Hey VINCE@SPECK RE: Speck 316 EQ

[wiz1der]

Hey Vince, or anyone with info on this unit.

I have gathered from reading different newsgroup postings that the 316 was the lower end model with "less expensive" parts, and that it was discontinued because it didn't catch on to the portable mixer (i.e. mackie) market it was intended for.

I just bought one the other day, pretty much brand new. Is there anything i can do off the top of your head to improve this unit?

Also, any schemo's you have would be greatly appreciated. I love the idea of having 16 channels of speck eq in one 3u box!!

:sam: Here's to Vince and a great company of quality products!

 

[Vince@Speck]

Thanks for the kind words.

The 316 EQ was a design based on our higher priced EQ16.

Here's archived info on both
http://www.speck.com/oldproducts/s316.html
http://www.speck.com/oldproducts/eq16_2.shtml

Both have been out-of-production for a long time.

The original target market for this EQ (back in 1992) was the Mackie 1604 customer. I believed they would be good candidates for a low priced 16 channel EQ. I was wrong. Most 1604 customers truly believed that the 1604 gave them everything they wanted in a small mixer...right up until the day they realized that it didn't give them everything they wanted. By that time, the customer wasn't really interested in buying an add-on EQ and most traded in their mixer for something else. There is a happy ending though, the 316 found another market and did well.

Because of the PC design, there isn't much room for mods. I had to get a 3 band sweepable EQ into a PC footprint of less than 1" x 5"... not much room! You could upgrade the output IC on each channel with your favorite "Gucci" IC. I still happen to believe the standard 5532 works just fine as an output driver. You could play around with R's and C's to tweak the frequencies, but it would be tedious work because the surface mount pots cover some of the parts. What the heck, open it up some day and see how you feel about working on it.

Regards,

Vince Poulos
Speck Electronics
www.speck.com

 

[wiz1der]

[quote author="Vince@Speck"]
The 316 EQ was a design based on our higher priced EQ16.

[/quote]

Hey Vince, What were some of the differences between these two units? was it just higher grade parts? or totally different designs?

 

[Vince@Speck]

[quote author="wiz1der"][quote author="Vince@Speck"]
The 316 EQ was a design based on our higher priced EQ16.

[/quote]

Hey Vince, What were some of the differences between these two units? was it just higher grade parts? or totally different designs?[/quote]


Same circuit. Same parameters. The EQ16 used Wima caps, the 316 used Panasonic caps. The EQ16 used seperate PB boards for each channel (more designing real estate), the 316 used one large PB board (less real estate). The EQ16 had a much larger power supply.


The main difference was that the EQ16 was available with 16 "stereo" EQ channels. The 316 was only availabe as mono channels. The EQ16 with the 16 stereo Eq's was originaly offered as an add-on to our Xtramix line mixer.

One nice feature of the 316 was if you plugged your input source into an "odd" numbered channel (like channel #1), plugged into the output of the adjactent "even" numbered channel (line channel #2), you would have 6 band parametic EQ.

Regards,

Vince Poulos
Speck Electronics