Is DEQX a game changer?

Woo-hoo, Almarg!! :-)
I was happy to read your post indeed & am looking forward to your personal experience with time-coherency thru DEQX.
From my personal experience & from Bruce's experience I believe that you will be nothing short of amazed what time-coherency can do for music play-back. It's the only way to go & I'm sure that, like myself & Bruce, once you get used to time-coherent speakers you won't ever go back. :-)
Like many others I'll be watching this space for your feedback.
Thanks for joining the time-coherent "gang" - you will not be disappointed....

Al, great to hear. I am confident that you will be equally impressed when you get the HDP4. If you need assistance with any part of the configuration or interpreting the graphs, I am more than happy to help

There are some really useful features that even the enormous manual doesn't make clear. I am also much cheaper than the DEQXpert service (ie free !)

Regards
Andrew

Thanks for the nice words, guys, and especially to Andrew for the kindly offer.

I'll most likely be ordering the HDP-4, together with the DEQX/Earthworks M23 calibration kit, in January or February. As a technically oriented person, I'll try to implement all of the procedures myself, at my own (slow and deliberate) pace. I suspect that will extend over at least several weeks before I either declare the profiles and settings to have been finalized, or decide that I need to take Andrew up on his kindly offer and/or utilize the DEQExpert service.

I'm planning on using the HDP-4 in place of, rather than in series with, my existing preamp (a Classe CP-60), which receives inputs from five different sources, and provides outputs to three different destinations.

My two most critical sources are CDP and phono. Pending possible revision during my listening tests, I'm planning on connecting a digital output of my Bryston CDP to the HDP-4 via AES/EBU. I'll connect the output of my phono stage (actually, the phono section of a vintage Mark Levinson ML-1 preamp, accessed via tape outs) to the HDP-4's unbalanced analog input.

For the less critical sources, I'll connect a digital output of my Squeezebox Touch (which I only use for internet radio) via Toslink. I'll connect the outputs of my vintage tuner and Tandberg cassette deck (I still have occasion now and then to play some musically and sonically excellent classical cassettes from way back when on the Connoisseur In Sync Label) to a mechanical switchbox that will select between them, with the output of the switchbox connected to the HDP-4's balanced analog input via RCA-to-XLR adapters.

I'll be connecting one of the HDP-4's three sets of outputs to my VAC power amp, one to my STAX headphone amp, and one to the cassette deck (although I can't recall the last time I ever recorded anything with it). Obviously the outputs to the Stax and the Tandberg will be configured for bypass mode.

Thanks again. Best regards,
-- Al

Don't rush to dump your preamp. The DEQX is essentially transparent, so you can use them together if you like what the preamp adds to the sound of your system.

Al,

I will stay tuned. I'm very interested in your finding as I'm sure are many here.

Not to make more work for you, but I would be very interested to understand the effects of DEQX on various speakers of various designs, in a sense as a potential objective way to measure speaker distortion, perhaps on some relative scale.