DEQX Owners Thread

[Tweaky]

Well you can use as many C.A.D. software programs as you like

Try this .

http://www.deqx.com/buy-DEQX.html

Should work out at arround OZ:4K for the lot.

Depends what your cabinet making skills are.

A HEADS UP

http://www.madisound.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi...id=2760709.5578

For WOFFERS.

THE BIG UP'S Tweeter wise....hold your breath...

http://www.soniccraft.com/Drivers/Accuton/d206.htm

Other ALMOST: Diamond worth

http://www.soniccraft.com/Drivers/Accuton/d206.htm

Iv'e just given you the drivers for most,if not all of the AVALON range of speakers.

How are you skills at copying?

Getting the crossover right would be a Bugg%% .

[Daemon]

I thought the DEQX gear came it at around 5k aus, and from what I understand, it takes away the problem of getting the crossovers right altogether, as it calculates and implements crossover for you, then allows you to tweak, as long as you're prepared to run a monoblock per driver (not as awefully expensive as it used to be with the price of some of the quite good class D monoblocks, and kit monoblocks). Got to be better than the active box in a Bose 901 set up :wink:

[MR BMW]

Very good piece of equipment !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Also does room correction if needed :biggrin:

[Tweaky]

I thought the DEQX gear came it at around 5k aus, and from what I understand, it takes away the problem of getting the crossovers right altogether, as it calculates and implements crossover for you, then allows you to tweak, as long as you're prepared to run a monoblock per driver (not as awefully expensive as it used to be with the price of some of the quite good class D monoblocks, and kit monoblocks). Got to be better than the active box in a Bose 901 set up :wink:

[/b]

It might be that price.my quote was from the RRP US price from the contact us part of their website.Various options,if you search through that link,offer better applications/upgrades of the Preamp/software/microphone.

I might cycle down to their place and do some serious questioning as they are only a few K/s from me downhill.

As for doing away with the crossovers completly,yes it can.

But if you would want to use serious drivers,well you would want to have sorted it out so that all the drivers you were using were being applied well within their operating parameters [well before their breakup modes at the first and second harmonic level] at a cabinet level.

[Great -Purpoursly Designed- cabinets are not to be dismissed,you need to get rid of standing waves]

Have a look at the AVALON website.

http://www.avalonacoustics.com/twochannel.html

Read up on their practise and the HI FI News Martin Colloms review of the original EDILON.

All available at the above .

I'm pretty sure his later review of the Diamond version of this speaker is available to read as well.

Also well worth reading is the interview with HIFI+ with Neil Patel.the head honco behind Avalon,also available to read at this site.

It would apper AVALONS mode of opperation is to select spercific drivers.that are true at spercific frequencies,and these drivers are not to be asked to reproduce anything remotley near their frequency breakup point.

Great design as a forthought is infinatlly better than digital compansation as a need be IMHO.

Anyway have a read at thier site,all will be revealed!....A bloody good read IMHO.

[Daemon]

Running all the drivers exactly so, within their optimal or most linear range, is what the DEQX is all about. Having one and not using it for the cross over would be an own goal and to make it easy, the real frequency response of each driver as mounted in the cabinet is measured with graphical presentation of the actual output curves, then crossover points and slopes can be adjusted graphically or mathematically, as well as phase and time alignment adjustment if required. Really all you need is the manufuacturers specs on the drivers and the competence to design the cabinet I'd think. Well a fair amount of cash too. There's a reasonable review of it on the Six Moons site. I think the only trade off would be the potential for D to A and A to D mischief, but by all accounts they're well implemented (far better than say TacT). And too, I speculate that you'd end up with less overall distortion and wickedness than is likely from a traditional inductors and caps crossover, even a good one. THe potential to do room correction is just icing, and you can ignore it if it offends you.

What sort of money do those Avalon speakers go for? I tried to find a price on the net but the few sites that list them are very cagey about the dollars; lots of "contact us for price" on sites where everything else is marked. Suggests extremely scarry money.

[Tweaky]

Running all the drivers exactly so, within their optimal or most linear range, is what the DEQX is all about. Having one and not using it for the cross over would be an own goal and to make it easy, the real frequency response of each driver as mounted in the cabinet is measured with graphical presentation of the actual output curves, then crossover points and slopes can be adjusted graphically or mathematically, as well as phase and time alignment adjustment if required. Really all you need is the manufuacturers specs on the drivers and the competence to design the cabinet I'd think. Well a fair amount of cash too. There's a reasonable review of it on the Six Moons site. I think the only trade off would be the potential for D to A and A to D mischief, but by all accounts they're well implemented (far better than say TacT). And too, I speculate that you'd end up with less overall distortion and wickedness than is likely from a traditional inductors and caps crossover, even a good one. THe potential to do room correction is just icing, and you can ignore it if it offends you.

What sort of money do those Avalon speakers go for? I tried to find a price on the net but the few sites that list them are very cagey about the dollars; lots of "contact us for price" on sites where everything else is marked. Suggests extremely scarry money

[/quoteThe Avalon [standard] goes for pounds sterlin 33K,the Diamond version add 10K.

If you have bothered to read the Colloms review ,well you would understand what has actually gone into the design processs.

High tech stuff,don't dismisss.

[Daemon]

Tweaky, for that sort of money, I'm not going to dismiss them and their research, I'm going to pretend they don't even exist. Perhaps then I won't feel quite so bad that I can't have some. Don't exist, not there, don't exist, not there... Not working yet, aargh.

[Tweaky]

I did a search to see if anybody was game enough to tackle the needed cabinet building skills required to build an AVALON 'clone'.

Sure enough these belguim guys have done it,bloody good job they have done as well by the looks.

Here's a link.

http://homepage.mac.com/marc.heijligers/au...ones/index.html

Here's a link to a clone of the WILSON watt/puppy...otherwise known as system 7.

http://www.users.nac.net/markowitzgd/david/david.htm

Apparently you can STILL source the Focal drivers from the USA,not so here.

[56oval]

I think Pat at WAR AUDIO uses the DEXQ

[Tweaky]

I think Pat at WAR AUDIO uses the DEXQ

[/b]

Yes.apparently he is the W.A distributor of DEXQ.

What I would love to see is the "Project Austral" DEXQ version,that would be very interesting.

But as I see it,it would require two of the DEXQ units to run it in it's current guise.

[Gav]

Dose any one here own a DEQX 2.6 Pre version ??

I take it this unit takes over from your existing Pre thus making it redundant, I geuse that would make you think well is at as good as the Pre one has allready.

It also has a DAC, the same ?? arises is it better than the DAC in my Droplet ??

The whole idea of the product sounds like groundbraking stuff.

[terry j]

hi all

Have a little idea on some of these questions. Been on the fringes of speaker design and manufacture for a couple of years now, some quite good speakers and some quite bad.

" Really all you need is the manufuacturers specs on the drivers and the competence to design the cabinet I'd think."

The bad ones I've experienced came about because he just accepted the manufacturers data. Guess it's in their interest to gild the lily so to speak. Rule no1, always test the drivers yourself. Theres a whole bunch of standard tests to gain driver parameters, Andrew could probably enlighten anyone who wanted more data on that. It is the results of those tests that lead directly to cabinet design ie volumes for bass (sealed, vented,bandpass,transmission line and for all I know many others), midrange cavity etc etc. Using incorrect parameters give us under or over damped boxes and so on.

" Here's a link to a clone of the WILSON watt/puppy...otherwise known as system 7.

http://www.users.nac.net/markowitzgd/david/david.htm

Apparently you can STILL source the Focal drivers from the USA,not so here."

Pat from War still supplies Focals, maybe not the ones on the link but focals nonetheless. I must admit I haven't heard the WW Puppy but I have heard the WW Grand Slamms (?) and the Sophias. And what a bloody dissappointment they were too, the Sophias especially were underwhelming. Makes me wonder why anybody would want to clone them. Just their vastly overinflated reputation I suppose.

And Pat does sell the DEQX, quoted me a figure of $5k.

I don't use a DEQX but have a Behringer that does exactly the same sort of thing but at a tenth of the price. Is it as good as the DEQX? I doubt it, but by crikey for what it does it is astonishing and the other unit would have to do something pretty special to justify the extra dollars.

Seeing these type of devices in operation is a pretty amazing thing. The test signal is fed into the system and obviously analyzed for frequency response and is adjusted in real time by the turn of a knob. Basically everything is adjustable- xover points, (low pass, bandpass,hipass), filter type ( butterworth, linkwitz-riley, besserwhatever), driver eq(increase decrease) etc etc etc.

It gets even lovelier, imagine placing the test microphone in your listening sweet spot in front of your speakers in your listening room and then the network gets adjusted to flat response. Hey magico presto. Will wilson Watt or JM Labs do that for you ? OK I have heard that Mr Wilson will come and tweek your system for you ( and for that price so he bloody should) but it won't be a new network, just tweaks.

Gav, I hope this will answer your question ( I'm not sure I fully get it) . I use cd only which signal bypasses any onboard dac and goes via optical or coax out straight into the processor and gets manipulated in the digital domain then goes thru the six dacs out to the power amps. Currently I control volume with the cd player remote (the behringer actually has no volume control of its own). I'm sure the DEQX has better dacs

and this is where an improvement could be found. There is also an analog input which goes thru the onboard adc then gets manipulated just as the digital signal does and then out it goes. Either way there is no need for preamps as such. Not having a volume control (bugger) would however mean that a turntable would go into a phono stage then into a preamp then from pre out into the processor and then we would have volume control, maybe the DEQX could have the phono stage plugged straight into it.

"What I would love to see is the "Project Austral" DEXQ version,that would be very interesting.

But as I see it,it would require two of the DEXQ units to run it in it's current guise."

Yes I have already thought of taking the processor down and seeing what Andrew could do, why two of them? Is it a 4 way? Thats an awful lot of passive network happening.

All in all this sort of setup really has its advantages, but do bear in mind the extra amplification needed, but that is offset to some degree in not neccesarily needing a preamp.

terry

[obiwan]

I have a DEQX 2.6P on order. There is a delay on it, but new expected delivery date is mid August. Looking forward to it very muchly, other than the fact I think I'm going to find it a bit overwhelming to set up initially.

[terry j]

wow read the review. Can see why they are so expensive, that masters degree that comes with the device must take out a lot of the profit!

By your local time I see your'e in NZ? If thats true 1. I can't hear it till I visit my wifes relatives bugger 2 How much is it ? Is it the one thats been quoted around $4-5 k?

It mentions a mic used for the analysis, does that come with it or do thay assume anyone buying this stuff would have their own analysis gear?

What are you running , is there anything specific you're trying to handle and what improvements would you expect.

This does not seem to be the kind of purchase one would try out 'just to see' or is it, or have you heart it's benefits somewhere else?

Quite interested cause it could be an upgrade to my system one day.

thanks,

terry

[Guest alebonau]

havent used one of these dqx things but wonder at $4-5k the value. if jsut room eq for dummies is what you want velo has the sms that goes for $1500 which I'm sure you twist arms and get for around a $1k also theres the gaggle of behringer gear that does all sorts all in the hundreds of dollars a pop. $5k buys soem really nice gear. think of hte nice source or amp or pair of speakers you can get for that ? having said all that CAV are running the legend flagship big red appears with a deqx something..

http://www.carltonaudiovisual.com.au/?q=node/view/752

might be worth someone having a listen if wanting to knwo what its like.

[obiwan]

I already have a Velodyne DD15 sub with its on board equalising system, but I feel the DEQX is going to give me a lot more control. I want to filter a lot more bass out of my main speakers, more the 6dB per octave that the Velodyne does.

[Gav]

hi all

And Pat does sell the DEQX, quoted me a figure of $5k.

I don't use a DEQX but have a Behringer that does exactly the same sort of thing but at a tenth of the price. Is it as good as the DEQX? I doubt it, but by crikey for what it does it is astonishing and the other unit would have to do something pretty special to justify the extra dollars.

Seeing these type of devices in operation is a pretty amazing thing. The test signal is fed into the system and obviously analyzed for frequency response and is adjusted in real time by the turn of a knob. Basically everything is adjustable- xover points, (low pass, bandpass,hipass), filter type ( butterworth, linkwitz-riley, besserwhatever), driver eq(increase decrease) etc etc etc.

It gets even lovelier, imagine placing the test microphone in your listening sweet spot in front of your speakers in your listening room and then the network gets adjusted to flat response. Hey magico presto. Will wilson Watt or JM Labs do that for you ? OK I have heard that Mr Wilson will come and tweek your system for you ( and for that price so he bloody should) but it won't be a new network, just tweaks.

Gav, I hope this will answer your question ( I'm not sure I fully get it) . I use cd only which signal bypasses any onboard dac and goes via optical or coax out straight into the processor and gets manipulated in the digital domain then goes thru the six dacs out to the power amps. Currently I control volume with the cd player remote (the behringer actually has no volume control of its own). I'm sure the DEQX has better dacs

and this is where an improvement could be found. There is also an analog input which goes thru the onboard adc then gets manipulated just as the digital signal does and then out it goes. Either way there is no need for preamps as such. Not having a volume control (bugger) would however mean that a turntable would go into a phono stage then into a preamp then from pre out into the processor and then we would have volume control, maybe the DEQX could have the phono stage plugged straight into it.

"What I would love to see is the "Project Austral" DEXQ version,that would be very interesting.

But as I see it,it would require two of the DEXQ units to run it in it's current guise."

Yes I have already thought of taking the processor down and seeing what Andrew could do, why two of them? Is it a 4 way? Thats an awful lot of passive network happening.

All in all this sort of setup really has its advantages, but do bear in mind the extra amplification needed, but that is offset to some degree in not neccesarily needing a preamp.

terry

[/b]

Thanks very much for your input , a very informative read :angry:

[Gav]

I have a DEQX 2.6P on order. There is a delay on it, but new expected delivery date is mid August. Looking forward to it very muchly, other than the fact I think I'm going to find it a bit overwhelming to set up initially.

[/b]

Can I ask are you going to use it to replace your existing PreAmp ?

Can you bypass the onboard DAC ( DEQX) if you want to ?

Can I ask how much you payed for it & who you are getting it from if a good price :angry:

I must admit it is very tempting but is hard to justify spending that sort of money with out being able to Demo one at home first.

I called in to DEQX head office in Brookvale Sydney it was only a small office with 3 guys in there, some how I was expecting a rather large place where they built the things , they acctually seemed surprised that somebody local even new what they did there, any way they were very welcoming even though they could not give me alot of information as the guy said this is not a sales office, and to be honest I didnt even think of asking them what they did do there, the guy showed me one with ( DEQX 2.6P) the lid of and there is so little in the box it makes you wonder what you are paying for.

[obiwan]

Can I ask are you going to use it to replace your existing PreAmp ?

Can you bypass the onboard DAC ( DEQX) if you want to ?

Can I ask how much you payed for it & who you are getting it from if a good price :angry:

I must admit it is very tempting but is hard to justify spending that sort of money with out being able to Demo one at home first.

I called in to DEQX head office in Brookvale Sydney it was only a small office with 3 guys in there, some how I was expecting a rather large place where they built the things , they acctually seemed surprised that somebody local even new what they did there, any way they were very welcoming even though they could not give me alot of information as the guy said this is not a sales office, and to be honest I didnt even think of asking them what they did do there, the guy showed me one with ( DEQX 2.6P) the lid of and there is so little in the box it makes you wonder what you are paying for.

[/b]

Yep, the DEQX will be replacing my exisiting preamp.

As I understand it everything goes through its DAC. So using the analogue inputs means everything goes through an analogue to digital and then digital to analogue conversion. So yes, using the digital input apparently is significantly more transparent, but I have heard it using the analogue inputs and it was still very impressive. In fact it was possibly some of the best sound I've heard other than live. Though how much of that was DEQX and how much of that was his DIY speaker system, amps, expensiive cabling and a totally dedicated treated room with zero WAF, I don't know. It was at a Brisbane Audio Club meeting. There were absolutely no cabinet colourations as there were no cabinets. The speaker drivers were somehow suspended on string down from a beam on the ceiling. But amazing sound.

I ordered it through DEQX directly and paid virtually the list price. I believe anyone who orders one now will be waiting a few months to have it made up. I don't think the list price is that dear for what it does. If you tried to buy a preamp, an outboard DAC, an active crossover (is there any other that doesn't cause phase changes anyway?)and some form of equaliser separately it would soon add up to or surpass the $5000 asking price for the DEQX, and that's not even taking into account the room correction and speaker correction and the software.

It would be nicer if it had more inputs. I'll use the digital input for CD's and I'll use a passive preamp that I have and plug that into the analogue input. The passive will just be set to full volume (unity gain) and it will have 3 or 4 sources going into that (turntable, L and R front home theatre channels of my processor, tuner).

[terry j]

dear obiwan,

you probably don't know it yet but you've made a new friend.. lucky you!

It seems an expensive 'experiment' here, you must be sure of your doing. Please give an overview of what you trying to achieve, room correction for example. Are you going to patch it in to your existing speakers and try and replicate the passive network actively or what? If you are all power to you! You can see I've got an active (pun intended) interest in these questions.

What is your current system its going in ? Have no more spacific questions, just give us a snapshot of 'why' you're going down this road along with your address and preferred visiting hours!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for your response Gav, if I was the type of person to do so I'd put a contented,happy smiley face here but I'm not so I won't.

lots of love,

terry.

[terry j]

just thought of another thing Gav,

you asked if the DAC would be better than the one in your droplet.

First of all I don't have a DEQX but a Behringer 'equivalent', and it is probably fairly described as entry level (especially compared to the DEQX). It packs a lot of processing power into the box, and is only about a tenth the price of the DEQX. It has six outputs, each with a D/A converter. My gut feeling then is that the quality of these dacs would not be as high as yours. I'm going out on a limb here as I don't actually KNOW, but I would feel that with a one to one comparison of the dacs between yours and the DEQX yours would be superior. Someone can correct me on this if they actually know something rather than my assumptions.

Having said that, the advantages offered (and I'll only stick to using the Behringer as a subject, with the assumption that the DEQX being a more sophisticated device will give an even more superioir result-hopefully!) by this type of component as a package FAR outweigh any disadvantages of having lesser DACS. This may not hold true in actuality but at least will be illustrative, lets say the dacs are 30% less good (tortured english there), but as that's split over three channels the impact is lessened, whilst gaining all the advantages of ridding the speakers of passive networks, time aligning with the flick of a dial, and by the way don't worry about phase changes, just dial in what you want. Of course the sonic benefits of tri-wiring have always been argued and debated, yet tri-amping has always been acknowledged to bring sonic benefits. These devices end up being in a bi or tri-amped system inevitably and is another benefit to the 'package'.

You've still gotta know what you're doing tho, I reckon the 200 page manual supplied with the DEQX is only useful to an already 'educated' person-ie it won't turn a complete novice in speaker design such as myself into a speaker designer, it would presuppose a competent and workable knowledge in the field.

thats enough blithering for one night

lots of love

terry

[obiwan]

A new friend, cool. Wonder who it is?

Its not that expensive in the end as I have a friend who's going to take whatever gear loses in the showdown that will happen when it arrives.

Where am I coming from. OK, I'll leave home theatre out of the discussion to make it simple. For my main speakers, about 3 years ago I bought Dynaudio Special 25's. Their forward upper midrange (once home) annoyed me and its been quite a journey to get them right. The result is I now have a Bel Canto eVo2i integrated which now is being used as a preamp only, a Rotel Michi power amp, a Velodyne DD15 sub now, and I also now have a pair of Dynaudio Contour s5.4's which I got in to replace the Special 25's. But I'm now back to using the S25's mainly.

When the DEQX arrives I'll sell the Bel Canto and the loser out of the S25's and the S5.4's to my friend.

The Velodyne software showed how my room really sucks out the 80 to 100 Hz region. Even the velodyne equaliser has a hard time trying to fill in that hole, although after playing around with speaker and sub position its now pretty good. Only thing is it doesn't solve the upper mid range glare (only mild) where as the DEQX should do this pretty well. Also I'll be able to much more steeply filter bass out of the Dyns than the 6dB per octave the hi-pass filter on the Velodyne does. Then my choice is do I also then bypass the S25's crossover and let the DEQX do its full magic.

But the other thing up my sleeve is that I could bypass the crossover in the floorstanding 3 way S5.4's with the DEQX and not even bother with the sub.

So many options, but I suspect I'll end up with the S25's and Velodyne sub option, +/- biamping the S25's with the DEQX.

By the way Terry, where are you? I'm Brisbane. Even though I thought i just changed the time setting on this site under my settings, it still shows its 11 in the morning instead of 9 at night.

[Gav]

I ordered it through DEQX directly and paid virtually the list price.

[/b]

If im being to nosey ( tell me where to go :angry: )

How did you manage to buy direct from DEQX at list price what ever that may be??

I find this particular subject facinating as it ( DEQX ) can make more differance to the sound in your room than any other singular Item.

And even though it is way out of my budget I am very temted to indulge in this Item.

[obiwan]

If im being to nosey ( tell me where to go :angry: )

How did you manage to buy direct from DEQX at list price what ever that may be??

I find this particular subject facinating as it ( DEQX ) can make more differance to the sound in your room than any other singular Item.

And even though it is way out of my budget I am very temted to indulge in this Item.

[/b]

By list price, I meant full retail list price, not wholesale. The list price is $4990 or so for the basic preamp configuration. If you want digital outputs, or balanced outputs, or a fancier microphone etc, the price keeps going up. There are no dealers in Brisbane, so I guess that's why they were able to spply me directly.

[terry j]

hi guys

Obiwan, thanks for the data. Sounds like you're serious here. Don't know the exact models your talking about but have heard some nice stuff done with Dynaudio drivers.

Oh yeah, I'm your new friend! Must admit though, feeling slightly less friendly when you're that far away in Brisbane !! Ever heard of fair weather friends ? I think I managed to get Bathurst NSW up in my name tag somewhere, so that answers where I am.

Please keep me (us) posted on how it goes, it's of real interest to me. Have had a lot of success with my el cheapo Behringer in doing much the same job.

Gav, if you're interested in this area you are more than welcome, as a first step perhaps, in coming out and having a listen to mine. Obviously it won't be the same as on your system in your house, but a look and see of how it works or does'nt as the case may be may help you decide whether it's worth pursuing further in your own setup.

You may even find that even though the DEQX is way out of your budget that the Behringer could slot nicely in instead !

lots of love,

terry