GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Melquiades Amplifier
In the Thread: A sort of DPOLs

Post Subject: My experience with the DEQPosted by scooter on: 1/22/2009

I experimented with a DEQ2496 on and off for about 6 months, and had a love-hate relationship with the unit. I eventually dumped the machine. The unit has a ton of features and in someways makes conceptual sense, in someways does not make practical sense.

Your experience would be interesting to hear about. One thing we will agree with from the start is that the graphics on the machine were designed with the 12-year old customer in mind.

My experience in a nutshell:

* I found the DEQ left a veiled sound in my system. At first I thought the veiling was due to mediocre quality cables, but using the physical circuitry bypass switch on the DEQ led me to believe that the real problem was the DEQ circuitry

* I tried using the DEQ purely as a DAC for my CD transport and felt the DAC was disappointing, even for a $300 unit. That made me wonder about the digital processing for the EQ functions

* Some argue that using EQ for room correction is futile for scientific reasons but you will come to your own conclusions there

* There is no question that the RTA for sub 100hz frequencies helped me integrate a subwoofer via placement and volume (for a given listening position). It was a valuable and fun experience to see what I was hearing. The system sounded awful with a flat EQ curve and there are all types of house curves discussed on line. Romy has some comments of interest on this site as well. The DEQ did not seem to veil the sound of my sub although I am sure the added processing knocked the sub out of phase but that can be dealt with

* A lot of people argue that using EQ for higher frequencies is a fool's game. With my good mains (which have a huge "sweet spot") the RTA was worthless. For some reason, with a pair of mediocre mains (which have a 6" sweet spot and are a bit colored), I thought the RTA did an impressive job of opening the soundstage, improving imaging, etc. as long as I sat in exactly the same spot the microphone was placed. I don't understand why the sound improved with one set of speakers but it is what it is

* I had fun using the PEQ to compensate for some of the mixing work done by deaf recording engineers

* The dynamic EQ function is a blast! At low volumes, human hearing is inefficient so certain low frequencies need to be boosted as volume is decreased. Check out Fig 3 in US Patent 7171010 for an interesting graph of how a modern curve might look. You can easily program that into your DEQ and you will note how much better your system sounds at low volumes; the difference was huge. I really miss that feature!

* I found understanding the impact of sound over the time dimension to be a worthwhile exercise, especially if you are considering using EQ at the lower frequencies. You can not do that with your DEQ but you can use your Behringer mic + software available for free on the internet to see that third dimension. It will help with speaker placement; you can determine the impact of EQ and acoustic treatments on decaying sound over time

Good luck

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