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Hardware digital I/O equalizer?

post #1 of 11
1/5/02 at 2:55am
Thread Starter 
Do they exist? I've used software-based digital I/O equalizers with great effect, but it's rather hard to implement it in the normal audio chain for headphone listening--either straight out of the noisy computer's crappy outputs or burn output to CDs before listening.
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post #2 of 11
1/5/02 at 3:08am
Wouldn't it have to be a computer or something complex like that to have a purely digital equalizer? May exist but sounds pricey to me, especially if you want an "audiophile" quality one. And if it is hardware, you need software to manipulate the digital signal, so essentially that defats your point! What's wrong with analog anyway?
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post #3 of 11
1/5/02 at 6:29am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally posted by chych
Wouldn't it have to be a computer or something complex like that to have a purely digital equalizer? May exist but sounds pricey to me, especially if you want an "audiophile" quality one. And if it is hardware, you need software to manipulate the digital signal, so essentially that defats your point! What's wrong with analog anyway?
Huh? The software should be integrated into the box. Same thing with your PDAs, even your CDP and HiFi equipment! They all have 'software' these days--they're just in ROM or firmware.

I'd imagine the interface can be similar to analog graphic / parametric EQ, but the innards would be digital processing
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post #4 of 11
1/5/02 at 6:34am
They exist....they are hella expensive. Basically they are DAC's with lots of DSP functionality. Even the pro-audio ones that do what you are talking about...the price for this gear alone would give you an entire headphone system for which you would be content 97% of the time anyways.
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post #5 of 11
1/5/02 at 8:45am
Thread Starter 
Um, in that case I wonder if there are any good options for expanding the audio capability on laptop computers... external soundcards and the like?
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post #6 of 11
1/5/02 at 1:52pm
There are hardware digital eqs around. I remember seeing them before but they're very expensive. Check headwize for the links. It was posted in the forums before.
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post #7 of 11
1/5/02 at 4:00pm
I have two.

Sabine Power Q, but you should check out the Real-Q2 and the Graphi-q GRQ-3102S.
http://www.sabine.com/index.html

I also have a Behringer DSP8024 Ultra Curve Pro.
http://www.behringer.de/eng/products...rs/dsp8024.htm

The Sabine is cleaner and more transparent sounding, but the Behringer is cheaper.

The user interface on both leave much to be desired, but the Sabine's is the better of the two. They both can be remote controlled by a computer as well.

Happy listening!!
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post #8 of 11
1/5/02 at 5:02pm
There's also the Z-Systems and Weiss units, which are probably two of the best digital equalizers you can buy today. Not cheap, but both are very well designed.

http://www.z-sys.com
http://www.weiss.ch

--Andre
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post #9 of 11
1/8/02 at 10:24am
Thread Starter 
The Sabine graphi-Q appears to have analog I/O only??
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post #10 of 11
1/8/02 at 11:04am
accuphase also makes a couple DSP processors, including a similarly spec'd EQ (to the other ones mentioned) and a crossover with 96db per octave slopes! It's a high end audio company so you're probably paying a lot for audiophile parts. The only thing I know about price is that the list price for their crossover is 700,000 yen.
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post #11 of 11
1/8/02 at 3:47pm
Good sound on a laptop? Get an external USB DAC.
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