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RE: Behringher UltraDrive DCX 2496 as a compressor

Recently, i found myself back at FOH for a once a month local non profit group jam band. I was in need of a system proccessor and i looked at everything from mild to wild. I ended up buying the DCX2496 as much as it pained me to do so. The DCX just had so much more in terms of flexibility and control then anything else on the market shy of several K. it was the best bang for the buck i could find. and as a Pro A/V designer i have access to almost anything.

The Software for the driverack stuff sucks. sorry but it does. what was the final clencher for me was how many DIY'ers there are out there rolling there own stuff for the DCX. the core of the DCX system isn't bad.

As my situation was a once a month gig. this unit fit the bill quite nicely. Add a wireless serial card to a tablet PC and you can walk the room while making adjustments to the DCX. nice slick setup.


The DCX has 2 compressor sections. Overall compression and frequency selective compression plus a 3rd section for brick wall limiting.

The frequency selective compression is nice for various situations. for example you can add compression to the low end only. this allows open clean clear vocals and yet will tighten up the bottom end a bit without killing the vocal dynamics etc.

Or, lets say you are using the DCX as the main system processor and using the sum feature to send a mono feed out to the lobby where the speakers are of the 8" crappy paging quality type. the freq selective compression can really help bring forward the vocals or speech and help control the dynamics from popping and rattling those poor crappy ancient paging speakers to death.

Or, i also use a DCX as my monitor chain processor. a little trick i play on the singer who can never have the monitors loud enough is to add a little bit of compression across the midrange of his monitor channel at a level where the monitors are loud but within control and 9 times out of 10 during sound check when we get to that level where the compressor starts kicking in, he stops asking me to turn it up and we are a good 6-9 db or more, quieter then where he would normally stop without the compressor. I have since been able to crank it back another 2-3 db or so in small increments and he has never said anything about it! same thing could be done elsewhere int he chain as well im sure. but this way the settings are locked in and repeatable.

Another function of the DCX i like is being able to back up my settings to a card and recall them later when we return to each venue. I really wish that they used a USB stick instead of a PCMCIA card.

The DCX is the one piece of Behringer gear in my system and the one Behringer piece i would buy over again!



Edits: 06/15/08 06/15/08 06/15/08

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