Digital EQ & XO to correct speakers & rooms (Off Topic)

by Bert , Thursday, December 20, 2007, 23:13 (5962 days ago)

Okay, lets start fresh giving some personal thoughts about this subject...

Advantages (i.e. what can you do with it):

You name it, alsmost everything is possible. Changing or correcting the frequency response of a speaker itself (phase, amplitude, crossover, etc..)

Disadvantages:

- Extra components in the signal path giving always some sort of distortion and in the worst case molesting the original data simply by changing the bits.

- Any change or correction applied and the signal is not bitperfect anymore (assuming the Digital EQ is fed by a bitperfect signal).

Why using it?

Okay, your speakers are not perfect (or good enough) for which I can understand that this might be an easy tool to correct their behaviour if nothing else is possible or when you want to take the "easy" way to do things.

With such a device it doesn't matter how the speakers are build or aligned, the machine will solve all your problems...

This is okay with me and I can see the advantages doing this but what I can not accept is that people are using the same device at the same time to correct their room response....this is simply wrong and will never lead to the most optimal performance of your system!

Why not using it?

A microphone will never be able to see what your ears are able to detect. Let alone a "stupid" device (compared to your brain!) with the limited knowledge that people learned the thing to do...

One example is that your ears are able to detect the differences between direct sound and reflected sound, your microphone can't, just as simple as that. A microphone only detects a mixture of direct and reflected sound.

The communication between the ears and the brain gives you the illusion of true space and depth (as present on the recording), correcting the speaker and the room at the same time using a microphone to correct this will only result in a more artifical, more flat and more technical sound, what has that to do with music?

The only result is that your brain is then working very hard to cope with all the unnatural information it receives trying to change it all into the "desired" illusion while listening at the one spot in the room....

Bert

--
BD-Design - Only the Best!

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