Is there such a thing as audiophile parametric eq?

I've read very good reviews about the Behringer DEQ2496 and decided to buy one. When I attempted to buy the DEQ2496 from a Pro Audio Shop retailer (Sydney, Australia) he advised me against it as he has had many returned for repair. Beccause of the DEQ2496's unreliability he has decided not to stock them any more. This wasn't a ploy by the retailer for me to buy another model, as he had nothing else to offer in one box that the DEQ2496 provides. The situation may be different on your side of world.

It seems from my research the Tact and Rives provide a very good but more expensive solution.

I question the chorus of suspiciouly loud criticisms of Behringer, particularly with respect to reliability.

Just because a dealer carries Behringer, doesnt mean he might not be motivated to upsell customers to more expensive and/or higher margin products.

I am not about to get rid of my Audio Research and Levinson gear for a full Behringer system, but I use two Behringer amplifiers and a DEQ2496 with my PC and televisions.

They have all worked perfectly right out of the box, I have never turned them off, never had a single problem, they sound great and are dirt cheap.

If I was a manufacturer, distributor or retailer trying to buy groceries by selling mediocre, overpriced, high end voodoo gear, I might be tempted to bash Behringer too.

The rest of us should definitely check out the EQ and mic and see how it can improve your system.

I believe analog is the way to go for a variety of reasons. One is that the phase shift in the analog eq is the oposite of the phase shift created by a room mode--thus you are automatically correcting amplitude and phase. It's also extremely transparent and leaves the upper frequencies alone. As Shadome pointed out trying to EQ above 200 Hz (I might go as far as 250) is not going to work terribly well. Our EQ functions 350 Hz and below, but we do recommend that you only use it up to 250 Hz.

[http://www.rivesaudio.com/PARC/PARCframe.html]Rives Audio PARC[/url]

We are the manufacturer of this product, but we built this product for this exact purpose and built it to be as transparent as possible. The circuitry used in the parametric is the exact same in API mixing consoles, which are undoubtedly the finest analog mixing consoles made.

Thanks for all the responses. It might indeed be worthwhile to buy the Behringer for the sole purpose of being able to see what I'm up against.

The PARC looks like an amazing piece of equipment. Still beyond my budget at this point. I have some connections in the pro audio arena and maybe I could find a poor man's PARC at least until I can afford the genuine article.

Rives, interesting comment about the analog equalization - I usually read about the negative impact of the phaseshifts in analog EQ. I didn't know the phaseshift would be the same as the one imparted by the room. Do you have a good reference (even a very technical one) that explains why?

Also, I am curious to hear your opinion on Room equaliztion. The effect of modes on the spectrum of course depends largely on the speaker position and as well as the listening position. While I have not too much problem compensating for modes excited by speaker position, I am not so sure about compensating problems due to the listening position. I do listen not always in the sweetspot or listen with my wife. Wouldn't it be better to average over several microphone positions, rather than choose a single place to correct for?