Digital Room Correction vs Room Treatments

@captouch that looks like a great music room. Think I understand better at what is going on. Everything looks a bit compressed, and yes, the room is filled. 

You might have a lot of speaker/power for that room, but that's ok. Had a thought, if you can get a wireless connection to your sub, find the room nulls, put the sub in the nulls, it might cancel out the room null. 

On the other hand, with your gear and that room, do you even notice the dip? Is it deep bass heavy? Do you feel the room is dead or alive? As most of us have realized, measurements don't always mean much to our ears. If it sounds good to you, then it's good. 

This is part of the reason why I don't want to measure my room. It's all analog (sans streamer), Done all the old school things, and it sounds good to me, so it is good. 

In my experience, room correction with DSP (MiniDSP+DiracLive) made a huge difference.  In terms of sound, it went from fatiguing to blissful.  The bass became more coherent, the mids and highs less muddy, more clear.  Instruments and voices became separated, imaging dramatically improved.  DSP is not simply about correcting issues with frequency response.  As previously mentioned, time domain problems can also be corrected, which I assume is why the imaging has improved so much.  

Below is my frequency response, measured with REW.  Yellow is with DiracLive turned on.

And here are the impulse responses as measured with REW, before and after correction with DIracLive.

My perception is that the magic comes with both the frequency and phase corrections that come with DiracLive implementation.

Before MiniDSP, my room was treated with some absorption panels, mostly to reduce some of the reflective wall surfaces to improve reverb.  The room includes a 77" TV, couch, furniture, large and dense wool carpet, and sits in the basement where two of my walls are concrete covered in sheetrock and insulation.  Speakers ('bookshelf') are 5 feet from the front wall, about 3 feet from the side wall (right, concrete, a little more open on the left side).

@mswale I think if I wanted to move my sub around to cancel the nulls, which I think is a good idea and ideal, I’d want to get a smaller sub.  The SVS was from my old HT system in a bigger space, and while no problem to reuse for HT in my new smaller space since the AVR will use Audessey to adjust level, it’s not an ideal sub for music.  

I don’t notice the dip or that anything is lacking, but it’s probably one of those things where you don’t know until you hear the alternative.

But as mentioned above, I’m going to try bookshelf speakers first before getting a new sub or committing to room treatments or digital room correction.  The Monitor Audios that I’m using now are spec’d down to 30Hz.  The new bookshelf speakers are spec’d down to 38Hz.  So they’re bound to create less of a 35Hz peak if they’re already down 5db or more at that frequency.  At least I think.

When I measured my friend’s Electa Amator II’s, which are spec’d at 35Hz or so, there was still a peak, but much lower in magnitude.  I’m sure I’ll still have the 60Hz dip and 180Hz dip tradeoff to some extent, but the overall balance of the FR curve may give me more speaker placement and LP options to help me find a better balance.

@atp001 I’m curious about trying something like Dirac Live - the price for entry just comes at a hefty price tag and the input I’ve received from this and other forums is that it could help in some aspects, but can’t help in others.  I think I’ll wait until measure and listen to my new bookshelves and see where I am after that.

It was suggested I try the trial period of Dirac Live, I just need to figure out which EQ software also has a trial period that will allow me to use it with their software and target curves.  I haven’t had the time to do that yet.

I have implemented DiracLive three times, on both sides of my basement, and in my living room.  The sound improved in all cases.  But, I think optimizing the speaker placement and/or LP (and possibly room treatment?) before using DiracLive will get the best results.  

One element that should be considered is bias towards your current (non-corrected) sound.  I would live and test the room corrected EQ for a little while before making any conclusions.  

The cost of MiniDSP + DiracLive is not large relative to your total system cost or cost of room treatments.  IMHO, best bang for buck I could ever spend.  True, tactile improvements in sound that could not be achieved with upgrades to components, cables, or recording type.  One could argue that DSP also corrects defects in speaker response (frequency and phase).  Sorry for sounding like a salesman, but this stuff has really changed my perception of what good sound is and how to achieve it.

Just curious, what elements of sound reproduction can DSP not correct?  We often hear that room modes cannot be corrected since they are a function of how the sound interacts with the room after leaving the speakers.  I would not be so fast in making that assertion.  By modulating the phase of the individual channels separately, should it not be possible to also correct, at least to some degree, constructive and destructive interference?  I believe this is what DiracLive is capable of, but to be honest I am not sure since they are a little vague in describing how it works exactly.  I would love to hear from someone with more technical knowledge on how DiracLive works.