Ah @mijostyn …but I did. It’s all laid out in the link with my first post on this thread. I pulled it from head fi. Perhaps you didn’t copy and open. It was a little tricky. It was a thread titled The Charter Oak PEQ-1. I’ll copy all the text and paste it so you don’t have to open a link:
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I felt at this point since I’m using the piece with synergistic success in two separate chains that I’d post some history on it. I initially bought it from SoundPure pro audio to insert in the tape loop of my Bryston B135 SST2 integrated amp with onboard dac. That was about 2013. About 3 years after Mike Deming at Charter Oak started producing it. Mike was well know for using highest quality parts and hand crafted attention in making his mics compressors and equalizers and his equipment has always sounded highly musical with excellent resolution and staging. I felt immediately I had struck gold having that EQ of his in my tape loop on my hi fi amp. The sound has always been magical. Even on the best recordings I preferred looping it in with the click of a button. Talk about a true bypass. Clicking out the tape loop you have the true straight source line in. The sound though with loop in has always been preferable. Even as I advanced recently my headphone chain rapidly and my listening skills advancing as well.
So, after years of enjoying this magic sauce in my big rig, I made a friend here on head fi when I purchased the Fostex TH900 and a Mojo2 and started chatting about them on Fostex forum. A really good guy many of you know named Geoff. We have remained close as “odd fellows” because I like to EQ a lot, mainly tone shaping, but Geoff doesn’t do much. Yet we share stories. We share listening observations. I read his excellent reviews, we totally respect each other’s differences in our respective approaches to developing our hi fi chains. It was because of my friendship with Geoff that I built out a much better desktop headphone chain than my Th900 and Mojo2. I now have Matrix Audio X Sabre 3 serving analog high end balanced source material to my Headamp GSX Mini balanced amp and out to my Hifiman HE1000SE, otherwise known affectionately as HEKse. While the sound quality was super, I still felt compelled to try the professional balanced analog mastering EQ by Charter Oak in my chain. Fell in love with it there too. Bought another one used in top notch condition from a studio engineer on Reverb and now I own 2.
Simply put, this piece has uniquely amazing musicality for pro gear and amazing synergy therefore with the robust full throated beautiful mids found in high fi gear. It’s worth noting that I’ve had the pleasure of comparing it in my big rig to multiple analog EQ pieces renowned in mastering circles as well as the Schiit Loki Max. It beat the Avalon AD2055 as well as the Millennia NSEQ4 by a noticeable margin in the more musical and less analytical department. Margins close here though, as all pieces well known in studios across the globe. It TROUNCED the Loki Max. Schiit Loki Max and Lokius are the only “hi fi analog” EQ devices made specifically for audiophiles and home playback systems that I’m aware of. If any of you are acquainted with these EQ’s, I will simply tell you that you have no idea how good tone shaping analog EQ can sound in a high Fi configuration until you’ve heard the Charter Oak. The Schiit products, I’m sorry to say, just aren’t in the same ballpark. The Charter Oak handily beats my my Auralic Aries DSP parametric. Same with Roon’s. Just no contest.
There is one unfortunate caveat though. Mike Deming no longer makes them and hasn’t for at least a few years. A California company has taken over the name and production of the last several years’ units. Mike Deming stays in occasional touch with me and has verified that these units don’t sound as good as his production era ones. So if you look for one online used, check to see if the beautiful gloss faceplate finish has disappeared as well as the numbers on the left and right master gain dials. If so, don’t purchase! Check serial number and bounce it off me. I’ve attached two pics. It’s a beautiful piece. This thread is simply my paying homage to a uniquely synergistic and transformative piece that never quits thrilling me for a decade now. I felt I owed it to Mike and Charter Oak to write about it here, as it’s meant so much to me in my hi fi endeavors. Oh, and Cardas Clear Sky XLR cables highly recommended in connecting your CO to your hi fi amp.
Thanks for letting me share!
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So the speakers are Martin Logans. That’s not in there. I use Transparent speaker cable. The short coaxial digital cable connecting my source streamer Auralic Aries is a Bryston cable. As mentioned in the post, I have 1000 dollars worth of Cardas Clear Sky XLR balanced cable connecting the EQ to the tape loop of the amp.
if you’ll humor me and wade through all of the post, you’ll find a quite respectable and quite hi fi headphone chain. Used same Cardas cabling to insert the EQ between the source and the desktop amp. The HEKse, by the way, are simply AMAZING headphones. The headphone chain honestly sounds freaking unbelievable. Particularly with CO EQ in there.
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Bottom line is I bought the Loki Max for the headphone chain. But when I heard it against my CO it took me all of 10-20 minutes to conclude it was inferior sonically. So the next day it was shipped back to Schiit and I bought a second CO used but in great condition for the headphone chain from a sound engineer in Austria. Bought it on Reverb.
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At the risk of boring you all (skip it if you want) I am going to post my story I had sent to my buddy Geoff at Head Fi about how I got into merging pro EQ with hi fi:
So a little about me and this hobby. I was always interested in SQ from a young age. Probably 14 or so. Had a Kenwood set with a JVC SEA-1 10 band equalizer running into the tape loop of that set up. That was the 80’s and equalizers were all the rave. And so it went that I used mine a lot. Skip ahead to about 1998. My beloved Kenwood amp died I had kept all those years because it sounded great. So I shopped my second stereo. Got some Martin Logan Montage at Best Buy for 2 grand and a 500 dollar onkyo av amp. Hated the SQ. Kenwood still sort of worked. Well enough to compare amps. So did. Found the Kenwood despite its connection failings sounded better than the new onkyo. How could this be? At this moment my foray into hi fi began. My income started to improve around that time as well, which helped. Started devoting my readings to hi fi mags, reviews, and forums. Started listening to the gear I read about in showrooms. Traveled all over south Florida and Orlando and Melbourne to listen to really good gear. As my ear improved I began to appreciate NOT ONLY the tonality changes of an equalizer BUT ALSO the hi fi characteristics of the source material unequalized: timbre, pacing, dynamics, resolution, ink black backgrounds and soundstage not just height and width but front to back,etc. I began to appreciate just how different recordings can be in terms of these hi fi characteristics AND in terms of tonality. I started listening to lots of different EQ implementations, both digital and analog, but listening from the perspective of hi fi characteristics and not just tonality. As you can imagine I became very picky about equalizers. The vast majority very disappointing. Turn them on and resolution and soundstage suffered immensely. But these were cheap EQ,s. What about the professional recording world? They must by definition use state of the art equalizers.
At that moment the lightning bolt hit me: I want to own hi fi gear AND integrate in a hi fi connectivity a hi fi EQ. The first part was easy. It didn’t take long before I settled on the Bryston B135 integrated amp. By now I was well aware I could go better with separates but I had heard this integrated and knew I’d sound great. Also money and space savings key. So bought the b135 for about 6 grand with onboard dac. The unit had a dedicated tape loop. Completely transparent. The next step was what to put in there. As your aware, you don’t shop equalizers in hi fi stores. Lots of blank stares and why would you want to do that and ruin your wonderful amps straight signal? Well, I knew at that point what I wanted. Clear as day. So I started reading reviews by studio production folks on pro gear. Lots and lots. No showrooms though for this hunt. Had to go solely on reviews. I loved the Charter Oak reviews and the folks I’d been talking to at Sound Pure said for my application the Charter Oak would be the best sounding and most musical least etched or analytical fo mate with my Bryston. So I bought it for about 3 grand. The moment I heard it I was floored. I played all different types of music and turned some dials. Best test to see if a hardware EQ can change tone AND still retain hi fi characteristics of source signal is piano, female vocals, classical jazz. So lots of those genres were played and wow results every time. Once I learned cables make difference I upgraded all cabling in the system for a few thousand more dollars. The Cardas are truly spectacular and really brought out the Charter Oaks full potential. Im at resting point with this rig for 3 years now. Ironically the Martin Logan’s are the weakest link in the system. But frankly I don’t care. It sounds that good.
Every now and again I go to Ed’s Audible Images in Melbourne—he has the best gear in Florida—and listen to Diana Krall and other known artists. Then I come home and listen to this same music on my setup, with some mild EQ ing. Every time I prefer my gear. It’s simply more engaging to me. Is it more “hi fi” as previously defined? No, probably not. But the burning question is is it any LESS hi fi? After years of this I still argue no. Indeed to me there is something magical about the way the two pieces interact. As I’ve advanced my hi fi headphone game, I still get goosebumps every time I crank up the big rig. I feel very lucky to have gotten to this point in my audio adventures.
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