Members aw_dee_o Posted October 9, 2007 Members Share Posted October 9, 2007 I stumbled across a great deal today and these two pieces were included in the bundle. I've downloaded the manuals from Peavey ( who has the BEST product support in the world !!!) and will take a look at them when i get a chance. With that in mind, i was wondering if anyone has ever worked with any of these pieces? I know that they are quite old and use early technology for this type of product, as they came out circa 1990 or so. From what i can tell, these units are very similar to some of the newer digital EQ's / room correction devices, but probably far simpler and cruder in operation. I saw some comments pertaining to their complexity of use, but that's about it. Outside of the Peavey manuals, the only info i can find out about them was that they were reviewed by David Mellor in "Sound on Sound" magazine in March of 1990. I've contacted that mag to see if i can buy a copy of that issue / review, but no response yet. Any info or help appreciated. Sean Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members SoundMan Posted October 9, 2007 Members Share Posted October 9, 2007 Well, me of course. I'm quite familiar with them. What do you want to know. I will tell you one difference between the Autograph and today's units. The Autographs are digitally controlled analog EQ's. That means the signal is never converted to the digital domain. I'm not sure what that means to you, but it is a big difference between the two. I guess the big thing would be the Autograph has a lower noise floor because of this. Also, if you just got these, take the lid off immediately and check around the battery for leakage. Those old Ni-Cads were notorious for leaking on the circuit board and eating traces. Get this taken care of ASAP! SoundMan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members aw_dee_o Posted October 9, 2007 Author Members Share Posted October 9, 2007 Thanks for the info!!! I really appreciate it, especially knowing that the signal remains in the analogue domain. I'm not a huge fan of "digitizing" most audio signals, especially with mass produced gear. I'll pull the lids now and take a look. These things were sitting in someone's garage for who knows how long. Other than that, i was looking for tips / tricks on using this unit, as learning shortcuts and what these units can do / can't do from end users would be of great help. I'm sure that i'll have some questions about these, so it's good to know that you're out there lurking Sean Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members agedhorse Posted October 9, 2007 Members Share Posted October 9, 2007 It was a cute product, I remember them well. For some reason, I recall they used some sort of National Semiconductor analog filter platform, don't recall the digital control aspect though. I don't recall the performance or nois floor to be all that great though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members SoundMan Posted October 9, 2007 Members Share Posted October 9, 2007 I'm not sure what your criteria for performance means, I was comparing it to any modern digital device. With a noise floor of -95dBu or so, and a THD of less than 0.005%, I think you'd be hard pressed to find better. Especially in the early 90's for the price the Autograph sold at. SoundMan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members agedhorse Posted October 9, 2007 Members Share Posted October 9, 2007 Were there 2 versions? I see a computer controlled version but I recall thatthey were only MIDI controlled. I also remember them being out in the 80's. Am I thinking of a different product? Maybe only 15 bands? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members dboomer Posted October 9, 2007 Members Share Posted October 9, 2007 Yes ... 2 versions. A master and a slave unit, both MIDI controlled Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members SoundMan Posted October 9, 2007 Members Share Posted October 9, 2007 Actually, before that, there was the original Autograph and Automate. Then the improved Autograph II, CEQ 280 and CEQ280R. The CEQ's were just the install version. SoundMan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members agedhorse Posted October 9, 2007 Members Share Posted October 9, 2007 That's it, the Autograph and Automate. I think it was the original ones that suffered from limited performance. I recall comparing to the Yamaha 2031's and the Yamaha units were vastly superior. Even now the Yamahas are pretty good performers but the costs on everything else came way down around them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Dookietwo Posted October 10, 2007 Members Share Posted October 10, 2007 I stumbled across a great deal today and these two pieces were included in the bundle. I've downloaded the manuals from Peavey ( who has the BEST product support in the world !!!) and will take a look at them when i get a chance. With that in mind, i was wondering if anyone has ever worked with any of these pieces? I know that they are quite old and use early technology for this type of product, as they came out circa 1990 or so. From what i can tell, these units are very similar to some of the newer digital EQ's / room correction devices, but probably far simpler and cruder in operation. I saw some comments pertaining to their complexity of use, but that's about it. Outside of the Peavey manuals, the only info i can find out about them was that they were reviewed by David Mellor in "Sound on Sound" magazine in March of 1990. I've contacted that mag to see if i can buy a copy of that issue / review, but no response yet.Any info or help appreciated. Sean Sean Should you happen to use the auto eq when you are done "BE SURE!" to unplug the mic. (Read and follow the manual)I seem to remember them feeding back if you didn't. The auto eq does give repeated results but remember it is time blind and it is what it is. There is a feedback finder that puts a cursor on the freq that is feeding back and you can then notch it out. I seem to remember it working well. You'll need a midi cable between the two if you want to use both. I remember them as a solid quiet unit. On some units the back light failed and there was no replacement for it. At least at the time I checked for one.DO Check the battery. Important!I liked the ones I had. Dookietwo (edit) Should you make a custom curve in the auto rta mode remember this is how you want the system to sound after eqing not what you want to take out/add. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members SoundMan Posted October 10, 2007 Members Share Posted October 10, 2007 I couldn't really find much info on the Yamaha's, were they digital? Did they have any special features, like auto equalization or being able to save curves? If it's analog, then we certainly made EQ's that were better performers than the Autographs, they just didn't have the other things that made the Autographs cool. SoundMan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members dboomer Posted October 10, 2007 Members Share Posted October 10, 2007 Even now the Yamahas are pretty good performers but the costs on everything else came way down around them. When we tested about 40 different brands a few years ago the Yamaha 2031B was one of the poorest performers in the bunch. http://www.roaddog.com/bink/geq_roundup.php Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members agedhorse Posted October 10, 2007 Members Share Posted October 10, 2007 I couldn't really find much info on the Yamaha's, were they digital? Did they have any special features, like auto equalization or being able to save curves? If it's analog, then we certainly made EQ's that were better performers than the Autographs, they just didn't have the other things that made the Autographs cool.SoundMan They were analog eq's. There were many better analog perfromers than the Autographs but true they lacked the features. The interesting thing about the Autographs, the early digital crossover/processors that Peavey made was that it was a glance into a company who LOOKED like they were firmly entrenched in the futire of big pro audio. Lots of really cutting edge technology, clever applications etc. The sad thing is that in hindsight they wasted a lot of great opportunities and fell back to MI audio as to the future of their "pro audio" offerings. I think there is a lot to learn from this... just having the best product or the best ideas isn't going to make you successful in an area if you don't have commitment and long term vision. I'm afraid this may be repeated again with the shedding of Crest Audio's (owned by Peavey) large format mixing consoles, and with the lack of adoption of both the Versarray and the VSX speaker processors. Both appear to be excellent products but lacking some kind of cohesive vision in their overall future of "PRO" audio. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members agedhorse Posted October 10, 2007 Members Share Posted October 10, 2007 When we tested about 40 different brands a few years ago the Yamaha 2031B was one of the poorest performers in the bunch.http://www.roaddog.com/bink/geq_roundup.php For some reason they got a bad rap early on and I have not found this to be true at all. I just tested one and did not see any HF boost set flat. Looking at the amplitude/phase plots, I suspect there are some measurement errors as I would expect a leading phase shift accompanying the high frequency boost which there is not. This is most unusual and very difficult to achieve in the analog domain. The "death to 100" test is pretty silly on a unit that comes equipped with a second order variable high pass filter. This test should have been done with the correct feature. Just because most of the other units did not have that feature shows that Yamaha was thinking about high pass applications with inteligence. Many of the other tests are pretty dumb when compared with the real world. Wider filters may be a benefit when using the eq for touching up a reasonably good system, I see nothing in the response curves that jump out as bad. In fact, the aggrigate filter responses were probably close to the most uniform of the bunch. How many of you would find the need to do 12dB of cut with 12dB of boost on either side? Just a dumb excercise IMO. Oh, and as a line driver, +24dBm no problem and stable into .01uF of load capacitance. With the output transformer I hung 1000 feat of wire onto the output with no problem at all. I think perhaps a more real world test of parameters that affect normal operation would show less opinionated results on many of the units present at the test. Some of the response curves on the very expensive eq's suffered way more than the Yamaha's did but my comments apply to those as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members SoundMan Posted October 10, 2007 Members Share Posted October 10, 2007 Regardless of the "real world" validity of that test, you have to admit, those are dramatically different results between what appears to be on the outside, similar devices. I assume we can attribute some of the stranger results to those being digital devices with strange algorithms. I'm not sure how those test results translate to "real world" results, maybe the more accurate device sounds better, maybe it doesn't...maybe that weirdness is what makes it sound good to some. SoundMan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members dboomer Posted October 10, 2007 Members Share Posted October 10, 2007 Since in the real world almost everything is a unique event it's hard to design tests. There are some that would probably never happen but since all units were subjected to them you can see how all units perform. You can dispute the findings .. but they were all done at the same time with the same equipment. To be perfectly fair we only had one sample of each unit and we could have had a defective unit at that time ... but that goes for all of them. As far as filter width ... the Yamaha had the widest filters of anything tested. That would make it the poorest candidate for eliminating feedback (without shreading the rest of the sound). see attachment Jim - are the filters in the autograph almost identical to those in the EQ31FX? and ... yes ... the digital ones can and do look different because in actuallity they are just a set of parametric filters made to look like a GEQ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members agedhorse Posted October 10, 2007 Members Share Posted October 10, 2007 Wider filters are often ideal when dealing with room acoustics though, especially when you are starting with a speaker box that is free from all kinds of peaks. How often do you find that you are dropping adjacent bands because the filter is not wide enough? In this application, the wider filters may end up working better. Testing something outside of resonable conditions does absolutely nothing for the applications where those conditions do not apply. For example the death to 100 test is just dumb because the proper way to accomplish this high pass functions with a high pass filter which on the Yamaha works better than any of the other eqs that must accomplish this with bandpass sliders. If course this isn't the graph that is shown. Same thing with the full cut on one slider and full boost on adjacent sliders. If you do this in the real world, you probably should just leave the eq bypassed because you have a poor understanding of how things work. Same applies to amplifier tests that go down to 5Hz... an amp will (and should) NEVER see this in the real world because the speaker would never survive either. Same for testing amplifiers at continuous full power at 20kHz... this is an unrealsitic demand as well, no high frequency device(s) could handle this for more than a few seconds. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members dboomer Posted October 10, 2007 Members Share Posted October 10, 2007 Wider filters are often ideal when dealing with room acoustics though My point exactly ... GEQs are too wide to deal with Feedback but OK for room acoustics. Testing something outside of resonable conditions does absolutely nothing for the applications where those conditions do not apply. For example the death to 100 test is just dumb And it says so ... but how many times do you see graphics with the bottom few sliders dumped? I do a lot. I would say it's common practice and now as this test proves it's not a good way to do it. And then there are guys that turn on the HP filters in their power amps on top of it ... stupid! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members dboomer Posted October 12, 2007 Members Share Posted October 12, 2007 This is NOT the way to do it ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members agedhorse Posted October 12, 2007 Members Share Posted October 12, 2007 This is NOT the way to do it ... Not sure I follow you... too much color in (on) the monitor? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members soul-x Posted October 12, 2007 Members Share Posted October 12, 2007 Not sure I follow you... too much color in (on) the monitor? Look at the EQs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members agedhorse Posted October 12, 2007 Members Share Posted October 12, 2007 Look at the EQs. Missed the bottom bands. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Dark Ice Posted October 12, 2007 Members Share Posted October 12, 2007 Yeah, that monitor is colouring the sound way too much! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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