Anybody Tried this Room Correction Program?

Those digital machines can be impressive--if used properly. I haven't used'em but can't wait--once they've matured enough. Even that site embellishes the virtues a little more than they are. Those systems can't correct for too early boundary reflections. If your speakers only a foot from the wall there will still be that less than ideal 2ms delay. But with good speaker placement and attention to basic room acoustics first, then liberal use of those things can really put the finishing touches on things. I gather its still awhile before the digital crossovers are really ready--although some are creeping out on the front lines (Tact has a poweramp/digital eq/dac/preamp all in one unit). I think it'll be so nice to do the crossover, volume adjustments, basic room correction/equalization and even things like interdriver time delay issues all in the digital domain with the convenience of a home pc. From there its just convert the signal to analog and feed it straight to the power amps.

Ezmeraldall why compromise the signal with analog at all?

The sincaudio site is pretty sparse in its detail. What the heck do you do, run the pre-outs into your PC soundcard and then out of the soundcard and into your amps? I'm confused.

And could sound cards possibly have advanced to the point that they wouldn't degrade the audio horribly?

I'm dubious but intrigued. Need info, y'all.

will

The obligatory disclaimer: I have no financial interest in sincaudio. All I know about their product is the info contained in their website.

If you think about it the TACT really is just a dedicated computer, customized software and a few pieces of added hardware (mic, mic preamp, digital I/O). There's no reason why a generic PC could not be employed to run the software. There are any number of quality cards that offer digital I/O in either coax or XLR format that would allow the connection of the PC beween a CD transport and D/A converter. There are also a few products that offer Firewire I/O with built in mic preamps.

One of the advantages of the TACT approach is that as an integrated product it can be fully optimized to take maximum advantage of the individual pieces of hardware. TACT claims that their DSP chips are specially designed for audio processing. An off the shelf Intel processor is not audio optimized, but this relative disadvantage can be overcome with clever programming. It also should be possible to put together a Sincaudio system for less dollars than a TACT.

I recently purchased a TACT 2.0 and I'm still in the process of getting it optimized within my system. The initial results are quite positive, but there is still work to do. I certainly don't regret my purchase, but the Sincaudio seems interesting and I'm just looking for feedback from someone who has tried it.

Unsound, I don't know what you mean by "compromise the signal with analog at all?" It has to be converted to analog somewhere for the speakers to reproduce it (and the amplifier itself). And these errounously called "digital amps",if that's what you are proposing, are just class D amps in which there's is actually nothing digital about them, they are analog units and have been around as early as 1928 long before digital ever came to be. Class D just happened to be next in line after Class C, but these days the marketing just calls all Class D digital. There are a handful of ~true~ digital amps that do the DAC in the input stage (they take a digital signal as opposed to an analog signal (like the Class D amp in your velodyne sub)), but these units still have class D ouput stages. And the output stages is what determines the amplifiers operating class. Class D sucks for the most part. Class A and class B will always offer less distortion if done right. So I'm hedging there's probably less distortion converting the signal over to analog and feeding it to a regular A or B unit as oppossed one of these hybrid DAC/Class D units. The devil is in the detail, but Class D isn't great.

Ezmeraldall, I might be mistaken but I believe the TacT amps to be pure digital.

I'm not for super-certian with what TacT is doing inside, so maybe they do have something completely different, you may be right. I did just nosy on over to there sight. They would be about the only ones that would even have something "pure digital." (If memory serves maybe Wadia too had something similiar.) But the majority of the others are just Class D analog the whole way through. I may loom over on DIYaudio.com and see what more of the engineers are saying since I've seen TacT come up in discussion.

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?s=e80d7dd05f01fce38712d6956a3e4657&threadid=1989&highlight=digital+amplifiers

That link has a healthy discussion on the amps, with specific mention given to what tact is doing. If it doesn't work, go to diyaudio.com, click under the "digital" forum, then click "search" and then type in digital amplifiers and one should come up about amplifying an ESL with a digital amp.

Ezmeraldall, thanks for sharing your research. Some people seem to think that some of the newer versions of class "D" aren't so bad. It seems to me that the Spectrons, Bel Cantos and Linn have recieved some decent reviews. I understand that Jeff Rowland, Accuphase and Edge are using some form of digital in thier amps. I really don't know very much about any of these products, though. Who knows where this will lead?