Is DEQX a game changer?

Thanks, Al. A well-reasoned response. I’ve been thinking the same thing. It pencils out alright, but it’s not ideal. I’ll have to keep a watchful eye on the heat during listening sessions and place it somewhere else if it gets to be too much. 

Wanted to thank everyone for their commentary and posts on this piece.  I have one coming, should be here next week.  Looking forward to getting it integrated.

Wondering if any could share their connection setup.  I’ve been attempting to integrate my preamp into the chain, with 0 luck.  I pulled my DAC and inserted the Premate and am not able to get a signal to pass through my preamp.  Sounds/works great without my preamp, connecting my amps directly to the DEQX, but getting the processed signal to pass thru my premamp, no bueno.  It may be something as simple as selecting the correct input, via the DEQX, though I’ve selected “auto” and every input, via the remote.  Any help is greatly appreciated.

Todd, if I understand correctly you are supplying the Premate with a digital input, and when you connect the analog "main speaker" outputs of the Premate to your (monoblock?) amplifiers everything works fine. But when you connect the analog "main speaker" outputs of the Premate to analog inputs of your preamp, and connect the preamp’s analog outputs to your amplifiers, you get nothing.

If that is a correct interpretation, the only possibilities I can think of (assuming you are using similar settings of the Premate in the two cases) are that the preamp’s input select switch is not set to the right input, or there is a connection problem, or the preamp has a problem.

In any event, as you alluded to I suspect the cause of this problem will turn out to be something simple.

Wondering if any could share their connection setup.

FWIW, I use my DEQX HDP-5 as my preamp.

Good luck, and enjoy! Regards,
-- Al

Hi Al and thanks for the quick reply.  Your interpretation is correct.  It does sound quite good without my preamp, but I really like the tubes I have in it, adds a little “warmth” to the overall presentation, so I’m not ready to discard it.  The preamp isn’t super finicky, but confirming that the analog out into the preamp should suffice, has me stumped.