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The Amazing 2496
I felt a need to get into equalization of my audio system because I will be
getting my new experimental speakers in a couple of weeks and to see just what a little EQ can do. I turned to the Behringer company because of good prices and choices. Started out with the FBQ6200, which is a large 31 band on two rows of sliders, strictly manual mechanical solution where you have to adjust each band after taking an RTA reading from some other piece of equipment. In my case it was a CD from Bruel & Kjaer that had a track of 31 bands of pink noise. Take a reading of the level at each band, write it down, graph it, adjust sliders as required. Then another newsgroup alerted me to the Behringer DEQ2496, a digital RTA/Equalizer that you wouldn't believe possible for such a price - $300 sometimes discounted to $250 or so. I knew about the advantages of parametric over graphic EQ, but graphic is so much more understandable and straightforward. Well, this thing has graphic, parametric, a combination of both, and something they call Dynamic EQ. There are pages of menus, a little screen on which you set sliders electronically with buttons and knobs, and inputs and outputs for XLR, Phone jacks, Midi, two kinds of digital I/O, and optical. It has 64 memories for the EQ of various pieces for various situations. This is important because if you want to EQ another set of speakers you don't want to have to take a picture of the old EQ so you can go back to it again manually. You want to just press a button and you will be back on your A speakers. But wait - that's not all. The thing has a mike input with an RTA (Real Time Analyzer) function with pink noise generator. You can take a reading on the pink noise and see where you want to go with your EQ, but (natch) that is not necessary with this unit because it also has automatic EQ with the ability to shunt out certain frequency ranges that you do not want to subject to auto EQ. But that's not all either. You don't necessarily want flat response at the listening position, you want some sort of "room curve" with a humped low end and a gradually rolled off high end. Or maybe even something else. Well, with this unit you can decide what response curve you want, draw it on the little screen with a set of slider settings, and then have the 2496 meet that automatically! There is also a gain offset where you can adjust the output gain if the EQ process ended up amplifying or reducing the total gain too much. A totally great piece of equipment, but I had a couple of problems figuring out the install. First, the I/O is all balanced XLR inputs and outputs. I had to buy some XLR to RCA adapters because most all home Hi Fi connectors are unbalanced RCA jacks. The second major problem was that modern receivers do not have any sort of tape loop or signal processor loop that lets you insert a piece like the 2496 into your signal path. This meant attaching it between the receiver and the power amps, which in turn made me worry that the signal out of the receiver could be too strong because it comes after the volume control. But with its 24 bit 96k AD converter it did just fine, hardly cracks the -6dB reading on the meters. One more minor detail - if you want to play with EQ you might want some audio inspired graph paper I thought it would be a piece of cake to download a ton of it from the net. No dice, gave up the search on the net and ended up brewing my own. I had a tiny little graph of audio freqs from the same B&K test disc booklet that I am using. So I blew it up to 8.5 x 11 and printed several. So I purchased their ECM8000 Measurement Microphone for an amazing $59.00 and may be able to try it out tomorrow. Oh, and for those with a digital paranoia, don't worry about the extra digital I/O stage that your signal will have to go through. It is 24 bit, 96k and sounds great and does not clip and is what is responsible for all of the tricks that the amazing Behringer DEQ2496 can do. -- Gary Eickmeier |
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