I’m a novice when it comes the use of EQ so please forgive my elementary questions. Roon has what seems to be a nice parametric EQ through Muse. My DAC also has EQ options, but they’re more limited. Is the decision on which to use as simple as going with the EQ with more flexibility (i.e. Roon) or are there implementation or other considerations I should be thinking about? Also, I would assume that using EQ in Roon and in the DAC is dumb right?
It’s better to use either Roon or DAC for EQ, not both. If you use both, the combined EQ curve will not be directly visible. Which one you should use depends on your system. If your Roon server machine is up to the task, you should probably use Roon. But if you use a low power machine and if the DAC functionality is sufficient for your use, offloading the DSP to hardware may be better. Using the DAC may also be better if you use other software players, besides Roon.
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Using EQ in both would be rather pointless and more likely to lead to clipping, so use it in one place or the other.
If you often play to that DAC from something other than Roon, and DAC’s EQ is sufficient, I’d use that just so that you do not have to keep switching things on and off. Otherwise, set it up in Roon (ideally, with some convolution filters as well).
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Yes. I agree with all the above.
If you are using multiple music servers then using the DAC EQ option is probably best.
If just using Roon and you have Roon server running on a reasonable computer then offloading the task to Roon Muse would probably be best.
Roon PEQ is pretty versatile and easy to use and using it would take the computing load away from your DAC and possibly sound better.
After you’ve tipped your toes in the PEQ well, then moving on to convolution filters as @Boris_Molodyi has mentioned, is the logical next step.
Good luck with it.
Kind regards,
Peter
