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toenail
02-17-2005, 03:33 AM
I recently picked up a Berhinger Feedback Destroyer Pro for use as a parametric EQ with my sub after hearing they would be discontinued. After a few hours of fiddling I must echo the sentiments others before me regarding bang for the buck. I've had some room issues due to limited placement options and have always been bothered by the "hot spots" in the frequency response curve. They served to limit overall output level settings and just plain sound bad when listening to bass scales on Jazz recordings and other material. I was able to rid myself of these hot spots and achieve the desired frequency response I was looking for, but I found an added bonus as well. Removing the unwanted frequencies really opened up the sound of the mains during 2.1 listening and removed a cloud from in front of the center channel in 5.1 mode. I listen to the system primarily in 2.1 configuration with CD's and digital cable radio. I was amazed at the amount of additional detail and imaging accuracy that was revealed by making a few changes with the BFD. Makes me want to go through and listen to all of my old stuff again to hear what I've been missing. Set to 5.1 for movies I noticed that the cohesion between the center and the mains/surrounds was improved quite a bit. Sound now transfers seamlessly from side to side and front to back without any detectable difference as it passes from center to surround. I had always suspected the center channel of being a bit dull in frequency response, perhaps missing something on the high end. Turns out it was just stuffed with low frequency over run from the sub.

Anyhow, a thanks to the people who've shone the light on this before me, especially Sonnie Parker and Ken Bruce for their thoroughly detailed write-ups about this unit. At $100 you really can't go wrong.

Woochifer
02-17-2005, 03:55 PM
Congrats, and welcome to the club! If not for the BFD, I probably would not have kept my subwoofer. Plugging the thing in out of the box, it sounded horrendous and based on measurements that I'd taken with my mains, I knew that the room acoustics caused this. If I lowered the levels to make the boominess more tolerable, it made the rest of the bass sound anemic. If I raised the levels so that the rest of the bass range was at the appropriate level, I had to brace myself for those peaks that would just shake the room and pound my head.

Fortunately, I had the BFD up and running less than 24 hours after I got the subwoofer, so I didn't have to listen to that boomy mess for very long. I ordered the BFD at the same time as the sub, and I just had to read Sonny Parker's VERY useful website and round up the parts that I needed to connect the thing to my system (the 1/4"-to-RCA adaptors, and an extra interconnect).

http://www.snapbug.ws/bfd.htm

The BFD evened everything out and made the subwoofer do what it was intended to do. Acoustic bass really highlights the improvements that the BFD makes. The room modes are most evident with acoustic bass because everything will go along just fine until the instrument hits a particular note that sounds 2-3x louder than the others.

After I installed the sub and the BFD, I also wanted to listen to my music collection over again. More so than anything else, it really added weight to acoustic music. And of course, it added to the fun of movie watching. Relieving my main speakers from having to produce the deep bass also made the midrange more coherent overall. Without the BFD, I hardly had time to notice what the sub was doing to the mids and highs because I was wincing from how boomy the bass got when the source hit specific notes.

At $100, the BFD is about a huge a bargain as I've seen in my years tweaking with audio systems. Behringer has not discontinued the BFD altogether, but they are about to replace the current model with a new version that costs $200. Still a worthwhile purchase at that price, but not the no-brainer bargain that it currently is.