(Somebody told me there's a reward for posting the longest message)
If you prefer to use your own DAC with DEQX [and your speakers aren't bi/tri amp-able] you can use the DEQX's dig-in and have the convolved signal exit DEQX's mid/full dig-out right into your favorite DAC. If you do have a bi/tri amp-able system you can run those 2/3 dig-outs into multiple DACs.
I got into DRC about a year ago and [given my ADD] it's a miracle I was able to accomplish anything. The stereo is that one hobby that promises immediate gratification -- I've been conditioned to wait not longer than 30min for tubes and stuff to warm up.
DRC is funny because it's the last thing an audiophile would purchase (certainly after cable upgrades), and it's effect is on the scale of a speaker upgrade, which would have been your first purchase. I spent good money on tweaks to combat the issues unique to my speaker/room/seating interaction. I'd spend a few hundred dollars on something and it was a challenge for my ear to detect that something changed at all, and along comes DRC software which all but made fun of my whole upgrade process. For me DRC's most evident improvement is how it makes speaker cabinets vanish like Totem Rainmakers. Other things are improving but that's what hits me first when trying it on different speakers. At this point I'm proud to say I've receeded to all budget cables (bluejean speaker, bluejean AES, belkin USB, and a variety of affordable RCAs).
I don't doubt DEQX is an amazing appliance. Last time I researched DRC hardware I didn't see any that had dig-in. Accomplishing this stuff in the digital domain prior to the first D2A is important. It's impressive that DEQX learns your speaker independent of the room effect. Those additional parameters must yield amazing results.
But this is my situation:
-My Thiels are already time aligned and I don't use subs
-I've got this giant vaulted ceiling with giant traps, speakers are 3ft off a back wall that is 37ft wide, and my focus is on my room's response to my speakers, and not my speakers. When I measure different speakers the graph shows a common suck-out and hump in the low frequencies.
-I'm all digital, so EQ'ing analog sources is not an attraction
-I'm a budget audiophile, so my "expensive" [worst case] solution would have been forking out $500 for Dirac Live.
My first taste of EQ was in Foobar using the MathAudio Room EQ plug-in. I then spent $100 on a FocusRite 48v mic preamp and a $60 mic. Eventually I spent around $50 to have Herb @ Cross-Spectrum Acoustics create a calibration file for my microphone. I did some free trials of affordable software but weeks turned into months and I conceded to take the beaten path started Dirac's 30day trial. That's when I learned my tiny netbook (Intel atom) would take several minutes to generate a filter. So I spent about $600 on a faster computer (Intel NUC - I call it my pocket computer), switched from Foobar to JRiver (which was yet another learning curve), and I spent $500 on Dirac.
In the beginning I thought my only issues were between 30hz and 700hz. Eventually I learned my whole system was out of phase and once that was corrected I discovered wonderful improvement when I ran the filter all the way up to 20khz. The other thing I learned is that a target curve that asks for aggressive "up EQ" will easily clip and therefore require the DSP gain to be set lower, and if the DSP gain is lower than 50% (-4db) then you aren't getting your money's worth. So I start my filter above my room's bass suck-out frequency (83hz) and this allows me to crank the DSP gain way up.
I'm now at a point where I use a single filter for all my music, but playback is now like driving stick. Each recording affords a certain amount of headroom for "up EQ" (generally the same for an entire album), and you want the DSP gain set as high as possible without Dirac's clip indicator redlining. So I'm always tinkering with the DSP slider which makes me feel like a DJ. So far it's not a bother for me -- I suppose when it does I'll start experimenting with JRiver's auto-leveling feature. 2 years ago I would have scoffed at a product that couldn't resolve above 96khz, but I've grown to appreciate the fundamentals and my priorities have since changed. I now would prefer to hear a 320kbps mp3 with DRC to the 24-192 version w/o DRC.
