Digital Room Correction For Speakers

The best out there right now is the Trinnov Amethyst. It will do everything for you including bass and sub woofer management. It uses a very special microphone to calibrate the system and it does so from various points in the room. I have been using digital room control since Radomir Bozevic, "Boz" dropped TACT Audio on the world. Lyngdorf was his financial partner at the time. Boz was the brains and the reason TACT failed. Anyway, a system with an ultra high def room control processor will put an identical system without to shame. Controlling over all frequency response is just one small part of it. Making the response of the speakers identical at the listening position probably the most important part of it. Your brain locates a sound by relative volume an time differences between your ears. if some frequencies are louder from one speaker than the other you smear the image. The most important benefit of room control is razor sharp imaging. Being able to equalize the sound to your taste is nice but the imaging is amazing. You still have to do basic things to your room like kill the primary reflections. Is there a down side? Yes. The top notch systems are expensive. The Amethyst is $11,000.

Thanks for your reply in regard to digital room correction. I went with the DSpeaker X4 and am very happy with how it takes care of my slight bass hump around 150 to 200 hz. I do not use sub-woofers so could you please tell me what Amethyst brings to the table.  The X4 was only $3750.00 on sale and greatly improves the sound when I care to use it.  Thanks for your feed-back.

Sam

@lewinskih01 Would you mind giving examples of the following components you use for Acourate file creation?

You need a mic and and mic pre, and analog to digital conversion

I am about to take the plunge in with the Acourate software. I got the following book to lead me through it. I do not have a mic, mic pre and an ADC.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01FURPS40/ref=pe_385040_118058080_TE_M1DP

Certainly don't mind! They are also a consequence of how I got to this point, so let me provide more for perspective.

Years ago I went from to PC as front end, after reading Mitch Barnett's articles on computeraudiophile about using Acourate for room correction. I was hesitant initially, so bought a Dayton EMM-6 calibrated much and a Tascam US-122mkII to connect the mic, convert from analog to digital and connect to the PC. I started with 2-channel digital room correction. I was using my audiophile -channel DAC for playback.

I then wanted to explore multichannel stereo, following Mitch's articles. I purchased a Lynx Hilo as multichannel DAC/ADC, like Mitch had. I still have it.

Uli Brueggemann, the man behind Acourate, recommends using the same device for DAC and ADC. So I use the Hilo. But the Hilo doesn't have a mic pre, so currently I use the Tascam set up so it just passes the analog signal it gets from the mic onto the Hilo analog in.

Depends on the soundcard you use (Hilo in my case), you may or may not need a separate mic pre. Prism Titan, for example, includes mic pres. 

Ulis also recommends not using USB mics. as they are converting analog to digital internally.

Is all this absolutely critical? Dunno! 

BTW, I have the book you linked to and is very good.

Hope this helps!

@lewinskih01 Thanks for the info. Today, with the experience you have gained, what mic, mic pre and ADC would you get for 2 channel only processing?

As an FYI:

In my room small room I will have 2 systems.
https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/7605

My existing KEF LS50 will get a 3-D audio software processor. I was in contact with the following manufacturer and this sounds like something very interesting to try for about $5K. The hardware version of this setup is over $50K but I can try the same functionality with my computer based system.

There is a microphone component that is part of this system along with something called a Babyface Pro http://babyface.rme-audio.de/
that is used to do the binaural microphone input into a computer. I wonder if the microphone and Babyface interface can work with Acourate?

We also noted from the pics you noted that you must be computer savvy. In that case, you may wish to consider our BACCH4Mac sofwatre-based product which is much more affordable than the BACCH-SP. It is designed for computer audiophiles and the same functionality of the BACCH-SP (and more).

You can learn more about BACCH4Mac on this webpage: https://www.theoretica.us/bacch4mac/ and read this critical review by a well-known audio critic: https://www.audiostream.com/content/bacch4mac-3d-audio-playback-system

https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/theoretica-applied-physics-bacch-sp-adio-3d-sound-processor (a thread I created a few weeks ago)

I will place the LS50’s on top of the large rectangular Yamaha NS 5000 speaker (using angled Isoacoustic stands) when playing the 3-D stuff via the LS50’s, otherwise the LS50 will be moved away to a bookshelf. The goal of the Acourate DSP will be to hopefully tame the large Yamaha into this small room. I also use ROON for my digital playback.

If this all works as expected it will be a home run for what I wanted to achieve.