Any experience with processors or equalizers?

[salmon]

Well i have boutgt Zhalou dac, it sounds good but on good recorded material, unfortunately most of my records is crappy recorded, i mostly listen music from 50 and 60 years. Are there any good standalone processor or equalizer which wil deliver new life (new juice) to old records?

 

[lini]

If you feed your dac from a computer, then some software eq would probably be smart to try first. Otherwise, a lot of people seem to be fairly happy with this Behringer: http://www.behringer.com/DEQ2496/index.cfm?lang=ENG

Greetings from Hannover!

Manfred / lini

 

[salmon]

Danke.

 

[rodentdog]

contrary to the majority opinion here, I use both an equalizer and a dbx 3bx dynamic range expander when I listen to vinyl. The RIAA recording curve limits dynamic range to 60-65 db (or the stylus would jump out of the groove)
the dbx is kind of like an electronic "slinky" that restores some dynamic range.
What I do is rip the vinyl to cd via audio music lab 2004. It has a built in mastering section so you can improve the problems on the vinyl. Purists might say that this introduces "distortion" into the signal path. I contend that the vinyl is already so flawed that if you don't do something all you listen to is the stuff between the music and not the music. Also a SAE 5000
Impulse Noise Reduction unit will help with the pops and clicks.

 

[bigshot]

The SAE impulse noise reduction unit is pretty useless. It's only effective on the huge shotgun pops, not the most common sorts of low level clicks that you encounter on vinyl. For that, you want a Burwen TNE7000a. It's a pro unit that used to be common in studios. You can find them on ebay for about $300. The Burwen uses a noise gate that is so quick, it introduces no noise at all. It only eliminates it.

See ya
Steve

 

[russdog]

Quote:

Originally Posted by salmon Well i have boutgt Zhalou dac, it sounds good but on good recorded material, unfortunately most of my records is crappy recorded, i mostly listen music from 50 and 60 years. Are there any good standalone processor or equalizer which wil deliver new life (new juice) to old records?

Are you talking about old crappy records and CDs? If so, I have found the BBE processor to do an excellent job of exactly this. Used in moderation, it takes the pillows out of your speakers and makes things better without making anything worse. It's rather amazing in that regard. It used to be that you could only get this by purchasing a dedicated BBE hardware processor. They used to make them for both music consumers and recording studios. AFAIK, they have stopped their consumer line and make only studio equipment now. You can get used consumer models on ebay from time to time. However, they have come out with a software version. It is intended for use with digital recording software, but it can be used as a plug-in for any software that uses Direct-X or VST plug-ins. I use MediaMonkey which accepts WinAmp2 plugins, and there is a WinAmp plug-in that works with DirectX plugs. So, for about $100, it works great for me. There may be other, more recent products than BBE that do a good job of this, I don't know.

If, however, you are talking about crappy mp3 files, then I don't know what to tell you.

 

[salmon]

Ok, I will look at it.

 

[salmon]

Just trying BBE sonic maximizer plug-in, on some recording it really helps, but no miracle, crappy recording is crappy recording especially MP3.

 

[russdog]

Quote:

Originally Posted by salmon Just trying BBE sonic maximizer plug-in, on some recording it really helps, but no miracle, crappy recording is crappy recording especially MP3.

Yeah, I said I didn't know what to do about crappy mp3's, simply because I got rid of mine before I got the BBE plug-in to work. So I've only used the BBE plug-in on good mp3's. As for old crappy recordings (not crappy mp3's), I find that BBE makes many of them a lot better without messing wth EQ. For others, a combination of EQ (mainly to reduce boomy bass) plus BBE works well. It can't turn a bad recording into a good recording, but it can do a wonderful job of making mediocre things a whole lot better.

I used to be of the "no DSP" school. I'd use just a tad of EQ to adjust for room and equipment, then leave it alone. When a musician friend brought his "BBE Sonic Maximizer" hardware processor over to my house, I thought he was joking. Boy, was I wrong. We hooked it up, he fooled with it for a minute, and stuff sounded pretty damn good. Then he turned it off, and everything went flat (in the bad sense of "flat"). My own reaction was "Hey, who put pillows in my speakers?" You read that phrase in BBE marketing materials, but that's not where I got the phrase. I got the phrase from listening. This is one case where the marketing phrase fits the actual experience.

All this happened in the late early 90's, and I've been a BBE believer ever since. I believe their original haredware processors were analog in nature, and that they've since figured out how to do whatever it does digitally. I can imagine that other people have exploited our digital age to develop something that's as good or better. If they have, I don't know about it. But, since I am well satisfied with BBE, I haven't really been looking, so I would be unlikely to know unless somebody else made a big deal about it.