DBX 166 - How to calibrate it?

[MiamiBoy]

That's awesome.. i'm gonna do the same. Thank you so much for testing yours, it inspired me to go along.

Mine also behaves normal in dual mono. But as soon as I hit the STEREO LINK button, it changes on 1 of the channels.
So like yours, maybe I don't need to go thru those steps. I can perhaps skip them and go straight to fixing the STEREO LINK issue.. you know where I should start from?
...or what do you think?

 

[radardoug]

Have you RTFM about stereo link? Some units only use the controls of one channel in stereo link. I dont know if this is one of them, but it pays to check.
And reading the manual, this:\
STEREO COUPLE switch and LED. Pushing this in turns the 166 from a dual-mono
unit with two identical, independent sets of controls into a stereo unit . Except for
Sidechain Monitor and Bypass, Channel 2's controls are overriden by Channel 1' s in
the Stereo Couple mode. Note that the detection circuitry senses the true rms
levels of the combined signal, so it is unaffected by phase shift s (or other discre-
pancies) between the channels. Among other benefits, this enables stereo compres -
sion without loss of imaging stability

 

[MiamiBoy]

So that means if stereo link is engaged, then the LED's will show "wrong readings" ? Mine not only does that, but the signal coming out of the unit back into my DAW, shows different levels on ch1 and ch2.

But no, I haven't read the fuckin' manual I don't understand these terms anyways. I make music and I am good at following instructions (as long as I understand them) etc. with a soldering iron.

 

[Script]

I calibrated in dual mono for same behaviour on left and right channels. Then switching to stereo should not offset the channels -- on the contrary, as radardoug explained.

So the unit confirmedly behaves well in dual mono mode? But it goes strange when the stereo link is engaged? Sure?

Faulty stereo link switch, maybe. If problem persists, you need to check the entire sidechains. Other than that we can't help, only wild guess.

 

[MiamiBoy]

Okay cool. If the dual compression is fine/normal, then I won’t mess with it.
I have no idea where to start on how to fix the stereo link. I will definitely do more harm than good if I start any calibration. Thanks for the heads up. I’ll send it to Revive Audio on my next USA trip, hopefully in a few years.