Over 40 years in this annoying obsession that masquerades as a hobby and I would decry equalises and the like as tools of the devil. Until. I had a music room built, I upgraded my system to what I wanted. I plugged it all in and disaster, it sounded terrible. I spent two years, hundreds of hours at the local mens shed, built bass traps that half filled the room and spent nights pulling out my hair isolated in the spare bedroom. The bass was uncontrollable. Until. I installed a minidsp between my pre and power amps. Now no bass boom, no walls and doors rattling, no neighbours writing to the council. Does it decay the purity of the signal, would it measure less brilliantly, I don't give a ? it sounds superb, I can at last feel the bass from my 200 watt hybrid tube amp and 2 subwoofers, hear the unbelievable soundstage created by my Audio Physic speakers, hear levels of detail from my CD transport and network bridge, tell the difference when I change the settings on my R2R dac. So technical purity and distortion figures below a bats audible range are great, good music is better.
Go get out your pitchforks, I’ve done a sacrilegious thing. . .
. . . I’ve added an EQ!
A Loki Max to be exact - and so far, I love it!
I believe in the purist approach for the most part, and I have a main system that that’s all about, but this system, this is my fun house system, but my room acoustics are not great in my living room. But that doesn’t mean I want crap sound in it either. The wife won’t let me treat the room, but frankly, that isn’t even the main reason I did it.
The system is basically Klipsch Forte III’s, Balanced Audio VX 3ix pre-amp, ARC balanced V35 tube amp, Bifrost 2 DAC getting sound from a Marantz ND8006 streamer. I put the EQ between the DAC and the preamp.
It’s dead quiet, and I can’t discern the difference in bypass mode either.
I figured it’s was a lot easier, and cheaper, to add this one component and get the exact sound I want versus going through a bunch of cables or changing out other equipment.
Soundstage is great, and there doesn’t paper to be any aberrations, but keep in mind this isn’t the most reveling system, another reason I wasn’t too worried about adding an EQ.
All in all, a good investment and make my music more enjoyable!