Anthem STR "Convert Analog" sounds much worse

@dtximages-

Ultimately, I think 97% of "this dac sounds soooo much better" reviews has to do with personal and situational bias. 

Above a certain level of gear, I agree with you. I tried a US$50 DAC once, and though inoffensive, it lacked transparency. (I was relieved it didn't equal my more costly equipment.)

It will take a while to learn all the options and settings on the STR. I hope you will enjoy doing so and that you'll be happy with your results.

About a year ago, I surveyed available DSP preamps, and my finalists were the STR and the DSPeaker X4. After a home trial of the STR, I bought it and haven't looked back. I'm always seeking perfection, and nothing is perfect, but I don't know of another DSP preamp now being made that I'd prefer to the STR.

You have to set it up correctly before you make any judgments! Go through the entire setup routine then come back and tell us what you hear. I have never used the STR but I have been using room control and digital bass management for 20 years. If I switch to bypass it is yuk. My wife accidentally hit the bypass bottom. It took me 10 minutes to figure out what went wrong.

Also, this is a problem anytime settings are buried deep inside electronic menus. You can’t quickly scan the knobs to see if everything’s just right. When I read reviews of things now, I think of their monetary bias, and what combination of 1,546,541 possible settings they might have used.

Reviews should always be taken with a grain of salt, like political ads.

Wish list: big manufacturers you should take note:
 - an on screen display that clearly and quickly shows the current settings of all the important "stuff"

Amazing how archaic so many on-screen (tv) menus/displays are.

Thanks mike_in_nc   I bought it used.  I'm not convinced the T2 dac sounds that much better if any than my Anthems to be honest.  It'll take a lot more convincing that's for sure.  On the tracks I've tried, I cannot tell a difference at all.  Most all differences are my biases from what I've read about how great the T2 dac is.  

I've tried long term listening and short term a/b comparison.  I find myself convincing myself one is better... Then going back on that - thinking maybe it's just the track, resolution, mood, or maybe a plane flew over (landing path of DFW) ha.  

Ultimately, I think 97% of "this dac sounds soooo much better" reviews has to do with personal and situational bias.  

I'll say this much, I challenge anyone to say the T2 dac sounds consistently better an Anthem's STR, on any setup..  I just ask you to be aware of those silent personal/situation bias's going on in the back of your head.  

I want to hear a difference to justify the cost of the Lumin trust me!  I love being able to put value on money spent.... But right now, I'm unable to do that.

Thanks for telling us! We’ve all made mistakes, but not everyone admits them. So you have my respect for that.

I haven’t used the A-to-D conversion of the STR, but I was surprised it seemed a problem.

That -5 dB is probably a safety factor to keep from overloading the ADC, which could sound really bad.

P.S. Maybe your dealer would swap the T2 for a U1 mini + partial refund?

In an act of humility and embarrassment, I have a confession.  I had the input levels for XLR -5db which is activated when "Audio Convert" is turned on....  

Now, when I switch between the two, there's no audible difference that I can tell at this point.. Mayyybbeee on some parts of some tracks there might be a difference but rarely is a change/tweak noticable or even "better" over the whole spectrum.

Apologies for being an idiot.  Sometimes settings get buried deep down in the menu and you don't know what you've changed...

Yes,  DSP is digital signal processing so it's done in the digital realm of the Anthem. All you needed was a basic streamer. In order to get the best of what DSP can do is run the subs through it with the main speakers. You will be able to keep the bass of the mains the subs will augment them. As Mike pointed out it will probably sound different until you get used to what bass should be like without peaks and nulls and the God awful boom. 

Thanks for all the input. Im going to play around more.  

So it looks like, if I want to use subs, I wasted alot of money on the Lumin T2 and should have just gone the streamer route since I have to filter everything through the anthem's processing anyway.

I thought setting the crossover in the Anthem created a high pass or low pass whatever for the mains... i.e. setting the xover at 50hz sends nothing below 50hz to my main speakers.. No? So using the subwoofer management on my Anthem still sends full range to my speakers?

It is adjustable. You can set the HP filter on the mains (which ARC calls "Subwoofer Crossover Frequency") to FLAT if you like. That will run the mains full-range.

I suggest you try letting ARC set everything automatically before you do that, though. You can save that calibration file, then copy it to another name, re-open it, and adjust ARC settings ("Adjust Targets" for each of the four allowable profiles. That will let you compare easily.

To get access to all the adjustments, you need to run ARC on a computer (not a mobile phone) and in Professional mode.

As others have said, you will get better sound using a digital input on the STR, rather than converting to analog in the Lumin, converting back to digital in the STR, then using the STR’s DAC again to get analog output.

After you have a correction set up, be sure to run the automatic phase feature, which will give you the most even LF response for several octaves around the crossover area. Without it, you are likely to have nulls and peaks.

Many settings in ARC can affect the sound in ways you might not expect at first. For example, speaker levels have no effect if you are running corrections full-range. But if you’re not, they affect the relative levels of response within the correction bandwidth and outside it. Thus, a click or two change in levels can change brightness of the sound.

It will take some playing around with ARC and thought about what it’s doing for you to fully master it. Also (as has been said in many reviews of DSP products) if a listener is used to hearing bass peaks, it can take a while to adapt to sound without them.

HTH

It might help if you read the manual.

The bass manager divides the audio range into two bands suitable for subwoofer/satellite speaker systems. The result is
that the main speakers don’t need to play bass as loudly or as deeply since it gets picked up by the subwoofer. Note that a
crossover does not suddenly cut frequencies in a cliff-like profile, but rolls them off according to a slope. If set to 80 Hz, for
example, frequencies lower than 80 Hz are still played by the main speaker while transitioning them to the subwoofer.

The range is 25 to 160 Hz in 5 Hz steps, or Off which disables the crossover.
Setting the crossover to the lowest number on your speaker’s specification page is unlikely to provide the best result.
Instead, setting it to twice this frequency or thereabout, which is an octave higher, ensures that the speaker’s woofer will still
play to its low frequency limit but at levels that present less of a struggle for it.
If you will be using the personal computer version of ARC, you do not need to select the crossover frequency since it will be
set while running the program.

I’ve asked this question before about connecting the Lumin T2 this way... Am I negating any T2 dac magic by sending it through the Anthem’s dac engine? I was told NO. But it sure sounds like it now!

Yep, you are. Either use the Anthem’s DAC, or use the pure analog pathway for the purest signals. Otherwise you are going back and fort from digital to analog to digital to analog.

@djones51   wait what?  I thought setting the crossover in the Anthem created a high pass or low pass whatever for the mains... i.e. setting the xover at 50hz sends nothing below 50hz to my main speakers.. No?  So using the subwoofer management on my Anthem still sends full range to my speakers?

Even using a crossover in the Anthem your speakers still play down to their limit. It's not like you're setting a cliff where everything below the crossover point goes to the subs it gradually reduces dB along a slope at the crossover frequency. In order to figure out if your investment in room correction is worth it is to try it. The AKM DAC in the STR is pretty good in order to see what it can do try connecting the server and integrate the subs through ARC. 

@djones51 thanks... I kinda suspected that and mentioned it on another board and people told me it's "not exactly totally really like that" that I was still getting the goodness of the Lumin dac, but I really didn't see how that was since the Anthem was unconverting then reconverting it back to digital.. I'm really hearing the Anthem's dac signature more than anything.

I'll try to do an a/b test running xlr and usb (Lumins dac vs anthems dac) when I can.

I was really surprised that just this setting would make such a noticeable difference.  

If you're using analog out on the Lumin connecting to analog in on the STR and selecting convert analog you are in essence not using the DAC on the Lumin as the STR is converting the analog signal to digital then converting back to analog. Try connecting a digital out on the Lumin to digital in on the STR and see how it sounds. The best thing to do is run ARC as it will integrate the subs better.