adjustments yourself if you want to and save the settings in two "custom" settings that can be recalled later...

i personally feel that this feature was almost worth the price of my receiver..(just over $1000)... it makes that much improvement....

now i know some of you would never lower yourself to listen to a "mere receiver", but these receivers will outperform many more expensive and "audiophile" separates....



 

[zybar]

MB,

When you use your 2496, did you ever try it between transport and a dac?

If so, what type of cable did you use?  My transport will only output via rca or toslink (not xlr).  The 2496 doesn't accept an rca digital input.

According to the Behringer website, they say you can have a cable which is rca on one end and xlr on the other end - any experience?

Thanks,

George

[mcrespo71]

now i know some of you would never lower yourself to listen to a "mere receiver", but these receivers will outperform many more expensive and "audiophile" separates....

A statement like this would be so much more meaningful if you provided some context to back it up.  I'm not necessarily doubting you, but that's a pretty blanket statement.

Michael

[ryno]

I use a DEQ2496 between a denon DVD player and a CIA DAC with fiber optic cables.  The DAC in the 2496 was about the same quality as the denon. When I added the CIA,  the soundstage opened up and everything became more detailed.
Ryan

[RussKon]

now i know some of you would never lower yourself to listen to a "mere receiver", but these receivers will outperform many more expensive and "audiophile" separates....

A statement like this would be so much more meaningful if you provided some context to back it up.  I'm not necessarily doubting you, but that's a pretty blanket statement.

Michael

i give you a couple of examples.... when i bought my pioneer elite 55txi receiver i was actually shopping for a pre/pro to use with my outboard amps.... at that time (last november), the only pre/pro under $2000 was the outlaw 950..... outdated technology and very hissy with my speakers....

even today there are only a couple of pre/pros in that price range - the sherwood and the rotel..... i have listened to the rotel and i get a much better sound with my pioneer receiver for several hundred dollars less....

not to mention i have a heck of alot more features that enhance the sound... the i-link input for one cable connection of sacd and dvd-audio that provides jitterless signal transfer....USB input for computer music.... the MCACC system (mentioned earlier) does an awesome job of auto eq/room correction.....

example #2....

over on avs forum a member did a direct comparison in his system between a lexicon MC-8 and a pioneer elite vsx-59txi..... i believe the lexicon retails for about $8000 and the pioneer lists at about $3000....

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=404014

the result is that the poster went with the lexicon but it was very very close..... for a processor that cost more than twice as much....

if you read many of the threads out there (esp on avs) you see that the smaller companies that produce pre/pros are having a hard time keeping up with the current technology..... the result is that the large mass market receivers can sound amazingly good!!!! (i realize that there are exceptions to my last statement...)

and many people who are strictly two channel listeners have no clue about what is happening..... this entire thread is about eqs and using them for room correction and it isn't until the bottom of page three that someone mentions what is happening at the forefront of technology!!!!!

and the "mere receiver" comment has come from reading so many posts on this forum that just reek of elitism..... this forum provides a great deal of good information but more than a few posters are full of themselves and their own imagined superiority to the "common" listener......

 

[eico1]

According to the Behringer website, they say you can have a cable which is rca on one end and xlr on the other end - any experience?

most pro gear will accept the lower levels of spdif, but I use Apogee rca-bnc cable with a Canare 75/110 transformer.

steve

[RussKon]

some additional "context" to back up my earlier statements....

the following is a link to 15 pre/pros comparing all of their features and prices....

one of them has an IEEE 1394 (firewire) input...(and it is not enabled as of this date)

none of these units offer any sort of room correction/equalization systems other than a single notch filter for bass freq in one or two of them....

http://www.prillaman.net/950_chart.html

meanwhile, there are at least 3 companies producing receivers that have these features and more....

 

[mb]

MB,

When you use your 2496, did you ever try it between transport and a dac?

If so, what type of cable did you use?  My transport will only output via rca or toslink (not xlr).  The 2496 doesn't accept an rca digital input.

According to the Behringer website, they say you can have a cable which is rca on one end and xlr on the other end - any experience?

Thanks,

George

Hi George,

That's just how I use it -- from cdp S/PDIF to DEQ2496 to CI-A dac or Behringer internal dac to preamp.

The DEQ will accept S/PDIF with an adapter cable (110 ohms to 75 ohms) as shown in the manual, and selecting S/PDIF level digital input instead of AES (higher) level digital signal. Ditto for the output. Cable with DIY'd by a friend who owns an earlier model Behringer.

Ryno's experience with the CI-A dac v. Denon cdp v. DEQ2496's internal dac is very consistent with what I've heard.

PS: it's very important that you analyse your room response with a high resolution software, preferably with MLS (waterfall) analysis as well as frequency response. The built-in RTA on the Behringer will not tell you enough to dial in the correct filters (1/3 octave is too wide, and the s/w does not reflect long decay modes v. speaker or sub lumpiness v. floor reflections, etc).

[Rob Babcock]

There is indeed a staggering amount of horsepower under the hood of a modern receiver, and the economy of scale that a Pioneer or Denon can bring to bear significantly lowers the price.

[Red Dragon Audio]

Hi George,

That's just how I use it -- from cdp S/PDIF to DEQ2496 to CI-A dac or Behringer internal dac to preamp.

The DEQ will accept S/PDIF with an adapter cable (110 ohms to 75 ohms) as shown in the manual, and selecting S/PDIF level digital input instead of AES (higher) level digital signal. Ditto for the output. Cable with DIY'd by a friend who owns an earlier model Behringer.

Ryno's experience with the CI-A dac v. Denon cdp v. DEQ2496's internal dac is very consistent with what I've heard.
 ...

MB:

How do you make this adaptor cable for the AES/EBU to S/PDIF?  If you friend has any instructions or guidelines on how to do it I sure would appreciate it.


And as far as the analysis software goes, where do we find that say for sale on the web?  I assume I will need a special soundcard for that as well; any suggestions?

[zybar]

For the analysis software, try ETF (http://www.etfacoustic.com/).

Yes, this will require a decent soundcard, but it is pretty cheap.

George

[proudx]

how does that software compare to the use of the truerta software?