About 2 years ago, I attended an Atlanta Audiophile Society meeting w/ the owner of Innersound. He (Sanders) had on display a Behringer Ultracurve EQ (31 band digital EQ). He said every system needed it. Using a calibrated microphone in a listening position, you could balance the sound of the speakers.

This appealed to me tremendously, mainly due to the fact that the room I had my speakers (Magnepan 1.6s) had me placing one speaker in the corner, the other speaker with a big open space on the outside of it. The speakers were very unbalanced. I purchased it and placed it in my system. It was amazing the difference it made, but alas, I'm jinxed... At about 25-30 dB below the signal, I had a hum (60 Hz) that I could not get rid of, so I removed it from my system.

Now, with the 990, in a new room (very symmetrical), I'm thinking about using it again (just for the mains). I have a few questions:

1. Has anyone had experience with the Ultracurve?

2. Is there a way to use the Optical output to get just the front left/front right speaker information to the Ultracurve? I would hate to convert the signal from digital to analog (SACD/DVD-A player) to digital to analog (990) back to digital to analog (Ultracurve).

3. The Ultracurve has balanced inputs. My amplifier (Citation 7.1) does not. If the optical transfer is out, can I use XLR cables from 990 to Ultracurve and my Tributaries interconnects from the Ultracurve to the Citation? Does this even matter?

Thanks,

EP