TACT RCS 2.0 Users Group

Mr Lyngdorf is incorrect.

I have both units and have long term experience in this area.

Fact: With the Tact you have no way of knowing what the end result is after correction. When looking at the actual measurements after correction using industry standard mesurement tools (MLSSA, it will be clearly demonstrated that the end result does NOT look like the target curve. Transalated--you are guessing when you pick a target curve.

Doing the exact same thing with the SigTech, you get what you expect---that is, if you tell the SigTech you want a flat response, you get a flat response (that is flat in the sense that the FFT of the time domain is flat).

In addition, the SigTech does NOT require that you place the speakers where you get the flattest bass response. While there may be some benefits to that approach, I can assure you that most of the SigTech installs I am familiar with (hundred of them) have the speakers where, in no particualr order (a)they fit within the rooms decor (b) the optimization between bass response and image depth (usually determined by the distance from the front wall) is considered and (c) customers personal placement preference.

On a more subjective basis, Mr Lyngdorf's comments notwithstanding, I could argue that the bass correction of the Tact sounds worse that the SigTech. I can demonstrate that from about 300Hz up the SigTech give MUCH BETTER response.

All of that said, I would summarize as follows: (a) for a fully function digital preamp with a good D to A converter and the ability to do your own room correction, you pay about $3500. The equivalnet (almost) SigTech (new) cost 3 times that (b) with some care (and some external measurement software) you can get much better sound (MUCH, MUCH, MUCH BETTER)with the Tact than you will EVER get with out one in 98% of the rooms.

While I can (and will) argue that the SigTech is the superior product in terms of sound quality, the Tact beats the pants off of no room correction and in terms of dollars per unit of sonic gain, the Tact wins against the SigTech.
If you can afford a SigTech, get one. If you can't, run, don't walk to your local Tact dealer.

Audioguy123, can you give a general description of the TacT's variation from target correction (which frequencies, how much, etc.) in your experience of measuring it? Thanks.

Drubin--it is not consistent. The one place where it is consistent is in the low end. If you use one of the curves with the boosted base, you actually get flatter base but the problem (as I stated in an ealier post) is that you don't know how much to boost the bass in the target curve (and what slopes to use) to get the correct flat response.

Sorry I can't be more help. There is some stand alone software that you can use with a Tact that by an iterative process you can get the desired result. Try www.ETFacoustics.com.

Hi,

Now I have been working with the TacT for app. 1½ year, I have some experiences on that product. It seems to me, that especially in the bas the improvement in sound is huge. Besides that it is also improving the general sound in terms of naturalness, coherens between bas, midrange and treble, and the general balance between left and right.

It may be right, that the target curve is not telling you the total truth. And so what? As long as you are able to change the sound temperature by just adjusting the target curve I dont see any problems. Do you really think the right system will actually have a totally flat frequency response? Probably not. Because the system is only performing, what you want to measure. Think of f.x. Mark Levinson, which excellent product do have an equalized bass, even that the frequency curve is very flat. The frequency response is unfortunately only the half truth. Or trying different cables. Different sound, but still the same frequency response. A lot of other things counts.

It is important to notice, that according to my experience it is essential, that the correction is based on the same propriety measurement system, not a external system. It is during the design of the measurement system necessary to select between several solutions, and to decide how to measure what we exactly are hearing, is very, very complicated. A lot of AES-papers can document that. And on this very point, the TacT system is indeed very good. Very good similarities between what is measured and how it will sound. From that point of view it is not important how the resulting target curve will look like. The TacT system is NOT a measurement system, but a sound system.

In short, I find the system very hard to live without, because it - to put simple - solves the interaction problems with my listening room, which I never had solved. It will not do a bad speaker perfect, as it requires a very good and expensive speaker to make it possible to registrate the full benefits. By the way the system is also working very well with dipolar speakers fx MartinLogan Prodigy.

Regards
Kim Kruse Petersen, High Fidelity, Denmark

In response to Audioguy 123 on the subject of Sigtech versus TacT, I have to maintain that there is no way the Sigtech with the limited time and frequency resolution can accurately correct for low frequency variations. Then obviously in your case it seems to be desirable to have less correction at lower frequencies. This could be due to some room anomalies that we have not experienced in the many different setups we have made with the 2.0. With regards to the sound quality we have only 3 times heard of customers preferring the Sigtech over the TacT in direct comparison. One of the obstacles we have encountered when selling the 2.0 into studios have been that many studios have tried the Sigtech without success. In every single instance we have demonstrated 2.0 to professionals with previous experience with Sigtech the comments have been hugely in favor of TacT 2.0. Therefore maybe we have become a bit arrogant, just dismissing the Sigtech as old fashioned and obsolete. My apologies for that. But not to the real issue: Anything the Sigtech does the 2.0 can be programmed to do with higher accuracy, except that the Sigtech can correct with higher resolution above 4 KHz – where little or no correction is needed. So when you have a situation where the Sigtech works better in real
life then I would really like to get to the bottom of this. If you send me the measurements for left and right channel made by the 2.0, and also the Mic. Cal. file then I will get some idea. If you like you can
also send the measurements made by your MLSSA measurements system on the Sigtech correction and the TacT correction I will be able to help you get better results. With regards to the TacT not following the measurements made by the MLSSA it is just a question of how the parameters are set on the measurement system. If you tell us how exactly you would like to measure, then we can correct to something that will look flat on that particular set of measurement parameters. I am sure though, that the sound would be worse that when measured with the TacT system.
Please send the measurements to: Lyngdorf@tactaudio.com

Peter Lyngdorf, TacT Audio