I bought my DEQX PreMate+ back in December 2017,
and finally got it calibrated on Thursday so I’m now utilizing its digital
crossover and room correction functions. Here is a rundown of the setup process, and my impressions. After living with the DEQX as just a
DAC-pre for over four months, I can say I’m quite pleased with how the DSP
has improved the sound (more on that later).
I was too intimidated by the calibration software to attempt it myself so I
booked a session with a reputable “DEQXpert” aka dealer, named Larry Owens,
based in Colorado. It took about 3.5 hours from start to finish. While it took
longer than the 2-3 hours he estimated, I was quite impressed with Larry’s
knowledge and adeptness with the software.
I expected that we’d start by taking near field anechoic measurements of the
speakers, but my DEQXpert, Larry Owens felt that might not be necessary. We
started by placing the mic at the listening position and based on the
measurements, he felt that would be sufficient for us to implement a crossover
for the sub/mains and correct the in-room response. I’m not sure exactly why we
skipped the near field measurements because much has been made about that
element to distinguish DEQX from other room correction products that don’t do
speaker correction. I can say that if we’d done those measurements, it probably
would have taken twice as long.
Before ever seeing any measurements, I expected a few things: (1) that my
subwoofer was set a bit louder than the speakers, (2) that I had some
nonlinearities in the bass, particularly due to some dips below 80 hertz, (3)
that my left channel near the wall was less accurate due to boundary effect,
and (4) that the high frequencies were slightly emphasized in-room. Turns out
all of that was true except for the fourth point. The highs were fairly well
behaved already.
The speakers (mostly left channel) had a dip around 60-70hz and the sub had a
dip around 80-90 hz so by setting a digital crossover at 78hz, voila, both dips
were avoided! From there, Larry made a bunch of very precise corrections in
both the timing and frequency domain that made things look progressively more
beautiful as he went along.
With just a couple hours of listening under my belt, I can say the system's
frequency response is noticeably flatter. The sound is more precise; less
vague. The bass is less room shaking than before simply because it was set too
high, but now it’s definitely tighter and more articulate. It makes it easier
to follow a bass guitar line and distinguish pitch (less monotone bass). I also
feel like the bass in more consistent throughout my room, which I didn’t expect
and can’t quite explain.
My stereo presentation is also noticeably
improved after Larry corrected each speaker to more closely match each other.
Before the calibration, I perceived my Revel F208 tweeters as a bit too bright
so I used the switch on the speakers to turn them down .5-1dB. Larry pointed to
a slight peak at a narrow but critical region in the upper mid treble that he
suspected might be the culprit. He used parametric eq to flatten that out and I
think that solved it. Much better to address that one narrow problem than turn
down everything above 3k with that tweeter knob on the speakers. The highs
sound more accurate now. Not too prominent nor too recessed.
I will live with this for a while and report back to Larry if any additional
tweaking is needed. He’s been a joy to work with.
