Meridian dsp

After almost two decades of trying to help people set up their systems and speakers I can say that the biggest challenge was to convince them to deal with the room to the fullest extent they can tolerate. Times have changed a bit and people are a little more willing to add some room treatment. There are more good products available now, too. Many can’t or aren’t willing to treat their listening room. That said and having learned my lesson, we decided to design our new speaker line to be used with DSP and room correction. To be clear, DSP does not always include room correction. We feel that system / room integration will likely be more successful with this approach and ultimately lead to customer satisfaction. I admit that I am biased but I believe for good reasons. We still suggest passive room treatment first. Even though our speakers are DSP controlled you won’t see us at an audio show without passive room treatment, unless the shippers loose them.

So, unless you (anyone) have a correctly designed dedicated room and speakers that are correctly designed for that specific room, DSP with room correction is very likely to help with system / room integration. Especially in the bass region which is almost impossible to get right. 

I supposed I could have titled my thread 'Why do they sound so good in the store?' and when I get them home they sound wrong. After around 8 pair (probably more) of full range passive speakers let me down I rolled the dice on a pair of DSP speakers and they make music in my room. I don't get it. They're still speakers in a box with no room correction applied. Did I just get lucky or are DSP's more user/room friendly? 

Steve,
Glad you found speakers that work for you. DSP is actually a broad term. Most good DSP units have many features. They can be used to simply perform just the crossover functions, to complex filtering, to advanced room correction. Before DSP many argued that, done correctly, active crossovers with multi amps yielded the best performance. Others will argue those system are too complicated and difficult to get to work properly. Many will argue that passive crossovers are the only way to go. Passive, active and DSP all have their pros and cons. One of the pros of active and DSP systems is that the drivers are usually directly coupled to the amplifier outputs. There can be substantial losses through passive components. Even with good passive and active crossovers the filters are rather coarse when compared to good DSP. Then there are phase issues...

Sorry for being long winded but my guess is that you like the DSP speakers because the manufacture did their homework and built speakers with not only a good frequency response but also with good phase response, good power response and decent off axis response. The drivers being directly coupled to the amps typically yields a more dynamic presentation. Great mid-range dynamics help make a system sound closer to real music. Good dealer go to great lengths to set up system to show off their products. They usually have lots of equipment and accessories at their disposal. Most of us don't have that luxury. 

Do your new DSP controlled speakers have room correction capabilities? Have you tried using it? Being a designer /manufacturer of DSP controlled speakers with room correction capabilities I'm curious of what your impressions are of correction vs no-correction. 

My speakers have been around awhile, the meridian dsp8000. They have absolute phase adjustment, 5 step axis tilt, bass and treble controls that go in .5 db steps and EBA that delays mid and tweeter response to so all fq's arrive at the same time, it can be turned off. early models ignored time alignment saying listening showed it detrimental to music reproduction however newer models have it. surprisingly with the bass turned down 2 db my system plays within a few db of flat thruout the fq range rolling off from 10khz. I have dsp in roon and have played some with previous speakers, but these work out of the box.