DSP vs New Cables ??


For two channel listening DSP can be a bit unnerving for the die hard listener who wants pure sound.  However, of late, the Technology has improved and DSP impact to address room issues can be really quite nice.  You will very likely notice an impact. When you get new cables you may notice something but it may not be dramatic enough to impress you vs DSP.

Home theater DSP much easier if you have a good processor or receiver. And this can have a meaningful impact and cables may have a lesser impact.

So my executive decision of the day is to defer buying new cables (was planning to spend 3K for some interconnects, transparent or silteck). So I'll revisit dsp for home theater.  Two channel Will require new stuff and I'm a bit Leary to introduced more stuff along the signal path but I hear it's not that bad and won't really restrict the path, hard to tell.

jumia

Showing 1 response by erik_squires

Stepping back from the OP’s question of specifically DSP, I think there’s more to this. The issue really is that most listeners (queue the "not me" trolls) are most sensitive to frequency response variations. In this sense cables are on the low end of items that can cause these variations.

Speakers, room placement, tone controls, DSP, room treatment or lack of. All of these have the potential for very large variations in frequency response. How bad? Well I once measured a subwoofer with over 20 dB peaks and dips in the in-room response. That’s a factor of something like 20x more power at some notes!!

I see a lot of evidence of listeners being tricked by ragged mid/tweeter responses into believing they are hearing more detail, who don't realize what they are hearing is just a different tonal spectrum.  I also know some listeners can go to an audio show in terrible sounding rooms and seemingly ignore the room’s acoustics. So this rule isn’t always true, but I do feel, strongly, if you are training your brain’s neural net to hear speaker cables but not the room your perception is now heavily unbalanced.