digital eq/room correction trade-offs

Thanks Kirkus and Samujohn. I agree that it's all signal processing and it's all how well you can use the tool. I guess my thinking is that these systems are supposed to self-configure, but my understanding is that they don't do that very well. So you end up tweaking them. And even with lots of experience running mixing boards in live sound situations, I'm not convinced that I wouldn't just be winging it with these new systems. Not to mention the problems introduced with additional jitter as the signal gets switched back and forth from digital to analog to digital to analog.

To Samujohn's point -- I get the idea of elimminating an analog stage and going with a digital pre, but that's going pretty far out on a limb before I even know what the technology can do, and given how many more options there are for nice analog pre's versus the handful of digital ones. The answer is probably a home audition of one of these systems to see how it works for me...

If you can get a home audition--hearing for yourself in your system is always the best way to decide. Every room and system (and listener) responds differently and priorities differ.

My experience with digital room correction (RCS) has been very positive. A friend brought over a Tact preamp and we set it up and it was as if a blanket had been removed from the speakers. I also though I had a good room, but measurements (especially in the bass) showed otherwise. My speakers have changed twice since then, but the RCS remains (Tact 2.2x and two 2150s).

Main benefits are in frequency response. The bass humps and suckouts that most of us have learned to live with are gone, which creates a subjective experience of opening up the mids. And time alignment helps add clarity, depth and realism to the soundstage. The only trade-off is a slight lack of warmth and bloom. These are very slight IMO, and insignificant compared to the advantages.

A year ago I thought maybe I was missing something with the likely recent advances in digital conversion, so I bought a $5K tube DAC and $4K amp to substitute for the Tact amp. Yes it was slightly more liquid, but less open and detailed so they were quickly sold (actually, I kept the amp for another system). There is a wonderful advantage to keeping the signal digital all the way to the speaker.

If analog or SACD is your main thing, the trade-offs with RCS might not be worth it -- hard to say. For me it wasn't and I sold my SACD, as my CD with RCS sounded about as good overall as SACD without. Depends on your room and listening preferences.

The presets are quite good by themselves, but heck, we're audiophiles and we like to tweak. I've tweaked my correction curves to fit my listening priorities, and also to have alternate options for different recordings (ie, some have too much bass for my taste, etc.) I've also got power supply, etc. mods to the preamp and amp which further increase the fidelity and minimize the digital conversion artifacts, but I could have happily lived without these.

In the end, different strokes for different folks -- but try to experience it in your system. You may be surprised. Products from Tact and Lyngdorf and Behold, etc. have really upped the ante.

I was a straight-wire-with-gain guy(using a modded Dahlquist DQLP-1 to bi-amp my system) for 25 years. My last attenuator was a Placette Passive Linestage. I eschewed any signal manipulation, analog or digital, until reading some reviews about the TacT RCS products/algorhithms. If the(pickier than I) live-music-listeners at TAS thought it was transparent, I figured I'd try one(the 2.2X). Now I couldn't live without it. Replacing it's power supply with the MauiMods FRED/Sanyo OSCON unit took everything(system-wide) to an even more dynamic, controlled and transparent level. A TacT RCS would replace your present pre, with fully differential and single-ended inputs/outputs. If your CDP has digital output: you could feed the pre directly from it's transport, eliminating the CDP's DAC. Unless you rode the "short bus" to school: set up and operation are a piece of cake. If you go TacT, there's no going back!

Well, I asked, I should be prepared to suffer the consequences! Thanks to all for the info and suggestions. Now I guess I get to go on one of these escapades that we all do in this hobby to try out the new thing!

I'm also interested in this.

Richards/Rodman: how do you have your TacTs connected? Are you taking a digital signal straight into the TacT and using its DAC (effectively using it as a preamp too), and from the TacT in analog to the amp? Or using an external DAC after the Tact?

I measured my room's response and seems to be rather good, and this has me wondering how big a gain I might get from RCS.

Thanks!