Yeah, at $150 it’s definitely a low-end model, I wouldn’t touch that one with a 10-ft. pole. Did you check the specs? Only 90 dB signal-to-noise with. And no qualification as to A or Z weighting, but it’s probably A weighting, which ignores low- and high-frequency noise. By excluding noise at the frequency extremes, an A-weighted spec can “improve” S/N by as much as 8-10 dB.
People don’t understand how difficult it is to make a high-quality 1/3-octave equalizer. For example AudioControl made some first-class 1/3-octave equalizers in the early-to-mid 90s that listed for $500. They were mono units, which means $1000 for a stereo pair. Twenty years ago.
The thing to understand is that anytime you boost a filter, noise is boosted with it. If your UMC-1 has a S/N on the order of 100 dB (just throwing a number out, I can’t find any specs on it) and you introduce a component with a 90 dB S/N, you’ve raised your noise floor 10 dB right out of the gate just by connecting it to your system. A filter boosted 4 dB at 1000 Hz means another 4 dB S/N loss at that frequency.
So while the price of the AudioControl equalizers seems outrageous, they had a S/N of 112 dB, which is low enough to keep noise introduced after equalization at a minimum. There are also other things that make a superior equalizer such as filter accuracy, variable- or constant-Q filters etc. that I won’t go into here.
If you’re serious about an outboard equalizer I’d recommend the Yamaha YDP2006 digital parametric. It listed for over $2000 when new, but you can commonly find them on ebay for under $200. It will blow that dbx out of the water. In the link in my signature you can find a review. It’s long but you might read through at least the second and third posts. If nothing else you’ll learn a lot about what to look for in a good equalizer.
Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt
