Gob-smacked by DEQX

When I entered the DEQX room and experienced a neutral, almost full-range sound, I assumed I was listening to the Gallo Reference speakers. But no—it was the $80 pair of RadioShack PA horns in the room corners that were playing, corrected in the digital domain with the latest DEQX DSP processor, the DEQX Mate. This is an analog in-and-out (XLR and RCA), two-channel processor that goes between the preamp and power amplifier. Bypassing the DEQX Mate resulted in the squawky balance I would have expected from the horns, with no lows or highs. Switching the DEQX Mate back in-circuit gave a sound that was evenly balanced, with good HF extension and enough upper bass to sound convincing. Color me gob-smacked!

COMMENTS
mward's picture

My current reference is NHT's Xd, which (as JA well knows since he measured them) incorporates DEQX tech to handle crossover and equalizaiton functions. For the price, I still think they're pretty amazing... I'm surprised nobody else has really adopted this. 

I have occasionally wondered how much of a downside there is to the extra cycle of A->D->A that occurs in the Xd sstem. I'd be curious how an "almost all digital" chain would sound, with digital inputs, something like NAD's M2 "direct digital" tech to take a digital signal, correct it via DEQX, and then use the corrected signal to directly drive a switching amp. 

skris88's picture

Sure, in the end that last link is analogue (the speakers) so is adding a digital processor in an all-analogue setup all that dreadful? Well, not if the massive benefits outweigh the miniscule (if any!) "faults" of the anything-digital is bad belief (that some analogue-only die-hards stick to).

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