I'm using a LaCie 321 with DDC calibration. The software lets one set luminance, or it will select luminance when the user selects L*. When I calibrated/profiled the monitor, I used DDC and the L* approach. The software selected a luminance value of 187cd/mm. My results indicated that the colour profiling was excellent but brightness and contrast were problematic. There are two fixes: the technically correct one: recalibrate by selecting a lower luminance value such as 120 (which I did NOT do), and the technically wrong one: intervene on the calibration/profiling by exogenously re-adjusting the monitor settings from the monitor front panel. The Lacie 321 does allow one to adjust contrast and brightness independently. Because I knew my problem was related to both and each needed some adjustment, I preferred to test the usefulness of the wrong approach. So I increased the brightness and decreased the contrast relative to the profiled settings. My soft-proofing is now very much more successful ON MY PRINTER, but my approach is "closed-loop" - which I don't mind, because I'm not exporting these images anywhere else but to my printer. The point is, the Lacie 321 does allow independent adjustment of brightness and contrast, and it can be calibrated to relatively low luminance values. I do, nonetheless, reegret the demise of my CRT after 4 years of faithful service. It just started dying and needed to be replaced. There is simply no available CRT good enough to replace it with.