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Need DCX2496 Presets for Emerald Physics CS2

I bought a pair of Emerald Physics CS2 speakers with the DCX2496 DSP on the used market not too long ago. This is my first step into finally investing in better hi-fi gear. I finally got the DCX to work after some tinkering and have been really enjoying CS2s for a number of months now.

This past weekend we had a power outage in our neighborhood and the DCX was powered on at the time. I sat down to listen the next day and discovered that two output channels for the low range stopped working. I’m not sure if the power outage is the cause, but it’s a suspect. I have learned after some searching online that these DCX2496 units don’t rank high for reliability.

Anyway, in the process of trying to troubleshoot what is wrong I decided to factory reset the DCX.  For some reason I thought the Emerald Physics presets for the CS2 would not be affected by this.  Alas — I was wrong! Shoot. Now I have a DCX with a couple bad outputs AND missing presets. 
I’m fairly comfortable with troubleshooting and repairing electronics, but I have no idea how to recover the presets which were custom designed for the CS2s.  Is there any resource out there where I can find these presets in order to manually reload them into my DCX2496?  (Any CS2 owners out there who would be willing to write down the settings for the presets?). Did I just unintentionally render my speakers useless?

I would appreciate any help.
lsoasey

Showing 6 responses by lsoasey

lsoasey's avatar
lsoasey OP
6 posts
 
rodman99999 -- That's an interesting idea. Something like this did cross my mind since I was already getting frustrated with the DCX2496's poor analog output stage and its 24-bit/96 kHz limit. (I have some digital sources which exceed this bitrate.) I was fearful, however, that I wouldn't be able to the get DSP recipe sorted out correctly. I'm not sure how much "secret sauce" is embedded in those original presets. If your friend had positive results, then perhaps I should be open to that also.

tweak1 -- Ah...  You must mean Water over at Underwood Hifi? You're absolutely right. I suppose I was assuming that the CS2s were old enough that they wouldn't be supported any longer. There's no harm in reaching out to him. Thanks for the suggestion.
lsoasey's avatar
lsoasey OP
6 posts
 
Update -- I just got off the phone with Water over at Underwood. Not surprisingly, the CS2 and its original DCX2496 are not supported at all anymore. He mentioned some kind of new amp/dsp product in the works, but it's not available yet. In the meantime, he recommended that I take a look at the DBX DriveRack VENU360 or one of the MiniDSP products.  Something with room correction capabilities sounds like a key feature to handle the custom EQing.

I've just started to look at the product pages for these units. Aside from this old and broken DCX2496 that I have now, I have very little experience with DSP/Crossovers and room correction. In addition to the DBX and MiniDSP offerings, are there any other manufacturers/models which I should compare to? I would like to find something with decent audio quality which isn't exorbitantly expensive. (If possible)  Any suggestions beyond the MiniDSP which rodman99999 already pointed to?
lsoasey's avatar
lsoasey OP
6 posts
 
rodman99999 - I’ve decided to give the Minidsp 2x4HD a try.  Do you happen to remember what kind of upgraded power supply your friend used?
lsoasey's avatar
lsoasey OP
6 posts
 
@rodman99999 - Thanks for the pointers. This really helps. I'll start exploring these LSP options.

In the meantime, I've been reading up on what it means to properly EQ the CS2s. This is looking a bit more involved than I originally realized, but I'm up for the challenge. Beyond the crossover settings, it looks like I'll need to deal with individual driver EQ, driver timing, and overall room EQ. I'm a newbie when it comes to REW.  I've downloaded the REW SW and have started experimenting with a Dayton Audio EMM-6 calibrated microphone. I found a couple of tutorials (via Google search) geared towards folks who are doing speaker design and setup. I'm clearly not designing the CS2s, but the EQ/tuning phase of the work appears to be relevant.

My first attempt at trying to EQ a pair of bookshelf speaks in my office ended up sounding worse than no EQ.  :-)  I suppose I have a lot to learn on EQ technique.

Did your friend with the CS2s and miniDSP go through the same process?
lsoasey's avatar
lsoasey OP
6 posts
 
I've got a miniDSP 2x4 HD now and have been playing with a little for the CS2s.  I've managed to correct the mid/high from about 200 Hz up. (Dipole peak and some other minor issues...)  The low end (200 Hz and down) looks crazy to me. I assume there are room effects in my measurements (big peaks and valleys), but the roll-off also appears too early from what I would have expected. I understand that subwoofer EQ boost might be necessary since this is an open baffle design, but I'm really not sure how to tackle this. 

Can anyone say if the forum community here on Audiogon is open to helping me through the process?  I could start a new discussion, for example, and post my measurements as I go.   
lsoasey's avatar
lsoasey OP
6 posts
 
@rodman99999 Thanks for all of your input! I’ll PM you on the side.

I’m using a recently acquired Dayton Audio EMM-6 with a calibration file downloaded from their website. It was fairly easy to get the cal filed loaded up in REW.

I did not pay for the upgrade for Dirac Live. I had assumed (based on some quick reading online) that that the capabilities of REW were adequate in my situation. I could have been wrong -- not sure yet. :-)
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