DSP- One person’s experience
Among the very few premises to which all audiophiles would surely agree, is that good sound is often largely determined by the quality of the room in which the sound is being reproduced. Not far behind that premise is the general agreement that the nature of the specific speaker being used is also a large determinant to the resultant sound in a specific room. If it were easy to get great sound from any installation, there would be far fewer audiophiles reading columns such as this in an effort to maximize their listening experience. Acoustic suspension, ported box, transmission line, multifocal arrays, planar dipole, acoustic dipole, ribbons, and on and on are now widely offered speaker designs. Each offers strengths and limitations that need to be carefully optimized in the hope that the best sound for a given speaker in a given room can be obtained. There may be those who are fortunate and can achieve excellent placement of speakers in their particular room with wondrous sonic results. Whether done by “voweling” in, or obeying certain time-honored physical relationships or speaker placement to room dimensions, or intuition, or Quiji board, some folks are simply fortunate in that the maximum extraction of good sound from their speakers in their room can be achieved relatively easily. This does not mean that small changes of speaker location do not matter and that any old placement works just fine. That is rarely the case. Rather, these folks have been able to get satisfactory results by trial and error and careful acoustic observation. Sometimes these efforts are done in conjunction with room treatments of various sorts; some more costly and others not. Still, they are the lucky ones. For many of us, such good fortune is elusive, and thus we seek the use of other tools in an effort to obtain great sound from our gear.
One such tool that has become available at low cost is digital signal processing, or DSP. DSP can be employed as expensive outboard components, but is also readily available on many inexpensive receivers with multiple speaker surround installations. If you have a tendency to look down your nose at a 5 speaker, Blue- Ray, 1 box audio video system that can be optimized to any room with the push of a button for under $1000, you may want to think again as there is a reason that for most people, the extraordinary value that exists in those products is the very thing that is killing the high end, and not too subtly I would add.
Let’s start by asking the obvious question: who might obtain the greatest benefit from employing DSP in a high-end system, and who would not? For me, the answer starts with consideration of the most basic of all properties in any audio system- frequency response. After years of perspiration, inspiration and education, my first thought is that if you are fortunate to have a nearly ideal frequency response at the listening position, you may not benefit from DSP. There have been countless blog hours devoted to supporting and refuting the claims of what an ideal frequency response is, and thus I will share my view and state that in general, it approximates what B&K published a long time ago as typified in the curve shown here:
Two things are clear from this curve. First, it should be obvious that I am not a proponent of a flat frequency response in the listening position. For my taste, most audio systems are frankly too bright on top (some painfully so). Second, I learned a long time ago from Jason Bloom (of Apogee fame) that a mild enhancement of 2-4 dB in the 40-100 Hz region was euphonically pleasing and the B&K graphs reflects this, in part. The B&K graph is by no means carved in stone. My own system tends to be slightly flatter in the 300-10KHz range and slightly more rolled off from 10KHz-20KHz. But if you are in this general range, you may not need DSP to render a pleasing frequency response in your room.
However, if you are among the many that believe that the inclusion of any sort of tone control device is anathema to achieving good sound, then read no farther. I used to have such purist views, but they were soon cast aside by the results of careful listening. How many folks have speakers that have mid bass suck out from the floor effect in the 100-200Hz are? How many have searingly hot top ends? How may systems have the lovely “British sound” with slight reticence in the 2500Hz area? The answer is, a lot of them. And if that is your subjective preference, then so be it.
But consider the following situation. A very famous maker of a $100K loudspeaker system offers zero tone controls; nada, zilch, none. The manufacturer has no idea of that speaker is going into a living room environment with plush drapes and carpet or stone walls and large glass windows. Why on earth would you buy speaker from a manufacturer who is so arrogant that he insists that its “his way or the highway” for you to get good sound with his speaker in your room, when having the flexibility to turn the treble down say 0.6 dB or 1 dB might make the difference between spectacular and enjoyable and “my ear hurts”? Everyone knows you can get a 2k pair of Vandersteens that have tone controls for the midrange and treble drivers that offer this flexibility. If the mega expensive speaker designer had even a modicum of tone adjustments in his loudspeaker to optimize the interface with the client’s room, perhaps you wouldn’t need a tool such as DSP? Oh, the expensive speaker manufacturer will blow smoke and tell you he can’t compromise his design, even though his driver is working through a resistor of known impedance that if changed ever so slightly, will mean little deviation in the design, except to help fine tune the tweeter driver to a particular listener’s environment. (This is the sort of arrogance that is also killing the high end. But I digress). If you can obtain a pleasing frequency response at the listening position without using any tone controls or DSP device, than by all means, please do so. If not, you might want to play with one to see if the benefits outweigh the liabilities of such a unit.
In my system, I do in fact rely on DSP to modulate and shape my frequency response. But it is only one of the two main reasons I employee DSP in my system. The second reason, equally important, is to help integrate subwoofers into my main midrange/tweeter line arrays by employing digital time delay to the mid/tweeters. If not for the second reason, I might consider a good professional grade analogue EQ device. Lord knows these have improved dramatically in quality over the years and I would not eschew them based on what you thought they sounded like 20 years ago. If you had any idea of the sorts of high quality digital and analogue EQ that can be found in some of today’s finest recordings, you might feel differently as well. But that is a topic best left for another time.
I should probably first comment that I believe I have tied to incorporate subs with the “mains” (i.e. midrange/tweeter) in my system every possible way without DSP. I have tried passive crossovers and active crossovers with every known filter and slope, etc. until I was blue in the face. But until I employed DSP, I never felt I could integrate them seamlessly. The reason is simple. Only with DSP can one impart a precise time delay to the mains such that the sound of the mains and the subs arrive at the ear at the same time. I won’t go into details as to why any system that simply uses a phase control to align subs can’t do that, but they can’t. In brief, using a phase control may allow you to get alignment of phase with sustained notes, but never, I repeat never, with transient notes. The sound of the main is always ahead of the subs if the subs are placed behind the mains, and there is simply no way to advance the sound of the sub to get the transient leading note to arrive at the listener’s ear at the same time as the transient signal from the mains. The only way to do this, is to digitally retard the signal from the mains. In my system, the sound of the L and R mains are retarded 7.45 and 7.50 msecs respectively. What is particularly nice is that I can validate the signal arrival time from the mains and the subs (JL Audio Gothams) to my ears by using a nifty little impulse program built into the TacT 2.2XP (Padilla modified), which is what I use for my DSP correction. (The “mains” are Pipedream Hemispheres18/36. There is a simple 6db/octave crossover built into in the Pipedreams that performs the crossover function that splits the midrange and tweeter drivers signal accordingly. The midrange and tweeter drivers are driven by the same amp, in this case, VTL Siegfrieds running in triode mode. With the JL Audio subs containing their own internal amp, the system is therefore a bi-amplified system.)
So there you have it. For me, the use of DSP has been extremely valuable in providing pleasing frequency response (at the listening position), but absolutely critical in enabling me to integrate he Gotham subs seamlessly with the Pipedream Towers. Do I wish I didn’t have to use DSP? Sure. I’ve been fortunate to hear a few great systems that have nearly perfect frequency response and driver integration without the use of DSP. But they are far and few between in my experience. The impression I would like to leave is that for many of us, DSP offers an engineering compromise that can often have far more benefits than liabilities. Don’t be shy in trying one because you previously thought that only a “purist” approach is the way to go. You may be surprised and very pleased, as I was, in the pleasures to be derived from using DSP thoughtfully in your system.
One final note. I employee both phono and CD sources. While the TacT 2.2XP can be used as a preamplifier, I choose to bypass its preamplifier function and use it only for its DSP and digital crossover features. The majority of my system gain comes from using an ARC Reference 5 preamplifier which then drives the TacT. For the digital sect out there, this seems to offer proof positive that I have surely lost my mind. But at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is the sound and what works for you.
Among the very few premises to which all audiophiles would surely agree, is that good sound is often largely determined by the quality of the room in which the sound is being reproduced. Not far behind that premise is the general agreement that the nature of the specific speaker being used is also a large determinant to the resultant sound in a specific room. If it were easy to get great sound from any installation, there would be far fewer audiophiles reading columns such as this in an effort to maximize their listening experience. Acoustic suspension, ported box, transmission line, multifocal arrays, planar dipole, acoustic dipole, ribbons, and on and on are now widely offered speaker designs. Each offers strengths and limitations that need to be carefully optimized in the hope that the best sound for a given speaker in a given room can be obtained. There may be those who are fortunate and can achieve excellent placement of speakers in their particular room with wondrous sonic results. Whether done by “voweling” in, or obeying certain time-honored physical relationships or speaker placement to room dimensions, or intuition, or Quiji board, some folks are simply fortunate in that the maximum extraction of good sound from their speakers in their room can be achieved relatively easily. This does not mean that small changes of speaker location do not matter and that any old placement works just fine. That is rarely the case. Rather, these folks have been able to get satisfactory results by trial and error and careful acoustic observation. Sometimes these efforts are done in conjunction with room treatments of various sorts; some more costly and others not. Still, they are the lucky ones. For many of us, such good fortune is elusive, and thus we seek the use of other tools in an effort to obtain great sound from our gear.
One such tool that has become available at low cost is digital signal processing, or DSP. DSP can be employed as expensive outboard components, but is also readily available on many inexpensive receivers with multiple speaker surround installations. If you have a tendency to look down your nose at a 5 speaker, Blue- Ray, 1 box audio video system that can be optimized to any room with the push of a button for under $1000, you may want to think again as there is a reason that for most people, the extraordinary value that exists in those products is the very thing that is killing the high end, and not too subtly I would add.
Let’s start by asking the obvious question: who might obtain the greatest benefit from employing DSP in a high-end system, and who would not? For me, the answer starts with consideration of the most basic of all properties in any audio system- frequency response. After years of perspiration, inspiration and education, my first thought is that if you are fortunate to have a nearly ideal frequency response at the listening position, you may not benefit from DSP. There have been countless blog hours devoted to supporting and refuting the claims of what an ideal frequency response is, and thus I will share my view and state that in general, it approximates what B&K published a long time ago as typified in the curve shown here:
Two things are clear from this curve. First, it should be obvious that I am not a proponent of a flat frequency response in the listening position. For my taste, most audio systems are frankly too bright on top (some painfully so). Second, I learned a long time ago from Jason Bloom (of Apogee fame) that a mild enhancement of 2-4 dB in the 40-100 Hz region was euphonically pleasing and the B&K graphs reflects this, in part. The B&K graph is by no means carved in stone. My own system tends to be slightly flatter in the 300-10KHz range and slightly more rolled off from 10KHz-20KHz. But if you are in this general range, you may not need DSP to render a pleasing frequency response in your room.
However, if you are among the many that believe that the inclusion of any sort of tone control device is anathema to achieving good sound, then read no farther. I used to have such purist views, but they were soon cast aside by the results of careful listening. How many folks have speakers that have mid bass suck out from the floor effect in the 100-200Hz are? How many have searingly hot top ends? How may systems have the lovely “British sound” with slight reticence in the 2500Hz area? The answer is, a lot of them. And if that is your subjective preference, then so be it.
But consider the following situation. A very famous maker of a $100K loudspeaker system offers zero tone controls; nada, zilch, none. The manufacturer has no idea of that speaker is going into a living room environment with plush drapes and carpet or stone walls and large glass windows. Why on earth would you buy speaker from a manufacturer who is so arrogant that he insists that its “his way or the highway” for you to get good sound with his speaker in your room, when having the flexibility to turn the treble down say 0.6 dB or 1 dB might make the difference between spectacular and enjoyable and “my ear hurts”? Everyone knows you can get a 2k pair of Vandersteens that have tone controls for the midrange and treble drivers that offer this flexibility. If the mega expensive speaker designer had even a modicum of tone adjustments in his loudspeaker to optimize the interface with the client’s room, perhaps you wouldn’t need a tool such as DSP? Oh, the expensive speaker manufacturer will blow smoke and tell you he can’t compromise his design, even though his driver is working through a resistor of known impedance that if changed ever so slightly, will mean little deviation in the design, except to help fine tune the tweeter driver to a particular listener’s environment. (This is the sort of arrogance that is also killing the high end. But I digress). If you can obtain a pleasing frequency response at the listening position without using any tone controls or DSP device, than by all means, please do so. If not, you might want to play with one to see if the benefits outweigh the liabilities of such a unit.
In my system, I do in fact rely on DSP to modulate and shape my frequency response. But it is only one of the two main reasons I employee DSP in my system. The second reason, equally important, is to help integrate subwoofers into my main midrange/tweeter line arrays by employing digital time delay to the mid/tweeters. If not for the second reason, I might consider a good professional grade analogue EQ device. Lord knows these have improved dramatically in quality over the years and I would not eschew them based on what you thought they sounded like 20 years ago. If you had any idea of the sorts of high quality digital and analogue EQ that can be found in some of today’s finest recordings, you might feel differently as well. But that is a topic best left for another time.
I should probably first comment that I believe I have tied to incorporate subs with the “mains” (i.e. midrange/tweeter) in my system every possible way without DSP. I have tried passive crossovers and active crossovers with every known filter and slope, etc. until I was blue in the face. But until I employed DSP, I never felt I could integrate them seamlessly. The reason is simple. Only with DSP can one impart a precise time delay to the mains such that the sound of the mains and the subs arrive at the ear at the same time. I won’t go into details as to why any system that simply uses a phase control to align subs can’t do that, but they can’t. In brief, using a phase control may allow you to get alignment of phase with sustained notes, but never, I repeat never, with transient notes. The sound of the main is always ahead of the subs if the subs are placed behind the mains, and there is simply no way to advance the sound of the sub to get the transient leading note to arrive at the listener’s ear at the same time as the transient signal from the mains. The only way to do this, is to digitally retard the signal from the mains. In my system, the sound of the L and R mains are retarded 7.45 and 7.50 msecs respectively. What is particularly nice is that I can validate the signal arrival time from the mains and the subs (JL Audio Gothams) to my ears by using a nifty little impulse program built into the TacT 2.2XP (Padilla modified), which is what I use for my DSP correction. (The “mains” are Pipedream Hemispheres18/36. There is a simple 6db/octave crossover built into in the Pipedreams that performs the crossover function that splits the midrange and tweeter drivers signal accordingly. The midrange and tweeter drivers are driven by the same amp, in this case, VTL Siegfrieds running in triode mode. With the JL Audio subs containing their own internal amp, the system is therefore a bi-amplified system.)
So there you have it. For me, the use of DSP has been extremely valuable in providing pleasing frequency response (at the listening position), but absolutely critical in enabling me to integrate he Gotham subs seamlessly with the Pipedream Towers. Do I wish I didn’t have to use DSP? Sure. I’ve been fortunate to hear a few great systems that have nearly perfect frequency response and driver integration without the use of DSP. But they are far and few between in my experience. The impression I would like to leave is that for many of us, DSP offers an engineering compromise that can often have far more benefits than liabilities. Don’t be shy in trying one because you previously thought that only a “purist” approach is the way to go. You may be surprised and very pleased, as I was, in the pleasures to be derived from using DSP thoughtfully in your system.
One final note. I employee both phono and CD sources. While the TacT 2.2XP can be used as a preamplifier, I choose to bypass its preamplifier function and use it only for its DSP and digital crossover features. The majority of my system gain comes from using an ARC Reference 5 preamplifier which then drives the TacT. For the digital sect out there, this seems to offer proof positive that I have surely lost my mind. But at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is the sound and what works for you.
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