I have had my Rane in the closet, until recently when another poster on another thread mentioned he replaced his Rane eq after his dac, to drive the power amp, instead of his very expensive line stage preamp, with excellent results. So, I pulled mine out to give it a try ( the eq, lol ). I went passive about 6 months ago, because I did not need a line stage. Long story short. The Rane eq is pretty fabulous. I did modify my Rane ( extensively dampened the chassis, circuit board and power supply transformer, as I do to most things ), which helped quite a bit. I am currently running my dac into my passive unit, running into the Rane, and into the power amp. Based on the bypass capability of the Rane, with all of the controls set to flat, it is damn close ! I caution anyone to try this going from a dac into the eq into the amp, without another volume control before the eq, because when you bypass the eq, you will get full output into the amp from your source. This is the best test to see how good an eq is. I am not sure I will continue using the Rane, because I am not needing eq for my room, or, my recordings, but I am amazed at how clean the unit is. Enjoy ! MrD.
