Room correction room system vs ears….

@thomastrouble  A $10,000 system can sound fantastic too!

Here is my friend's system that I thoroughly enjoy:

VPI SuperScout TT w/Dynavector 20X2 H

McIntosh C20 version 2 pre-amp

RAM RM-9 amp

Kyocera X310 CD player (new caps)

Von Schweikert VR 35 Export speakers

Grover Huffman Empress cabling throughout

Sure, it's older and now obtainable as used gear only.  But for $10K, try to do better and the speakers are designed to be within one foot from the front wall, room friendly.  

Many of the DSP non-subscribers must have marvelously paired speakers and rooms. Somehow every room I've ever used did have plenty of issues, bass mostly.

While plenty of treatments (to the point of needing to close one's eyes) do work, I could not happily live with my current system without the DSPeaker Anti-Mode 2.0 room correction unit with digital equalization.

While it's not a bad room and the sound is anchored by Raidho D2 floorstanders,  the room still had an effect on bass flatness and response, and the Raidhos have a small bass 80-120 upper bass hump that needs tamed (at least to me).

With room correction performed, and very judicious and minor equalization, the speakers are very flat (+-2) from 30Hz-10kHz. The difference is stunning. All of the Raidho resolution and tonality remains with the excess bass removed.

Anyone who has heard the A/B comparison with the bypass on or off has immediately noticed the more open transparent sound with room correction and DSP activated, and with true flat bass to 30Hz. It sounds great, and my DSPeaker unit is a non-negotiable 'keeper' in my system.

I am a devotee of high quality DSP room correction.  I have done some room treatment, heavy curtains behind the speakers, overstuffed furniture, etc., but my system didn't come into focus until I had programmed my DEQX DSP room correction and reprogrammed and reprogrammed it.  Right off the bat I decided to sacrifice seven or eight dB of woofer sensitivity to enable equalizing the bass by pulling down peaks instead of attempting to boost dips.  This was possible because I had all kinds of headroom in the bass, 104 dB/w/m sensitivity woofers  coupled with a 300 watt amplifier for the four ohm load of the woofer.

Programming the DEQX room correction was a monumental task for me, but I kept refining it until my fully horn loaded, triamplified, DIY speakers sounded quite good to me.  Then I read about company approved DEQXperts one could engage to give the DEQX DSP a truly professional programming by means of connecting PCs and holding a Skype call to get the work done.  I hired DEQXpert, Larry Owens.  He turned out to be brilliant at the task.  After performing speaker calibration, speaker correction, time and phase correction and finally room correction My DIY speakers sounded absolutely splendid to my ears.  Larry hit it out of the park.  This was 2017, and I have had no need to change anything with the DEQX.  The system has a smooth frequency response from the low 20s up to 20 kHz.  It is properly time and phase aligned and the crossovers at 200Hz and 8 kHz (16th order) are inaudible to me.

I have some experience with automatic DSP room correction with my Marantz AV pre/pro in my HT system, and while it wrought some improvement it is in no way comparable to the results that can be achieved with a high end DSP  like the DEQX.