Digital or physical room correction?

Рет қаралды 9,624

Күн бұрын

If you have room interactions with your stereo system, and who doesn't, is it better to make physical changes or digital EQ changes?

Пікірлер: 74

@SirTipsi 4 жыл бұрын

Why not do both? Physical as much as possible first, then digital for the remaining issues.

@nissimtrifonov5314 4 жыл бұрын

Thats the reasonable approach as there is no perfect and you are not going to be able to straigthen every kink of the curve with just physical. Not in a room you intend to live in anyway

@robh9079 4 жыл бұрын

Because you would be taking your lovely audio signal and subjecting the whole thing (in most cases) to a phase of A to D and then D back to A and a whole extra device. In the treble frequencies, I think there might be issues with creating much larger off axis differences in your speaker response as a result, and limiting the sweet spot, and possibly numerous other issues. Having said that I use Paul's recommendation of just the sub using DSP and only subtracting frequencies. If you try and fight a 'null' with gain it will only fight back - shift position slightly and it may bite back! I think there is possibly more place for good 'ole tone controls (analogue) with a bit more sophistication than just treble/bass.

@markcolegrove 4 жыл бұрын

agree 100%. If you can fix the issues completely with room/placement tweaks, great. However, if you can't fix everything this way or have a fixed environment (like my desktop!), then digital correction works really well to smooth out the remaining issues.

@googoo-gjoob 4 жыл бұрын

@Mr Do , this is a 2 cannel page..... there is the occasional comment specifically directed a multi.... butt 99% 2 channel.

@NathanOakley1980 4 жыл бұрын

Its Tip yep, acoustic treatment for the room then use EQ if needed.

@herrlindner 4 жыл бұрын

Looking forward to the Audiophile Guide 🙌

@afaqueazad 4 жыл бұрын

In my experience as a live sound systems engineer, I find that gardens such as yours, is the best acoustic environment with the trees and bushes being a diffuser and coarse sand absorbing 160 Hz

@boblee5524 4 жыл бұрын

I'm an Electrical engineer, Audiophile and I like beautiful gardens!

@stottpie 4 жыл бұрын

Glad Paul mentioned it, only do it for bass. If you want to get very scientific, you can find your room's Schroeder Frequency, and do the stuff below that (usually between 100-200hz). Then, only do cuts, no boosts. Any EQ boost you make lowers your system volume headroom by the same dB as the boost!

@boblee5524 4 жыл бұрын

Another one from Belgium. Excellent!!! I Cannot wait for the book. I am an Electrical Engineer from Scotland living in Belgium! As a pure audiophile to me the only solution is a dedicated room for studio. Digital audio correction for everybody home setups is pure gimmick to me. This is not how you do things. Proper digital audio correction should only be used by professionals in labs and studios for research, innovation and design. Not home entertainment!!!

@Finn-McCool 4 жыл бұрын

ACOUSTIC FIELDS has one of the most in-depth channels that teaches about when where why and how to use diffusion, absorption and dispersion. The dude is involved with sound waves like few other.

@googoo-gjoob 4 жыл бұрын

please and thank you...

@usandthemx 4 жыл бұрын

Paul's voice ENTERED my room. I could reach out and touch the space it occupied. How? Nearfield listening, which ELIMINATES the room. Like listening front row center, or even at times ON stage? Listen nearfield. Ole lady doesn't like it? Don't let the door hit her on the way OUT. The speakers used are 5' towers with 4 built in subs, 2 10" up top, 2 12" below for SEAMLESS perfection. :O)

@steenj938 4 жыл бұрын

Firstly, i'm s huge fan of Paul and his team in these videoes🙏❤️ Their way to explain all the subjects they are covering is very understandable, and simply great! I'm shure their productd are stunning. But this time, i will have to disagree with Paul. Of course we all have the right to our own opinions 😉 Here is mine: If you have a dedikaded room for listening, and you tweek the s*** out of it with all sorts of diffusers, and what not, Paul is probably right. I admit, that i cant' say for sure 😉 But most people are listening in an ordinary living room, that has to be 'livable'. In that case, digital room correction - if it is properly made - in my opinion is the best way to go. I have been owning my Lyngdorf TDA,-3400 amplifier with 'Roomperfect' digital room correction for a little more than a year now together with my Snell E 3 (Harbeth is my dream 😉) I am extremely happy with it, and it is made here in Denmark ❤️❤️❤️ It bypasses so many problems on my livingroom. Sounds fantastic 😛 Couldn't have done it without correction!

@supabayes3284 4 жыл бұрын

Agree with you about usefulness of digital after all the physical is applied. I am using Trinnov instead of the Lyngdorf.

@tjp444 4 жыл бұрын

I agree. I have a "L" shaped living room that just doesn't have the space to allow physical adjustments (other than a rug). There's no way to relocate the speakers or add wall treatment. I'm very happy with how my Anthem STR amp made a very noticeable improvement with their "ARC" 2 channel system that adjusts 500kHz frequencies and lower. The soundstage is so much better. I think digital correction is a great way to go for most people that don't have a dedicated listening room. However, you have to be careful - My Denon's AVR 7.1 system's Audyssey correction software ruined 2-channel music listening.

@birgerolovsson5203 3 жыл бұрын

I would do a physical correction as good as possible and then, as a "bonus", I use digital to fix the last little things.

@SuperMcgenius 4 жыл бұрын

Good advice Paul, I have found the same thing.

@carlosanvito 4 жыл бұрын

Absolutely right Paul. Fix the fundamental problem rather than inserting an inverse transfer function to correct the mess.

@savvassidiropoulos5952 4 жыл бұрын

The conclusion and summary advice are sound and correct, but I feel some additional arguments are required. The error created by two or more speakers in a room are not tied to frequency response alone. They are also spatial (vary with your location in the room) and also time related (reflections that each have their own frequency response and dispersion) arrive to the listening location with varied delays. To only consider the frequency response issue is much less than a band aid. It's like taking an aspirin for a fractured skull. The better way to correct the problem is reduce (not eliminate) the parasitic reflections so that the initial output from the speakers with their dispersion become a bigger element of the audible sound. And you don't want to kill reflections. You can do that with a half decent anechoic chamber but you wouldn't enjoy listening music into one. Or if you don't want reflections, listen with headphones. Much cheaper. Treating a room with absorption and diffusion (for larger rooms) is much better because you greatly reduce the effect of standing waves and with proper use of the tools available, you end up with an experience relevant to a much bigger listening space. Some people hate the use of panels and diffusers. I can understand that. If you have a large living room to serve as a listening room, careful furnishing of the room can do almost what dedicated panels can do with a much more pleasing and functional result. Some years ago, there was that "school of thought" to kill reflections totally and then depend on the actual content or insert some artificial reverb in the music to enhance the sound. Home theaters were built with thick carpet all around the walls, ceiling and floor, thick armchairs for the listeners and plenty of small speakers dedicated to generate artificial reflections. Thankfully it didn't catch on much.

@jamesplotkin4674 4 жыл бұрын

Paul's amphitheatre backyard looks perfect, i'd suggest. Tree-lined front wall, plants along the sides with sand leading up to the listener.

@cliffolson1528 3 жыл бұрын

Couldn't agree more, Paul! I have an Anthem AVM60 which supposedly has a very good room EQ. I have tried on several occasions to dial it in and try to live with it. But I've always ended up defeating it. Why? Well, I can clearly hear the sound change from full, beautiful to low-fi. And I am certain something changes with phasing. I don't care what anyone else says, I know and trust what I hear. Just put on an SACD with good localization in the surrounds and listen with room correction off and then turn it on. It is unmistakable in my room/setup. The image will be blurred instead of precisely located. You lose a huge part of the realism. The center channel also becomes veiled. I suspect it's due to Anthem Room Correction routing the lower frequencies to the subwoofer which then smears the sound. So I run all speakers except my ATMOS ones at full-range. In fairness,, I've spent a fair amount of money on physical room correction. Bass traps, sound panels, concrete floor, heavy curtains over windows. This is the way to do it, period. Glad to know someone very respectable shares the same opinion.

@woohunter1 4 жыл бұрын

Fixed as much as I could first just by placement of speakers and subs, then drastically moved the 4 main listening positions, then the receivers built in correction, huge bass trap in the worst corner, and finally, mini dsp for the subs! Sounds miles better than originally, but there is always room for “just a little bit more”.

@nl_2652 4 жыл бұрын

I wish I was able to more physically, but DSP correction is easier and more affordable. It is not sonically pleasing in some occasions but is better than minimal room treatment alone.

@channelzero2252 4 жыл бұрын

I thought this video would be about CD/SACD error correction. Do you want to make sure the disc is read correctly or would you rather correct everything in the DAC or a combination of both?

@supabayes3284 4 жыл бұрын

Interesting topic. I am using Trinnov Amethyst for stereo. Pro studio are using the Trinnov ST2 Pro for their studio set up. Definitely physical first to reduce the reflection and standing waves bass as much as possible, then digital to correct more for bass dip and phase. Trinnov is highly regarded in commercial cinema setting where there are many speakers and subs firing at the same time. There is no way that physical alone will sort out the phase and bass response in such setting. It makes perfect sense to have digital to analyse and apply the correction.

@moukiebengal9753 4 жыл бұрын

i use both , diffusion absorbtion + dirac live room EQ = WOW !!!!

@bc527c 4 жыл бұрын

IT's a tough call in that doing physical room correction is a difficult process, but done right sounds the best. Digital EQ sucks the Mojo right out of the music.

@bc527c 4 жыл бұрын

Also, digital room correction simply can not do what physical room treatment can do in terms of, well, everything about 100 hz... so you HAVE to do absorption and diffusion to treat above 300 hz if you want to get truly great sound.

@bc527c 4 жыл бұрын

I built an active anti room mode system. It works really well, vastly better than any room eq and cheaper and simpler (when you understand it) than doing so called bass traps. Good bass everywhere in the room (where a person might put there body).

@robh9079 4 жыл бұрын

Definitely uses for DSP I would say - live venues for example, and where you are setting up a system for an event. Would I sometimes like to tweek my mids - certainly, though not at the expense of running my lovingly honed signal path through an extra device including AtoD and DtoA - that's 3 devices really! (possible off axis complications..?) I am using dsp on the sub however (mainly subtractive) as Paul has suggested. I wonder whether we are pining for tone controls - a bit more sophisticated than treble/bass but with less 'trauma' than a DSP unit. Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?

@Antoon55 4 жыл бұрын

My system is in the living so my means of physical corrections are limited. I made some filters with REW that I use in Roon DSP and it's a god send :)

@ThinkingBetter 4 жыл бұрын

It's a bit like comparing apples and oranges. Room correction incl. speaker placement is only way to solve issues of a room creating too much reflections messing up the purity of the sound. For vinyl music, I wouldn't like using digital room correction as you end up adding an ADC and DAC in the path. But for digital music, DSP based room correction can be awesome in fine tuning the sound against your speaker performance, room and your personal taste. I need +5dB at 12kHz to rejuvenate the tonal balance (fix my personal frequency drop due to aging) and I usually like around 4dB extra around 40Hz due to the Fletcher Munson Curve effect at my typical listening levels (I don't play at concert level so often). The cool thing about DSP audio processing for digital music is that pass-through is 100% without any change (numbers out = numbers in). What is worse for the audio...a 40dB RIAA EQ or a -3dB DSP EQ compensation for a speaker issue? Vinyl lovers are sort of EQ lovers.

@fernandosilva9137 4 жыл бұрын

What about Peter Lyngdorf dsp??

@charlesferguson6678 4 жыл бұрын

I think your birds are Goldfinches. Are they yellow and black?

@user-xb4nn6ql5l 4 жыл бұрын

You’re a pacer up and downer! I liked you before but I like you so muck more now. You’ve been plugging your forthcoming book for a while now - when’s it coming out?

@hansiangng2808 4 жыл бұрын

A echo/reverb free room is good enough.. and then apply eq to reduce the bass peaks or room modes.

@dandonna852 4 жыл бұрын

I have only 2 walls and 10 ft. wide patio doors concrete ceiling

@stevensmith8793 4 жыл бұрын

There goes Paul in that small back yard again!

@scottyo64 4 жыл бұрын

I have caught so much crap over the last few years for telling people room correction is a bandaid

@deevnn 4 жыл бұрын

The real problem is that it takes lots of money. Digital correction will win in the long run just like subwoofer digital correction because it can be done “affordably” and these days give you 99%. Just ask Mads at Buchardt Audio.

@landosazo7506 4 жыл бұрын

nice yard...natural soundstage...definitely physical changes first by listening to system in an open field...in the end, everything in life is a momentary experience - every moment is unique even if the EQ setup remains unchanged...anyway, I have an integrated amp with an internal DAC. I stream 90% of my music from a laptop going to a inexpensive DAC that has optical and rca digital outputs then I use the digital out to a more expensive DAC, then the DAC goes to the amp via single ended rcas...essentially, the audio signal is going thru 3 DACs before outputting to the speakers...If I use the DIRECT MODE on the amp (1) will the internal DAC of the amp be disabled and uses the external DAC? (2) does upgrading the external DAC make a difference if the internal DAC of the amp has the final say, anyway? ...or just ignore the audiophile neurosis and enjoy the music...thanks

@nissimtrifonov5314 4 жыл бұрын

Not as easy but definately much, much more expensive :D The room correction in my studio was more expenise than the monitors, or the sound card, or each of my synths

@luke78333 4 жыл бұрын

Sometime's the speaker is the problem and needs to be digitally corrected, which no amount of physical room change will fix.

@poserwanabe 4 жыл бұрын

Both.

@sebsoud 4 жыл бұрын

Sure physical room treatment has to be done first. But it doesn't mean that digital is crap, I disagree with Paul's comment, and apparently he does knows only a bit about frequency correction, and not for example about time correction. So it would be better to check with somebody who masters it, and be able to listen to example(s) in your area. In my case, I don't own my flat, so I can do limited passive treatment. Result with software correction is really a plus. But it was quite some job for me to learn how and do it, it's not at all a button to press.

@QoraxAudio 4 жыл бұрын

Digital or physical green correction? Damn that garden is *bright GREEN*

@googoo-gjoob 4 жыл бұрын

new growth emerges lighter....

@QoraxAudio 4 жыл бұрын

@@googoo-gjoob I know. But it's still remarkably green. Somehow, it's like there's a trend of making videos a bit more green-ish and higher contrast, compared to a few years ago.

@oysteinsoreide4323 4 жыл бұрын

He who makes that question mixes class-D for digital amplifier which it is not. You can have a room correction in a class A and class AB amplifier too.

@googoo-gjoob 4 жыл бұрын

the amplifier may be... but the 'correction' isnt

@oysteinsoreide4323 4 жыл бұрын

@@googoo-gjoob Of course. You need a DSP before amplification. And you need a AD conversion of all analogue audio before the DSP.

@TylerStout 4 жыл бұрын

Based on what audioholics said on their channel turning off correction above 500-700hz which is the room transition zone is best as anything above that the room correction can't tell what's speaker issues and what's room issues. Based on my own experience I would agree as that still helps with boundary interference from poor placement that I can't get around and stops my high end from sounding so shrill. I do agree that if you can physically fix the problem at the source you'll be better off.

@SJMessinwithBoats 4 жыл бұрын

I agree with Paul this time. But I'm spending more time these days making my grass greener.

@ThunderStruckMTB 4 жыл бұрын

Take any pair of speakers - at any price point, and stick them into 100 rooms with 100 different MLPs and they will sound different 100 times. Why not use technology to help them sound similar in every room?

@hermannschmidt9788 4 жыл бұрын

Social distance to the camera, Paul? 😃

@jaytorr6701 4 жыл бұрын

You don't like feedback in an amp? Hegel just left the room...

@amb3cog 4 жыл бұрын

Huh? Hegel doesn't use feedback AFAIK. They use a proprietary feed forward design called SoundEngine. There's a video on here of the designer showing how it works. It's worth a look if you're interested at all. Made me want to buy one. But then I want buy everything. 😁 I think it was on Darko's channel. ✌️

@jaytorr6701 4 жыл бұрын

@@amb3cog Soundengine a fancy feedback model. I am not saying anything against them, I love their sound and I am in the market for the H90

@amb3cog 4 жыл бұрын

@@jaytorr6701 I don't think so. Hegel does not use feedback AFAIK. Feel free to look it up yourself, if you don't believe me. I've watched the designer himself explain it. He says he does not believe in feedback, because it causes distortion. He claims that by the time the feedback arrives at the transistors. They've already moved on to the next thing basically, so it isn't a good design. Watch the video I mentioned. You'll see what I mean. Unless he was lying? Or explained it wrong somehow? I mean I'm no EE, but that's what he said. And he shows how it's done on a white board in the video. It looked like a Feed Forward design to me. And that's what everything I've ever read on Hegel calls it.

@PebblesChan 4 жыл бұрын

One uses digits to perform physical room correction.

@fredjohnson9856 4 жыл бұрын

completely left out advice on adjusting the wife factor...

@googoo-gjoob 4 жыл бұрын

easy.....dont bother

@NickP333 4 жыл бұрын

First? Do I win the cookie or the pin?

@terriludolf6101 4 жыл бұрын

you'll get a handsigned print of Trump's 99 percent false :-)

@NickP333 4 жыл бұрын

LOL! Perfect answer. I was running outta TP anyway.

@doowopper1951 4 жыл бұрын

@@terriludolf6101 isn't that 99.99%? Trump is the Biggest Bestest liar ever.

@SirTipsi 4 жыл бұрын

@@doowopper1951 Eh, Trump def isn't the best president. He stays stupid shit like this quite often. But I don't agree with how the mainstream media portrays him. If you want to argue about lies, Trump has delivered on a lot of promises that benefit the country. Same thing can't be said about Obama. I'd rather vote for a guy like Trump, although I despise him on an emotional level, than a guy with Alzheimers that clearly isn't fit to rule. My guess is Trump is going to eat Biden alive at the presidential debates.

@amb3cog 4 жыл бұрын

@@SirTipsi You sound like someone repeating what they saw on Facebook. I don't believe you really did any research at all, or know what's really going on at all. Because no one who actually went out, and informed themselves could possibly say what you just did, and mean it. I would love to see a list of all the things he's done for our country. Here I'll give you a headstart. Packed the courts with unqualified (and in many cases criminal), radicals that will make a mockery of our justice system until they die, or retire. Transferred more of our wealth to the top 1%. Added to the top 1% Gave huge tax breaks to the top 1% Ruined our relationship with our allies. Helped our enemies. Put China in a position to be the world leader we used to be. Allowed our enemies to sabotage our election process. Is in the process of destroying the USPS to get help himself get re-elected Got rid of Obama's (you remember him. The guy who didn't deliver on his promises) Pandemic Playbook, and is now responsible for tens of thousands of lives because of it. Wasted money on a wall we don't need, or want. And that doesn't work anyway. Hired completely incompetent people to destroy our government agencies, including the State Department. ON PURPOSE! Divided our country more then its probably ever been, at least since the Civil War. Inflamed ongoing racial strife ON PURPOSE! Tear gassed, and violated the constitutional rights of innocent American Citizens so he could take a damn photo! Played more golf then any other president ever up to this point in his presidency, after criticizing Obama for playing golf, and saying he wouldn't do it himself when he became president (yup he does tell a lot of lies doesn't he? And he's quite the hypocrite too!). Made a fortune for his business off of the American taxpayers, and foreign ones too. The figures are shocking! Look it up. Cost us more for Secret Service protection then any other president before. Violated more ethical rules, and broke more laws then any president since Nixon. And probably easily beats him in that department. Should I go on? That's just off the top of my head real quick. I could start Googling if you want. I mean I barely got started on the race thing, which is really what all of this is about anyway. Which is hilarious (well not really, but you get the point), because his words and his actions show he doesn't care at all about other white people and is fine with watching them die in droves. But anybody that's actually paying attention knows there's only one person in the world DJT really cares about, and that's himself. Just like your words and actions tell me what you really care about too.