Is DEQX a game changer?

Looking forward to your follow up Bif. (Lucky you)

08-21-14: Bob_reynolds
Bruce, thanks for the additional insight. Is there a reason that most speakers on the market are not time coherent? I think so -- it's way down on the list for impacting sonics. Meadowlark claimed to be in the time coherent school and published a nice looking triangle graph. They didn't sound time coherent to me, i.e., I couldn't tell that they were or weren't. Things that have a large impact on frequency response like room correction will definitely be audible. So, time coherence may be DEQX's selling point, but that won't be reason enough for me to be interested.

Bob, you couldn't be more wrong about time-coherence & it's importance to music playback.
Most speaker designers simply do not understand the math & physics to make a speaker time-coherent so they skip this part totally.
For the Meadowlarks you might have known how to set-up the speaker &/or what to listen for to ensure that you were seated in the right location to hear the time-coherence. Plus, guidance could have been poor from the manuf.

I would strongly urge you, as Al already has, to read that "Sloped Baffle" thread he provided the link to & search for DEQX & read other things about time-coherence. I believe it will be educational to you.

BTW, there is atleast one member in that thread, lewinskih01, who is using DEQX & has found it to be transformational in his system - it made his speakers trend more towards the time-coherence paradigm than before & he is pleased with the results (so he wrote).
whatever makes your speakers more time-coherent will make your listening even better.

And, if your system pix are the latest, I see that you are doing atleast 1 aspect of the time-coherence thing: time-alignment of drivers. You have your tweeters pointed out on both channels. This makes the path length from the tweeter a bit longer compared to the woofer which has the effect of time-aligning the acoustical centers of those 2 drivers. That helps to intergrate the sound of the drivers at the listening position.
So, if this is any clue to me, you are going to like a time-coherent speaker even more.
That "sloped baffle" thread is a good one to read. I 3rd Almarg & Bifwynne on your reading that thread.....

Gotta tell ya. Getting the DEQX audition arranged up has been a frustrating PITA. I'll be generous and attribute it to the summer time and vacations. But if it's half as good as it's hyped, it is an important tweak that serious audiophiles should be thinking about.

As I said, hopefully, shortly after labor day and I'll have something to report.

If DEQX doesn't do a better job of getting a more responsive dealer network established, I fear crash and burn.

I'll have more to say after the audition.

@Bob ... time coherence is not just pure BS. Manufacturers make design decisions based on pluses and minuses. I don't enough about the engineering or the cost accounting math to weigh in. But I'm sure that if top companies like Focal, Revel and Magico could figure out a way to push the square peg into the round hole and solve every problem, they would do it.

It's all about trade offs. Poor Roy Johnson and GMA. I showed my exterminator a pic of Roy's top of the line speakers, and he was ready to pull DTT out of his truck. LOL!!

I'll be back.

Bifwynne, Even though such an experiment on the surface might appear to provide a correct time / incorrect time value check with everything else being relatively the same: and on the one hand I don't want to discourage your experiment(heck, I'm curious too), but, on the other hand I'm not sure the DEQX by by itself is the ideal way to determine how important wave fidelity is. I would be concerned that unless the speakers were designed from the start towards those aspirations they might not be hospitable to the demands made upon them by such manipulations. The DEQX might(?) actually be in conflict with the speakers designs intentions.
Perhaps, I'm mistaken, but don't think Bob is too far off course here with the idea that a speaker designed from the get go for wave fidelity combined with digital room correction might be the ideal way to go. I suspect that the future might yet provide for digital signal corrected for room considerations into digital cross-overs into class D amps into individual drivers that might provide the ultimate fidelity for listeners in real rooms.

Just to clarify: I participated in the "sloped baffle" thread and mentioned the DEQX, but I don't own it nor have heard it. I've been interested in time-aligned speakers and discussed this with a couple knowleadgeable people who have tried them, and in that context I discussed with an owner of a DEQX who uses it for DRC and as DAC (he doesn't do time alignment though). He has a very expensive system, spoke super highly about this unit, and said it replaced a $30k DAC.

Bifiwyne: how are you planning to set up your audition? I see you have Paradigm S8 and a sub (or two?). Since you have a turntable, I'm guessing you'll have it after the preamp and driving amps directly. It is my understanding such a setup would allow the unit to perform the room correction and set delays between subwoofer amp and S8 amp, but to time-align the drivers in the S8 you would need to disconnect the crossovers and drive each driver with one channel of an amp. I myself am very intrigued by this approach, but realize it's cumbersome and requires more amps to try out.

If I may, I'd like to make the OP's initial question broader: "is DSP as it stands today a game changer?" I'm VERY intrigued. Just as to some who never heard it this makes no sense, to me (never heard it either) makes a lot of theoretical sense. And the few I exchanged with who have tried it speak highly about it.

For those of us with only computer sources, there are cheaper ways to try this. Acourate DSP software + Lynx Hilo is one option. Here are two articles on such use worth reading:
1) doing room correction
2) time-aligning drivers

To me, actively multi-amping always made a lot of theoretical sense, but the incremental cost of amps and cables and XO made it non-practical/economical. But with these software/multichannel DAC packages we could do without the preamp and XO and associated cables, plus we can do time-alignment. Is it worth vs my beloved Lamm preamp? Well...that is what intrigues me!
In full disclosure, this also would open a door for me to build my own speakers, an additional benefit to me. I'm a mechanical engineer and comfortable with the mechanics associated with speakers and drivers and room, and building stuff, but I'm not up to par for building crossovers. So if I can have a software tackle that piece, I could build my speakers - that would be fun!

Anyway, sorry I digressed. I guess I used this post as therapy! I couldn't talk to anybody about these things without them thinking I lost it...maybe I'm not alone here? :-)

Cheers!