This is a review and detailed measurements of an upgrade for the venerable Behringer Ultra-Drive Pro DCX2496 by Behringer MODs. An upgraded unit was sent to me for testing. The upgrade itself costs £138 in UK and £115 outside UK.
The board fully upgrades the existing DAC board:
I like the clear notations on every subsystem. And the fact that the company has included measurements to show efficacy of the upgrade -- rarity!
Note that unlike the stock unit that goes up to some 10 volts (clipped) the upgrade's max output is about 4.5 volts. I am told by the designer, Simon Ashton that this is to make it more compatible with hi-fi equipment.
Behringer MODs DCX 2496 Upgrade DAC Measurements
Note: for this review I found the high and low pass menu options and defeated them (they didn't impact the measurements of either units). Let's start with our usual Dashboard with the unit configured to accept AES/EBU balanced digital input:
The stock unit had a SINAD of 94 dB. Here, one channel goes up to 96 and the other to 99 dB. Distortion amount is not changed a lot but noise has gone way down:
You can see the same in how the upgraded board maintains its SINAD much better at lower output levels:
Company's testing shows much better IMD distortion and I can verify the same:
Multitone is improved by similar amounts:
Here is the stock version (was missing in the original review so I measured it last night):
You can see the increasing sidebands as frequencies increase which is missing in the upgrade.
Linearity and jitter are more or less the same:
There must be more out of band noise to cause the upgrade to have similar THD+N vs frequency (wideband measurement):
Behringer MODs DCX 2496 Upgrade DAC+ADC Measurements
In case you are using the unit as analog in/out, as with the stock unit, I measured the unit in this configuration. Here is our dashboard:
This is 3 to 4 dB better than the stock. Sweeping the levels you see the superior performance yet again:
Once more, IMD distortion measurements show the most gap relative to stock version:
Same for noise performance:
Finally, wideband measurements show the same performance:
Conclusions
The Behringer MODs upgrade clearly takes performance of DCX2496 by a full step or two higher. This is most visible in noise and IMD distortion tests. The former is important as you make trips in and out of digital domain. Last thing you want is substitute response errors for hiss and noise when deploying EQ.
As a side note, Simon was a joy to work with. Original plan was for me to do the upgrade and Simon volunteered to send me a fully upgraded unit. And even created a video on how to configure the Behringer for full pass through mode.
The only negative is that the upgrade is a bit involved so you better read the instructions to make sure it is for you.
I am going to recommend the Behringer MODs DCX upgrade.
----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
The board fully upgrades the existing DAC board:
I like the clear notations on every subsystem. And the fact that the company has included measurements to show efficacy of the upgrade -- rarity!
Note that unlike the stock unit that goes up to some 10 volts (clipped) the upgrade's max output is about 4.5 volts. I am told by the designer, Simon Ashton that this is to make it more compatible with hi-fi equipment.
Behringer MODs DCX 2496 Upgrade DAC Measurements
Note: for this review I found the high and low pass menu options and defeated them (they didn't impact the measurements of either units). Let's start with our usual Dashboard with the unit configured to accept AES/EBU balanced digital input:
The stock unit had a SINAD of 94 dB. Here, one channel goes up to 96 and the other to 99 dB. Distortion amount is not changed a lot but noise has gone way down:
You can see the same in how the upgraded board maintains its SINAD much better at lower output levels:
Company's testing shows much better IMD distortion and I can verify the same:
Multitone is improved by similar amounts:
Here is the stock version (was missing in the original review so I measured it last night):
You can see the increasing sidebands as frequencies increase which is missing in the upgrade.
Linearity and jitter are more or less the same:
There must be more out of band noise to cause the upgrade to have similar THD+N vs frequency (wideband measurement):
Behringer MODs DCX 2496 Upgrade DAC+ADC Measurements
In case you are using the unit as analog in/out, as with the stock unit, I measured the unit in this configuration. Here is our dashboard:
This is 3 to 4 dB better than the stock. Sweeping the levels you see the superior performance yet again:
Once more, IMD distortion measurements show the most gap relative to stock version:
Same for noise performance:
Finally, wideband measurements show the same performance:
Conclusions
The Behringer MODs upgrade clearly takes performance of DCX2496 by a full step or two higher. This is most visible in noise and IMD distortion tests. The former is important as you make trips in and out of digital domain. Last thing you want is substitute response errors for hiss and noise when deploying EQ.
As a side note, Simon was a joy to work with. Original plan was for me to do the upgrade and Simon volunteered to send me a fully upgraded unit. And even created a video on how to configure the Behringer for full pass through mode.
The only negative is that the upgrade is a bit involved so you better read the instructions to make sure it is for you.
I am going to recommend the Behringer MODs DCX upgrade.
----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
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