Room correction

A few years back we undertook a major renovation on our house and I took the opportunity of renovating my sound system at the same time expecting bigger room better sound , well it sort of worked , but there is definitely room for improvement , lots of hard surfaces , minimalist furniture curtains in the wrong place etc . I got a person in to have a look at what could be done and what was proposed was laughable although it may have worked . I saw an article recently on the DEQX which was being shown at the Melbourne hifi show unfortunately I didnt realise this and missed the opportunity to have a decent listen . Now I know it was at the RMAF and did anyone listen to the device and does anyone have a view on putting another piece of gear in the chain , even though the end result may out weigh the losses . Regards

PWT DS DAC Lacie 2 bay storage Sugden IA4 class A intergrated Consensus Lighting SE Avid Diva SP II Lyra Delos SME arm

DEQX is certainly a powerful tool and can enhance the sound of your system. However , it is not going to correct significant room problems. At best it might allow you mask them. DEQX is capable of much more than room correction. It can also take on cross-over duty, phase and time alignment of drivers.

The latest versions DACs are reported to be very transparent which makes the LP crowd very happy as there is allways a worry about the A-D conversion.

If you are. Seriously considering a move to DEQX I’d recommend looking at some room treatments first to get a good “base-line” and then use DEQX to make it better, cream on top.

Yes, I have a DEQX and yes my listening room is treated but I haven’t yet installed the DEQX

Fully agreed; fix the room first. Then if you are still interested, look into electronic enhancements.

I agree with the previous posts. In addition, I suggest taking some measurements so you really know what’s going on in the room. When I first became aware of the importance of treating the room, 10-12 years ago, I learned that the best tool for measuring is a Real Time Analyser (RTA). At the time those cost a lot of money (~$1,000). The poor man’s alternative was to play a bunch of tracks at various frequencies and plot the readings, taken from a Radio Shack sound level meter, on a graph. I did that, but redoing the tests every time you made a change was not exactly user-friendly, and the Rat Shack meter was hardly a professional quality device. But still better than nothing.

Fast forward to 2015. If you have a tablet, you can get an RTA app for very little money, or even free. You just play pink noise and the RTA lets you see spikes or dips at various frequencies. It’s easy to save the graphs so you can see what happens when you move speakers, add/remove/rearrange room treatments, etc. Even if you buy an external mic, as I did, it’s still a modest investment compared to what most of us spend on our systems. I like the AudioTools package on the iPad (maybe it’s available for android too, I don’t know) but there are others. Any of them will be easier and better than what I did years ago.

It is fun walking around with the mic and see where the frequency dips are.

And an RTA is great for placing a sub. Placing the mic at the listening location, moving the sub and watching the changes in real time is fascinating.

I bought the studiosixdigital AudioTools apps and their mic recently. Really great stuff.

It’s fascinating how it’s possible to see the influence of location, crossover frequency and slope to a flat response when i.e. matching a sub. You really see what you hear and it’s so much faster to find the optimum. And often surprising.

I can recommend this 200-300$ investment to everyone!

I always find it surprising. At least for me, acoustics is far from intuitive.

Well worth $2-300.

Definitely far from intuitive. I owned a DEQX Mate for a couple of years that I found invaluable for doing three things: (1) compensating for the speakers I was using at the time; (2) adjusting the speakers for two different uses; I had a combined HT and audio rig, with six channels of amplification, and the Mate allowed separate profiles for each activity; and (3) integrating the subs. Excellent piece of equipment. Not exactly a breeze to use. But very effective. As others have said here, start first by understanding the room, and do what you can for the room itself. At least for me, the DEQX was much more effective, and its results more satisfying, when I thought of it and used it first as a speaker corrector.