Does anyone know price & year JVC SEA -M770 and M9

I'd say that at least within the confines of purely frequency domain problems with the electronics (from the listening position), EQ is still entirely valid and can be very effective (if designed and executed correctly enough). And it's still at least somewhat useful for colorations from things like volume controls, room effects, speaker cabinets, etc - it's just that you could also make the argument that it's better, or just as well, to deal with those things at the source. OTOH, sometimes doing so is too expensive or otherwise impractical. But, IMHO, NO amount of compression can be "saved" by any EQ, no matter how good its quality. Nothing can save us from that - not even the best expanders. Once it's compressed, that's it, we're screwed. Avoiding those files is the only solution I know and probably the only one there is. Analog EQ's have their advantages and disadvantages, as do digital EQ's. Dunno about the JVC. I recall the Pioneer unit was respected enough in its day. AudioSource made a good sounding unit about that period, but, if I recall, it had one part near the power supply that tended to overheat that made it unreliable. Also consider Audio Control - good quality, when refurbished. If your only sources are digital, consider the Behringer DEQ2496. It is only "upsample ready" and doesn't upsample on its own, but, when used as a digital passthru, it has rather good sound quality and nice EQ flexibility, along with memories. I use (a modded) one along with a Monarchy DIP Combo to help with jitter control (it also enables 96k). Just don't get too caught up with the "trying-to-get-the-response-ruler-flat" crowd that can be out there in the forums, which I find is usually the kiss of death to overall musicality anyway (a smooth response, yes, but not a flat one). To me, just finding what you like with that is usually the best way to go in the long run. Hope this helps.

I have a DEQ2496 that I sometimes use for bad recordings. You can set it up so that it can be switched in and out of the signal path. Any decent music store will have many EQ's to choose from, at all different prices.