Newbie-EQ Worth It?

Greetings all -- I've recently purchased a Dynaco 70 power amp (price was insanely low on Audiogon), a PAS 3 preamp and I've had a pair of Dynaco A25s for awhile (CD players are a CalAudio Labs transport and an Oppo 93). I also have a Thorens turntable. I'm very happy with warm, tubey sound, and I noticed on eBay a Dynaco SE-10 EQ. Would that be a worthwhile addition to my setup? And if so, why?

Thanks from Salt Lake City!

theeditor wrote:Greetings all -- I've recently purchased a Dynaco 70 power amp (price was insanely low on Audiogon), a PAS 3 preamp and I've had a pair of Dynaco A25s for awhile (CD players are a CalAudio Labs transport and an Oppo 93). I also have a Thorens turntable. I'm very happy with warm, tubey sound, and I noticed on eBay a Dynaco SE-10 EQ. Would that be a worthwhile addition to my setup? And if so, why?

Thanks from Salt Lake City!

short answer : No

Longer answer : it cannot improve on what you already got, only distort the sound

Depends on what you have for room dynamics. First step is hardscaping the BIG problems - baffles, absorption panels, traps, wall hangings, that sort of thing. There's a law of diminishing returns where it becomes a lot cheaper and more effective to do the final tweaks with an equalizer.

But.

Most graphic eq's like the SE-10 fall short of being able to correctly dial in on the problem areas. Even if you can target a specific frequency that's giving you trouble, a simple slider affects way too wide an area in the band. The more sliders then, the better, right? Nah ... the more sliders, the more confusing.  

If you do decide to go to an eq (and that's only because you have a noticeable need for improvement) I highly recommend a parametric equalizer. A good one allows you to drill down to exactly what you need fixed, and also allows you to tweak the bandwidth so you don't affect any more area of the spectrum than you actually need to. A really good one also allows you to stack filters - e.g. - a wide filter to drop a wider band, and another narrow filter to raise the level for a specific frequency inside the first filter. Kewl stuff, that.

PS ... the HARD part is figuring out what specific frequencies you need to address to flatten a room's response. I lost a lot of hair here before I decided to cheat and go the software route. REW for windows is killer for that ... and it's free!

Oh. Here's a good one ... Technics SH-9010. Last eq I'll ever buy ...

Thanks for everyone's advice. Looks like I'll keep my wallet in my pocket.

Just posted this up on one of the other forums ...



Few leftovers from my personal battle with room eq. I'll have to flip these outta here one of these days. All perfectly good, but all unfortunately unable to handle the weirdness of my "problem" room.

I have a SE-10 that I use with a secondary system made up of a Dynaco SA-80Q amp and a FM-5 tuner. The SE-10 is an old design and not the best. I mainly use it for the fun of messing with older Dynaco solid state equipment - how do you like the A25s? I never auditioned a set.

I'm refinishing the cabinets now ... they wouldn't be out of place in Don Draper's apartment on Mad Men, they're that "good looking." As for overall sound stage, they are a shade below my previous speakers, KEF 103s. IMHO, the highs are a tad blocked with the A25s.

Now, if you want to auditioned a pair of vintage speakers, Dahlquist D10s are nirvana.

I'm currently experimenting with a cica-mid 1960s set of Fisher XP-7s. They are very robust on vocals but
I'm learning Fisher typically rolled his speakers off on the high end. Likely had something to do with the play back components of the time. I'll recap and swap out the "fried egg" tweaters soon.

Good luck with those. I had a Fisher 400 receiver. Fantastic tube sound, unbelievable headphone amp. It pained me when it died, but I gave it a burial it deserved

Whenever you introduce frequency response variations with an analog equalizer, you also cause frequency-dependent phase shifts.  This isn't too damaging if the variations are gradual and wide, as with conventional tone controls; but with the narrow bands of typical equalizers, they can be a problem for perfectionist audio.

But an eaqualizer can be a good thing if you have audio issues related to your room or ears - the latter being an issue that catches up with us all. I remember the days when EQs were considered an improvement over basic tone controls. Either which way, its really all about having fun.