DEQ2496 for mains?

[frodaddy]

I was hoping someone could give me some advice. I've had great results EQ'ing my IB, and now I'm looking at the other 5 channels in my HT. I've taken some measurements with REQW and my ratshack meter and can see there are some improvments to be made. Thomas suggested the DEQ2496 in a previous thread, so I sent on a researching spree about it.

My setup is a basic one with a Toshiba HD-A1 DVD player hooked to a Denon AVR4800 (THX Ultra certified, blah blah) receiver. My center is a Polk CS1000p and my mains and surrounds are Polk RT800s. To integrate the DEQ2496 into this system, here is what I can do:

- The Toshiba will be the DAC and use the Toshiba's 5.1 analog RCA outputs
- Buy one DEQ2496 and use RCA to XLR cables to try EQ'ing the front left and right channels
- Buy XLR to RCA cables to wire my AVR into the chain by using it's external inputs. Use it as my amplifier for my main speakers

I'm worried about degrading the signal by hooking it up like this, though. Would it chain like this? Or does the signal stay analog within the EQ?
- Toshiba: Digital -> Analog
- DEQ2496: Analog -> Digital -> Analog

Anybody have any suggestions or opinions?

[ThomasW]

Some people are reporting that using the DEQ2496 in a digital link between the transport and the DAC provides the best possible performance.

Other than that yes the DEQ is a high quality EQ designed for fullrange use.

[frodaddy]

admin said:

Some people are reporting that using the DEQ2496 in a digital link between the transport and the DAC provides the best possible performance.

Other than that yes the DEQ is a high quality EQ designed for fullrange use.

It has a toslink, but I couldn't find any literature if it decodes Dolby Digital or DTS. I was guessing that since it has L/R in/out, that it only accepts a two channel digital signal. I'm not sure what standard a digital 2 channel signal would be?

[ThomasW]

It's only 2 channel, so it can't do anything with a DD or DTS feed.

[frodaddy]

It doesn't seem very common for people to EQ their mains. Is there a reason why? Does it typically degrade SQ with overprocessing, is it just complicated, or maybe it's too expensive?

I hear about people EQ'ing their subwoofers all the time, so I don't know why more people aren't taking the next step to EQ their mains, too?

[PeterW]

In pursuit of sonic uniformity, my opinion is that the eq'ing of mains is desirable.
Just take pa and sound reinforcment systems as an example. They almost always have a big 18+ band graphic eq for their main channels.
As for home audio, i assume the same idea is valid..

[twisterz]

The graphic EQ's used in many early home stereos were very noisy and usually used to boost lows and highs. EQ's in large PA systems are usually parametric in nature and used to cut the nodes that cause feedback (that high squeal ). Many systems still have a graphic EQ just to smooth out the final sound mix. If you use a digital EQ like the DEQ2496 and use it to cut peaks and stay away from boosting you should be able to greatly improve the overall sound without adversely effecting the sound quality.

[jonfo]

One can get great results with good quality EQ gear and judicial use of the controls.

However, on must have a quality measurement rig to really make best us of these solutions. Just setting 'by ear' is far from accurate.

Using modern speaker processors yields incredible results.

See what my >$100K system does with DriveRacks and, yes, a DCX2496 in the mix. Totally awsome sound I tell ya.

www.martinloganowners.com/~tdacquis/forum/showthread.php?t=543

Follow the threads on the SL3XC build for details on measuring and tuning using speaker processors.

[rlspach]

I have the DEQ2496 - it is great for EQ in the digital domain but I found the DAC's are not that great. I would qualify that my system is extremely high resolution so you may or may not notice this depending on your system's resolution.

My equipment: California Audio Labs CL20 CD/DVD, Anthem AVM20 processor, Sonic Frontiers Line 2 (for stereo), Innersound ESL 300 AMP, Sound Lab electrostats

The DEQ doesn't handle DD/DTS

[htnut]

I have the Denon 2307ci and it has a program to phase, level and eq the speakers based on driving each with a signal and doing a computation. It works very well indeed.