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Old news, but an amazing $300 dollar "tweak" to make a good system great.

Posted by aljordan (A) on June 11, 2006 at 18:43:00

I have been fooling around over the past few months off and on trying to use my computer for digital room correction under the linux operating system. While fun, the results I was getting were not that great - I was able to acheive more transparency but it came with a flattening of dynamics and strange tonal colorings. The other day I was fed up with my lack of success and went over to Guitar Center and picked up a Behringer DEQ2496 for $299.00. Every other component in my system costs 10 times the price unless I have made the component myself.

First, I fed my cd player's digital IO into the DEQ via the optical connector (with a really cheap cable), and hooked the DEQ up to my preamp with more really cheap cables (XLR to RCA) that I bought at Guitar Center. I turned the DEQ on and received a nice message... "Fatal Error. Reset Device." Okay, so maybe the quality control isn't very good, but I have a pair of interconnects that cost more so I wasn't expecting much. Unhooked the DEQ and drove back to Guitar Center to return it. That, of course, was the only new one they had in stock so they pulled the demo out of the rack and I drove back home.

Hooked the demo up, turned it on (it worked, woohoo!), bypassed all processing on the unit and compaired the dac to my present CD player's on board dac. Not bad at first glance!

I hooked up my RTA mic to my laptop and checked to see how well the pink noise signal of the DEQ was correlating to the sine sweep that I normally use to test room response. It was pretty close, so I played the pink noise through the speakers/subs and measured it on the laptop while fooling around with the parametric eq of the DEQ. Using the parametric eq only to dial out heavy peaks, I had a pretty good measured response at the listening position within ten minutes (I had read the manual on the internet before buying the unit). I shut off the pink noise and listened to music.

Here in ten or so minutes I had acheived the type of result I had been trying for with the computer for the past few months. I have about 12 grand invested my system, and this three hundred dollar device seems to be about as effective as throwing another five grand into speakers. The difference that a little very well controlled subtractively applied eq can make is astounding. I feel like I haven't really begun to play with the unit and already the soundstage of my system has opened up nicely, as well a substantial increase in perceived bass depth from getting rid of of the major bloat at 40hz and more minor peaks elsewhere. Instument tonality, detail and presence has become much more apparent after the subtractive eq.

While the DEQ is not an easy unit to configure compared to most stereo equipment, it is a walk in the park compared to Brutefir and DRC running on linux. To really effectively use the unit, it is nice to have a detailed visual representation of your room's frequency response. The DEQ has built in capabilities to do this, but I find a good reasonably priced software package like TrueRTA to give a better representation of the room.

I am looking forward to seeing the further improvements that the DEQ can make when I have some time to play with it more.

Alan

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