First off, let me say that I have no experience with any other DSP units, I am not a pro, and I have no ability to take fancy measurements, so take this all with a grain of salt.
I recently purchased a Peavey VSX26 for my church, it is taking care of our processing for a pair of EAW AS300e and LA400. With the amount of difficulty I had finding useful information on this unit, I thought I’d share what I know now having one in use.
I bought a ‘demo’ unit for a $50 discount, it came with a manual that was labeled as ‘Preliminary'. I downloaded the latest firmware (v1.03) from the Peavey website.
The VSX26 is pretty easy to use; it has buttons to go to each of the main functions and a navigation wheel to change settings for each function as well as select which input/output you are using. All parameters are controllable. The first screen you see upon start-up is a routing matrix where any combination of inputs -> outputs can be selected. The standard functions are available: compression and delay on all channels, 27 band GEQ on A and B inputs, high and low pass filters (all standard types, 6 – 48 db/oct) on all outputs, 5 band parametric EQ on all outputs, all are fully programmable, no limitations by pre-configured templates or anything like that.
I have seen some information that says an RTA, which doesn’t seem to be implemented yet. The computer interface software is still non-existent; although, as easy as it was to use, I don’t see that as a really big deal (esp. for $450).
A couple features that are working that I like:
The USB jack works perfectly and allows me to keep a backup of the settings on the USB flash drive I always have around, no need to worry about lugging computer along just to backup the DSP (I didn’t try to hook a computer to it to see how/if that worked). It is a 3-input unit, allowing aux-fed subs, the mic input on the front panel needs to be used for the third input, and there is no compression or GEQ available for this input, but that shouldn’t be a big deal for aux-fed subs. Input ‘A’ can be configured as an AES/EBU digital input, not something I plan to use or could test, but an interesting feature none the less . . . could be useful with a DM1000 or TT24, keep out one D/A to A/D cycle . . .
The unit did add a barely perceptible amount of noise to the total system. When I say ‘barely perceptible’, I mean that it was difficult tell the difference over the building’s/existing system’s noise floor (I did the install at 11:00 pm and was the only one there), not audible at all during Sunday morning. The signal chain is currently as follows: CR1604VLZ-PRO (soon to be replaced with an O1V96) -> Rane ME15b (for BEs) -> VSX26 -> RMX amps (1450 and 1850HD). Like I said, noise is not a big issue, but there is enough that it could become a problem with poor gain staging, I know that is always the case, but it seems to me that it is more often the case with digital gear (admittedly, I only use cheap digital gear).