I have been asked a few times why no digital room correction on the Bryston SP-3 Processor.
The problem I see with Digital room correction through ‘EQ’ is that it totally screws up the direct sound vs the reflected sound coming from the speaker.
When you listen to a speaker in a room you are listening to what we call the ‘power response’ and you hear all the direct sound as well as the reflected sound mixed together. So the listening experience is a combination of all the direct and reflected sound waves in a given room with a given speaker. When you alter the ‘direct sound’ at the speaker using ‘EQ’ it totally changes the relationship between the direct and reflected sound and is a disaster when it comes to ‘time smear’. So the speaker designer has spent years attempting to get flat frequency and phase response from his speaker and we come along and force the speaker to do anything but accurate signal transfer. Also if you are going to use ‘EQ’ try and only ‘reduce’ the ‘peaks’ in the room and not ‘amplify’ the troughs. Amplifying the troughs can play havoc with your speaker drivers power handling.
A lot of these newer types of ‘EQ’ products try and average a group of curves taken from many different locations in the room as they are attempting to reduce the negative effects of the single listening chair dilemma. Having a single spot in the room which measures flat but everywhere else in the room measures like crap is not a good result in my opinion. I think you are much better off adjusting the speaker location and using proper room treatments. If all else fails maybe some ‘EQ’ can be used but I would recommend keeping the correction only for the very low bass frequencies and stay away from upper bass, mids and higher frequency ‘EQ’ where room affects are not an issue due to the shorter wavelengths involved. I am hopeful that we will see many more Subwoofers with built in room ‘EQ’ which would be the better solution in my opinion if you are forced to use room correction.
Also ‘Room Correction’ much like ‘Video’ is changing quickly and I wanted the SP-3 to be a long-term purchase for our customers so adding specific dedicated boxes as the current technologies develop to the SP-3 made more sense to me going forward rather than obsoleting some questionable feature in the SP-3.
Hope this helps.
James
James,
I have never asked for this, as I know it is irrelevant to the proper sounding setup in a listening environment, as you noted within…’proper speaker placement and room treatments’. A number of years ago I wrote an article, for most likely Residential Systems or Pro Sound News, where I setup a room as follows;
Lexicon MC-12, w/o room treatments…settings by ear, w/o treatment with Radio Shack meter, with room treatments, and finally with the $3600 AKG (4) mic room correction kit optioned by Harman. (fronts were most likely B&W 802 & rears were either B&W or Genelec 8030) The result, my ear was only off by 1dB from the meter (except the sub )…and the room, TREATED w/o room correction was FAR superior to the ‘corrected EQ’ room, w/o treatment. So your comment reflects my many tests.
Dr. D’Antonio might, if he had time, comment on this, but suffice to say, any studio, anywhere in the world, if properly designed, is treated to take advantage of said space, without need for EQ. DSP as we know maybe used in post but for different reasons. Dr. D., might give you the science behind it, as it relates to your comment within, but I think BRYSTON is proper in not using a pseudo room correction EQ.
By the way, Alan Parsons was recently quoted in a magazine as saying that Room treatment should be a primary consideration, as it is in the professional field, whereas in the consumer market, it is more of a ‘snake oil’ mystique of an esoteric labeled product.
Wayne
