Is DEQX a game changer?

Will work on more detailed impressions, and getting a mic stand.

With this weather and snow, no hope of getting speakers outside.

Haven't reached out to Drewan77 or Larry until I get better sorted out over here. Just haven't had much time to do that lately.

Yes, many thanks Drewan. That is very very much apreciated. I will likely be in touch after the DEQX arrives. You rule!

Just read Kal's review of the DEQX and a few things stood out.

For those of you concerned about 24/192, it looks like the DEQX downsamples (right word?) it to 24/96. As for the other DAC measurements, looks like there is room for jitter improvement. Might be worth looking into a reclocker like the Wyred4Sound Remedy, or a pricier one.

I was very interested to read that the speaker correction and calibration seemed to make a larger impact than room correction in Kal's set-up. Though Kal also suggested that with more time and effort, better room correction and EQing could be achieved. Of course the smaller impact of room correction could also be because Kal has a well treated room already.

Oddly enough, Kal decided not to rip the crossovers out of his speakers to evaluate the DEQX ability to replace passive crossovers. Huh, go figure. :)

This thread and Kal's review certainly have me intrigued. I came to this looking at DEQX as quite similar to my DSPeaker Dual Core 2.0 as a DSP room correction device, but it seems to offer considerably more than that (Kal I'd be most interested in your thoughts on the DEQX relative to the Dual Core if you'd care to share them). Though I also felt grateful for the ease of interface on the Dual Core, after reading about the steep DEQX learning curve.

From other threads and forums, it also seems that the manual EQing possibilities can potentially change the character of a speaker, allowing home users to tweak the voicing of the speaker. Still hoping to somewhere find a useful tutorial on what bumps and valleys at what points on the frequency spectrum have what impacts on a speaker's sound. But it may be possible to have presets that equate to a more forward or laid back sound, etc. Very intriguing. For example, wonder how much Kal's Brystons could be made to sound like his B&Ws or vice versa by using something like the DEQX.

Thanks for that very informative post on your experiences. Super helpful.

Very curious to hear more about others' use of the analog input into the DEQX. As a vinyl guy, I worry about losing some of that analog magic, though I recognize that the benefit of the speaker and room correction could very well outweigh the possible loss of sound quality that comes from A-D-A conversion.

Ha, I wondered if Al was who you were referring to, Bruce! I've been following this thread for a while and re-read a lot of it to pass the time before my unit arrives. And I recalled Al's interest. In fact, I'd recalled that Al was interested in grabbing one of these, so I figured I'd give him first dibs on this HDP-4 if it didn't work in my system. Least I could do for all the great contributions from the great Almarg!

Yeah Al, the HDP-5's touchscreen looks mighty cool. I was a little surprised that they didn't go with the linear power supply on the HDP-5 though. Just looked at the comparison grid re: the HDP-5, are there any other substantive differences other than touch screen, internet connectivity and power supply that you've been able to find out about?

Well folks, we'll see how the DEQX works out in my room and with my speakers. The speakers (SP Tech Revelations) are too big for my room (will be moving shortly and couldn't turn down on those speakers). So I am really hoping for some real help from the room correction functionality.

Will let y'all know how the HDP-4 works out for me.

DEQX is here! Did an initial set-up quickly using the DEQX wizards. But will probably tweak a bit today. Some of the measurements suggest I might need to get some room treatments behind my listening position, and might benefit from some different speaker placement.

Drewan77, I'll be in touch once I've got this tweaking worked out.

I'll try to get some other impressions up here soon. But first I want to tweak my room a bit and re-run the room correction.

I think that 3 hrs is a totally reasonable amount of time. Though I will say that the learning curve here gets a bit steep once you move past the basic setup via the setup Wizards. Powerful device.

Oh, that DEQX is a beautiful mistress. Was just gobsmacked by how much I was hearing in an Iron and Wine LP I thought I knew so well. And this still with just the set-up wizards.

Did add some GIK panels behind my listening position, and toe'd the speakers in, and brought them closer together.

But looking at the measurement graphs, I think I need to use a real mic stand instead of taping the mic to an old fan. Looks like some artifacts on my plots from measuring that way. Will get a mic stand from a musician buddy shortly.

More tweaking to come. I'll give Drewan77 a holler after my next set of measurements with a proper stand. But already a convert from what I've done already.

Brilliant stuff.

...or you could just make the tweaks via the DEQX.

I can't imagine debugging those new features in the HDP-5 can be much fun.

Yes, was Unsound's comment in the correct thread.

Also, Al did you have a chance to ask about the switching power supply in the HDP-5 vs the linear in the HDP-4?

Yes, was Unsound's comment in the correct thread.

Also, Al did you have a chance to ask about the switching power supply in the HDP-5 vs the linear in the HDP-4?

I will concur with you about Nyal having a great reputation. Whether the SMPS influences the sound relative to the linear supply remains an open Question. And it may well be that the advantages of the other new features and their cost outweighs any degradation that the SMPS could bring.

Bombaywalla,

Excellent discussion of power supplies. Thank you for that!

A new DEQX review:

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue79/deqx_premate.htm

Al,

Did you happen to take a pic of the measurement setup that you can share?

Thanks. I may try using some of the GIK panels to do something similar around the mic and compare that to the measurements without. Unless that seems like a boneheaded idea to some of you folks wiser than I.

Al,

Thanks for your report on your experiences with the HDP-5. I like your step-by-step approach of evaluating the bypass mode in comparision to your previous set-up. I look forward to hearing what differences you hear in bypass mode once you have had a chance to listen and compare for a longer stretch.

Psag, I think that you can adjust the gain on each channel independently in the control panel.

Yes, thanks for the updates Al. In your most recent round of speaker calibrations, where did you cut off in the low frequencies?

And in general, I'm curious what cutoff everyone made in the bass and how you arrived at that frequency...

That it may come down to the quality of the drivers (and enclosure) when DEQX is in the system has also crossed my mind as well. No longer necessary to choose between speaker makers' voicing since DEQX allows you to dial that in yourself.

I'd love to hear other folks POV on the cutoff frequency that worked best for their speaker calibration.

Many thanks for that great explanation and for passing along the recs you have gotten from experts on this matter. One thing I'd like some clarification on:

You say: "In doing that I tried to set the lower frequency limit of the calibration above the frequency at which significant differences started to become apparent in the frequency response plot as I varied the duration of the truncation window."

What did these "significant differences" look like. What should we be keeping an eye out for?

Many thanks as always, Al.

Quite the odyssey Al. Enjoy those new tubes!

And how are you liking the DEQX as a DAC to your headphones, relative to other digital sources you have used with them?

Thanks for that info Al. Very impressive considering how resolving the Star are known to be. Not to mention the removal of any room effects.

Not much progress with my HD-4 of late. Played with the window for speaker correction and moved it to 600Hz from much lower. An improvement, but I haven't had the chance to do the necessary room correction. Family matters came up before I could get to it. I'll report back when I have more done.

Al, 

Somehow I missed this excellent post when originally posted (damn end-of-year push at work I suppose). That's great to hear that you've finally gotten the room correction work done. 

Now that winter is forcing me indoors for longer periods, I'm about to get back on the horse and dial in the DEQX. May go back to the beginning and redo my speaker measurements based on the recommendations you made. Also got some Giant Gliders from Herbies to give me a little decoupling from the floor which should also make moving the speakers around a bit easier. That'll also enable me to dial in my speakers positioning in the room first, before beginning the room correction (as an aside, I wonder if the DEQX makes speaker positioning less crucial than it otherwise is? Within limits of course). 

I'd be very curious to hear about other folks who are using the digital output too, and curious to hear what DACs seem just comparable to DEQX (similar sound or a sideways move), and those that are a big upgrade over the DEQX internal DAC. 

As some of you may have seen, John Darko is doing a multipart review of the DEQX Premate+.

Part 1 (with popular KEF LS50):
http://www.digitalaudioreview.net/2016/06/next-level-kef-ls50-with-the-deqx-premate/

Part 2 (with ELAC B6): 
http://www.digitalaudioreview.net/2016/07/get-a-room-deqx-correcting-the-elac-debut-b6/

One more part (on room correction with LS50) to come. 

I'd asked Darko to comment on the DEQX DAC quality compared to others he's tried or has in house, but he said that it wasn't likely that he'd do that as part of these reviews. He chose to focus on the speaker and room correction functionality. 

Ozzy, I think most users of big speakers like you and me are not doing measurements outside. Even taking indoor measurements, the improvement I heard was pretty drastic

Very interesting discussion there of both using the DEQX for crossover and how DEQX can impact sub placement location options. Good read. 

drewan77, 

Sorry if I missed it, but have you tried DEQX digital out --> external DAC --> preamp (if volume control is needed)? If so, how did that compare to the setup you are currently using ( external DAC =>A/D =>D/A =>out)?