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After a couple of months of lurking to try and get the benefit of others' experience, I am approaching pulling the trigger but my new listening room (just moved) has some serious issues and my reading has led me to the Behringer DEQ2496.Has anyone done an "all-out mod" on a Behringer DEQ2496 (a la Reference Audio Mods or similar) and gotten fantastic results?
I am particularly interested in mods to the DAC section in order to reduce jitter and/or improve the DAC. Has anyone...
- dropped in an AKM4395 (or something else) in place of the AKM4393?
- put in more DACs? cascaded or otherwise?
- added a superclock?
- added a USB input?
- changed the input wiring to I2S?
- done a DAC to OPT bypassing the other stuff after the DAC?I am thinking that if one could do any or all of that, one would have a pretty good DAC destination for a PC server (one with parametric equalization capability built in).
If there are reasons which make the Behringer DEQ2496 wholly unsuitable to getting very high-quality redbook output no matter what one does, I would love to hear that too.
Follow Ups:
The digital out to external DAC is probably the most hasslefree way to get it done. I was asking because I wanted to avoid an extra box if possible.To Erik, I am worrking on the room already, just wanted the DEQ for fine-tuning.
To Audioengr, could one change the DAC family? And if one put something like a Superclock in the Behringer, would that eliminate/reduce the need for one in the DAC which followed?
I expect to use this in a Mac/iTunes implementation. I am unaware of a DEQ software solution to pair with iTunes (and could replace iTunes if there were another Mac-compatible piece of software which had similar/better functionality). I would gladly use a software solution for DEQ if it worked well, especially if it had the ability to use customized or third-party algos.
"To Audioengr, could one change the DAC family? And if one put something like a Superclock in the Behringer, would that eliminate/reduce the need for one in the DAC which followed?"The DAC will usually NOT have a clock in it unless it is an asynchronous upsampling DAC. Only a very few expensive DAC's have master clocks in them, and they are usually mated to a particular Transport that has clock input.
I beleive this thing has a digital output, doesn't it? If so, there's your best mod. Put an outboard DAC after it. Many to choose from on Audiogon, my favorite are the Musical Fidelity one's for around $500.
Just a note or two of caution.EQs of any sort are not nearly as good as having good room acoustics.
EQs can't fix nulls, and if you have a very irregular response, and try to fix it to flat with an EQ, you'll only fix it in 1 specific location in the room.
For this reason, I always urge people to deal with the room acoustics first, THEN EQ.
Also, EQ's tend to work best in the subwoofer/bass region, where having super high end quality parts and components isn't as critical.
I would respectfully disagree due to practical considerations - the DEQ is $300, and shortly after I got it I gleefully sold off $8k worth of room acoustics treatment that didn't do nearly as much. Primarily ASC tube traps, but also a variety of other things. What's more, I got my living room back - felt like a normal person again. Yeah, maybe if I hook up a specro-graph-ometer or whatever people use to measure nulls, black holes, and audio antimatter I'll find some - but once the DEQ was set to my liking, the rest seemed folly.If you have room acoustics problems you've got a lot of spending to do on room acoustics treatment - and if you're listening room isn't dedicated, it will be by time you're done furnishing it with tube traps, roomlens, pillows, foam, etc.
For digital sources where the DEQ is simply numbers in and slightly different numbers out, for $300 it's a dream come true - turned me from an audio nut in a padded room to a music lover in a nice living room - in a very real way it changed my life. Priceless!
Most audiophiles dont spend the time doing speaker placement, toe-in and placement of the tube traps for optimum dynamics and focus, as well as bass cancellation. This is very time consuming and complicated if there are say two tube traps, a speaker and a subwoofer. Having set-up for 10 or so shows I am experienced at this now and can do it in about 1 hour. The first time it was 4-5 hours of tweaking and an angry wife to deal with.....Tube traps are generally used wrong IMO. Use of them for bass cancellation should be minimal, like one trap. Then two should be used for scattering and located near the speakers. The tuning on these is critical. If they are off by an inch, everything is screwed.
Depends on the problems you are trying to solve, your room, and where the speakers and listening positions are placed.I would suggest RealTraps or GIK Acoustics as much less expensive ways to go than ASC products.
I'm not saying EQ's don't work for some things. I'm just saying they are no cure-all. Fixing a room problem by the indiscriminate use of EQ is folly.
The one place where a "room" problem is well fixed by an EQ is in the bass, and even then, there are limits to how much you can do.
If you are fixing problems in the overall balance of the speakers themselves, this is not a room problem. :) The indiscriminate use of acoustic panels can also be a problem.
Since this IS the PC sound room, I suggest those who are interested follow the link below to some great software for finding out just what is going on.
Regards,
Erik
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Replacing the AKM DAC with another AKM DAC will improve clarity and focus, but they are not very musical IMO. I would stick with the digital out and improve the clock.
and sold it last fall after living with it for about a year or so.I use a Presonus Firepod for onsite, live recordings and it serves as my outboard DAC as well. It does fine for those jobs. Originally, I purchased the DEQ for its room-matching system, found in many of the contemporary 'pro' monitor systems these days.
I was underwhelmed with that particurlar function but found the Real Time display useful while mixing down tracks.
I order to use the Compressor and Limiter functions, the audio streams had to be processed back to analog the run through the DEQ and back to digital - not worth it, IMHO. I use the software-based equivalent functions in Cubase instead.
The parametric equalizer is a bit of a pain to manage the settings with the small window it uses. Call me old-school, but I still like the old sliders in a row if I'm going to manually do equalizing. Otherwise, its back to the DAW's functions.
In the end, then, I really didn't find it that compelling. It does a whole lot of thing that I really don't need.
Hope that helps.
Cheers,
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