Analog Equalization causes havoc with image generation. This is why serious audiophiles steered away from toner controls and EQ in the past. Any major errors in amplitude were controlled at least in part by acoustic treatments.
Fine control over amplitude is a huge advantage, much finer than any analog method can muster, literally 1 Hz at a time. This can now be done in the digital realm without any added distortion of any type. Certain digital preamps have this capability allowing you to create target curves. I'm sure there are also plug ins that allow you to do this. This is the path to a SOTA system in most rooms. The other path requires incredible luck.
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@mirolab
I'm not railing against EQ. I railing against analog EQ. It does not matter how well you think you can do it analog. I can and do do it much better digitally. You might consider trying it sometime.
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@tlcocks
Tone shaping? tl anything, and I mean anything you try to do analog I can do digitally better. All I have to do is look at the amplitude curve you prefer and I can mimic it exactly with less distortion. I can store it in a preset and punch it in whenever I want to tone shape. I can set up an equalizer with as many stations as I please and have a different Q at each station. I can make you a tone shaping slider and you can shape yourself silly. The possibilities are endless. Analog is extremely limited in comparison.
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@tlcocks
I noticed you have not posted your system. What exactly are you using that allows you to make these incredulous statements.
@h4k4lugi That is perfectly normal. All subwoofers need some correction because of the room they are in. This is just another reason digital signal processing is so important. tlcocks thinks he can "tone shape" with a tone control. It sounds like he sells hair spray. Amplitude adjustment has evolved over the years from simple tone controls then analog equalizers, which nobody with a good ear would go near, then on to digital signal processing which came into it's own in the late 90's with TacT Audio. Because of the bad rep of analog processing (well deserved I might add) digital processing has had a rough start because people think it has the same weaknesses as analog processing. Far from it. I can hop on the computer and design a target curve with a resolution of 0.01 Hz essentially telling the processor exactly what I want my system to sound like. All my crossovers are digital. RIAA correction is done by computer. I can remove any significant pops and tics'. All signal routing is done by Lynx Hilo, a studio piece that is a DAC, ADC and signal router. It's digital metering with peak hold lets you know when you are getting close to 0 dBFS. It allows you to adjust gain structure between inputs to maximize gain without clipping.
This sort of power is available at a reasonable price in the form of the MiniDSP SHD and SHD Studio. The SHD is $1300 and the Studio is less expensive as it does not have internal DACs. Benchmark Media Systems uses a MiniDSP SHD Studio in it's show room with two of their own DACs. They are very happy with it. It is , however not as flexible or powerful as units like the DEQX Pre4 and Pre8. The Pre8 will cost $13,000 US when it is release in a few months. A group of us will be testing the Beta program shortly.
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@tlcocks
You have to pardon my sense of black humor. I have to use hair spray or it sticks strait up. I'm too old to look like Maynard James Keenan.
Which Martin Logans are you using? They and your room are the most important part of your system. I assume you do not play vinyl?
I will have a DEQX Pre8 shortly. I will be biamping the Sound Labs using a Bricasti M25 to drive the high frequency transformers above 5000 Hz using the crossovers in the Pre8
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@mirolab ,
That's nice. I have a good friend who is a recording engineer. He knows virtually nothing about HiFi systems. He listens to music all day. The last thing he wants to do is listen to more at home.
I really do not want to be condescending but the fact of the matter is the performance of high resolution digital signal processing is so much more advanced than analog signal processing it is like comparing the Kitty Hawk to the SR71. People can like playing around with out of date analog EQ all they want. That is why Howard Johnson's made 28 flavors. Touting it as anything more than an interesting artifact is .....like the manual transmission, misleading and I have a manual 911. I'm not racing anyone with a PDK transmission.
What is done to most CDs is criminal.
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@tlcocks
Treble like bass is a moving target all because our ears change their frequency response with volume. My last processor had dynamic loudness compensation. It changed both bass and treble relative to the volume following Fletcher - Munson curves. It was very spooky. The system sounded the same regardless of volume. Before that I adjusted the volume to the best compromise for that specific recording. Some recordings sounded better at lower levels, others sounded much better turned up. I am sure everyone has had the experience of a recording that sounded somewhat dull until you turned it up then it sounded fine. The problem with the dynamic loudness compensation was that it could not accommodate to any specific recording, only volume. The end result was that I still wound up making adjustments manually. I made life easier by programming a series of target curves matching the F-M curves which I can select manually depending on both the recording and the volume.
Many people advance the treble trying to get more "air." Some of this is audiophile euphonics. Some a response for suppressed treble in the speaker/room combination. The odd thing is I have not noticed older people advancing the treble to make up for their declining hearing. Owning Sound Labs speakers I opted for Atma-Sphere MA2s given their reputation for driving Sound Labs. Nobody has ever mentioned lack of air or depressed treble. Although the midrange and midbass are glorious I found the sound to be somewhat dark. Low and behold even with the brilliance control turned all the way up the treble started to roll off above 12 kHz and by 20 kHz was down 20 dB. This is all because of the very low impedance of the Sound Labs at higher frequencies and the highish output impedance of the MA2s at 1.5 ohms. Sound Labs will go all the way to 20 kHz flat with the right amp. Fortunately for me the DEQX has a 4 way crossover and the Sound Labs has both a low frequency and high frequency transformers which can be biamped. The current plan is to drive the high frequency transformer with a Bricasti M25.
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@tlcocks
The PEQ in the processors I mention above are GUI style ganged controls. You adjust them on you computer and they can be used on the fly.
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@mirolab
I do not use a separate Equalizer. All digital preamp processors have EQ capability of one sort or another. The ones I have used and use currently have EQ in several different forms. The first is your typical parametric EQ but with frequency and Q selection and the second is via Target curves. Parametric EQ can be done on the fly whereas Target curves are designed to address specific problems. As an example some recordings might have a tendency towards sibilance. So I programmed a target curve with a Gundry dip in it. I have a base target curve that tells the system how I want it to sound from an amplitude perspective.
Preamp processors available now are the MiniDSP SHD, The Anthem STR, the DEQX Pre4 and 8, and the Trinnov Amethyst. They range in price from $1500 to $13,000.
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@baylinor ,
Us older philes had a negative view of tone controls and qualizers because the older analog versions messed up the image and added distortion. DIgital versions do not do this.
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@tlcocks
The Chord Mojo 2 is a cute little DAC/headphone amp. The fastest it can go is 756/32. The Artix 7 field programmable gated array processor is trick in this application because it requires very little power. A 64 bit Floating point processor would roast that little unit alive. You might even burn your hand. It is nowhere near as powerful as a Trinnov Amethyst or the DEQX Pre 8. I hate headphones by the way. I do not like the way the music is presented. It is very unnatural. It is interesting to note that people with the very best systems do not use headphones. I should also note that people who live in apartment buildings might have no choice. I've been there and hated it, I suspect my neighbors also hated me😈
In short, comparing something like the Chord Mojo 2 to an Amethyst or Pre 8 is folly at best. The best comparison to the Mojo would be the MiniDSP SHD another 32 bit device.
The Amethyst and DEQX Pre 8 are full function preamps. Both even have phono stages. Both use 64 bit floating point processors so degradation at low volumes is insignificant. This is extremely important for processors that are being used to adjust volume levels at various frequencies.
@jacobsdad2000
Room acoustics are very important and most rooms require some sort of management depending on the type of speaker used.
Room control is a misnomer. It is really speaker control. It repairs and adjusts things that are totally immune to room management like group delays and the variations in frequency response between the two channels. Then there is making the system sound the way you want it to. I boost bass below 100 Hz and attenuate frequencies above 1000 Hz. I have my own "house" curve. I also have a high volume curve which flattens the bass and reduces treble even further. People never realize how loud the system is playing until they try to talk.
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@tlcocks
That comment was not meant to be condescending tl, it is an unfortunate fact of life. Very few systems image near the state of the art or have the level of detail heard in even moderately priced headphones. I lived with such systems for decades. I have heard four systems image at state of the art levels in 60 years. The first one was at age 21, the system of a high school teacher. The funny thing is that he had no idea what he was doing, it was shear luck. That system made my life a lot more expensive searching for that level of performance.
Imaging is not just right to left differentiation and a false sense of 3 dimensions generated by artificial echo. It is the generation of the space the recording was performed in and the sense that instruments are 3 dimensional objects standing in space. Really large spaces breath at very low frequencies and you have to be able to get down to 18 Hz flat to replicate that. Most systems are lucky to get to 40 Hz flat. Loudspeaker specs are very misleading. What a speaker does at one meter is a whole lot different than what it does at 4 meters in a room. Gunnar Olsen's bass drum should kick you against the rear wall. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnEqnvz7Qkc. What a machine, one of the very best drummers alive, Carmine Appice with style.
Only one DEQX needed. It is a digital preamplifier with full DSP capability including a four way crossover, room control, EQ and Bass management. It even has a phono stage. Once you know what you are doing you can go anywhere. It is also like cheating. It is a shortcut to a state of the art system. https://www.deqx.com/products/
Where do you see that the Chord operates on a 104 bit system? The only spec I saw was 32 bits. The processor in the DEQX probably costs as much as the entire Mojo. I can not make a comparison statement because I have never played with a Mojo 2. It certainly does not have near the capability of the DEQX. I doubt anyone would use the Mojo as the preamp in a $150K system. The DEQX will EQ at a resolution of 0.1 Hz via target curves. You draw the frequency response curve you want on a computer and download it to the DEQX. It will overlay the curve on whatever it has to do for room and bass management.
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@tlcocks
Your link set off my virus alarm.
Let's assume 104 bits is correct. The DEQX has a 64 bit floating point processor. Regular processors like the one that is in your Mojo can only work in integers. Floating point processors can calculate down to infinitely small fractions. This gives them much higher accuracy and with DSP a much higher dynamic range. The higher dynamic range is essential in DSP to maintain decent resolution at low volumes and to prevent boosting filters from clipping. They are also a lot more expensive and run hot, too hot for a small unit like the Mojo. Against any floating point processor the additional bits in the Mojo do not mean much as the formats it is working with are either 32, 24 or 16 bits as it can only generate a fixed number of values, whereas the floating point processor can generate an infinite number of values.
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It is difficult to describe what state of the art imaging sounds like. Obviously, we are all use to hearing our own systems and how they perform. Many of us think they sound really good. Stereo system imaging is for all intents and purposes a surrealistic characteristic and not commonly heard in live performances. Only a live acoustic performance can generate such an image under the right circumstances. Thus many of us have not experienced this type of imaging. It is something you have to experience. What does being Tasered feel like? You have to be tased to know. The problem for audiophiles is getting to that level of imaging performance is really hard. Having EQ capability is a vital part of it as no two identical speakers have the same amplitude curves and they have to be identical to generate the best image.
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@mahgister
You are parroting ambiophonics stuff at me. My old Tact had all the necessary filters for an ambiophonics system which I set up. There was a more stable image across the field, but it paled in comparison to what you have at the listening position of the best stereo systems, you do lose it of axis.
The crosstalk you mention is not between the speakers, it is between your ears and this remains the same regardless of the sound source. live or reproduced. The effect cancels out. Headphones of any type present another (different) surrealistic presentation of a performance and IMHO it sucks. Why, you might ask? Music is also a visceral experience. Anyone who has been to a live modern music performance like NIN or Tool knows this. With headphones it is missing entirely, like taking a shower with a raincoat on. Your opinion manifests because you have never heard a state of the art system that can image at the highest levels. Why is EQ so important? You locate sounds by volume and phase. As for phase most systems mess this up because of the positioning of the drivers or issues with crossovers and electronics. This is one of the reasons people are attracted to full range speakers. As for volume, all you have to do is mess around with your balance control to see what happens. Identical speakers in different locations have different frequency response curves. I just recently measured a set of Magico S7s in a very symmetrical room and there was an 8 dB variation between to at 300 Hz. I was asked to measure it because of a poor image. The two channels do not have to be flat, but they do have to be identical from 100 Hz to 12 kHz. The only way to accomplish this and phase/time accuracy is with digital signal processing.
@tlcocks
I discussed these comments with another designer of digital audio equipment. Now, I have stated any number of times that acoustic treatment of the room is actually more important when using digital room control for several reasons. Room control can do nothing with echos, only amplitude. If a room is really bad at a given frequency the DSP will not be able to correct it all the way without clipping filters although the new floating point processors are much better at this. I have been using DSP for 25 years. The paragraph beginning with ," I am afraid I do not know," is honest and correct. As volume decreases the resolution does drop which was a problem for the older units. At low volumes they could easily drop below CD resolution. This is not true of a 64 Bit floating point processor almost down to it's noise level which for the processor in the DEQX is 130 dB down. For the entire unit it is 120 dB down. In other words, noise is no more of an issue than with any other high quality piece of equipment and is totally inaudible at even quiet listening levels. Then Rob presents the opinion of lay users of the Mojo which is totally worthless. People always support the equipment they own, especially if it is an inexpensive "miracle solution." What you do notice right away in a high power system is the improvement in dynamic range with a "traditional processor," which Rob avoids entirely. I suggest you ask him. "Conventional EQ is subjectively flawed." No sh-t Sherlock. Both analog and digital EQ are trying to do the same thing, adjust amplitude at specific frequencies at a given Q. Your choices via Analog EQ are extremely limited in comparison to digital EQ where you have essentially an infinite choice of frequency (down to 0.1 Hz) and Q which is infinitely adjustable via GUI slider. All this without any significant phase, IM or harmonic distortion. NO analog EQ unit can claim ANY of this. There is literally no comparison. You might as well use an abacus rather than a computer. There is no frequency that analog EQ is even remotely equivalent. As Rob himself suggests, it is the kind of distortion some people find Euphonic. I do not.
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@tlcocks
I am 70 years old and have been doing this since I was 4 years old when my dad got me a Zenith portable for my 4th birthday. He already had a serious system for the day based on Bozak B302A loudspeakers. He had an Ampex tape deck and over 100 pre recorded tapes. I paid my way through medical school installing high end systems in the homes of very rich people. I got all my own equipment at salesman's comp. I have already been through every permutation you can think of including analog equalizers. I am one of 120 people who are going to beta test the Pre 8 (we get one at 1/2 price). It should be showing up any day. If someone wants to bring a Skyline to my home I would be happy to plug it in. I am certainly not going to buy one. Progress does not like going backwards and I am not sentimental.
Knowing what a state of the art system/room is capable of is totally a matter of experience. Many of us have heard some very expensive systems and most of them do not perform at the level I am talking about although they may be very impressive. I might also add that the very best systems I have ever heard were not hyper expensive except one, an HQD Levinson system. It does not matter how good your ears are if you have not experienced the best. Try explaining what Foie Gras taste like, you have to try it to understand.
@mahgister
Theories are just that. In the end people decide and they are not rushing to get one of these systems. I never said that "mechanical control", more appropriately called acoustic control of the room is not important, it is very important. Without it you are finished in terms of creating the best system. Most important to acoustic control are the dimensions and configuration of the room. The room has to be designed for sound reproduction to get the best results, although using something like a DEQX or Trinnov can help a lot there are problems they can not manage. For instance, great bass throughout the room is very difficult to achieve. The DEQX and Trinnov can only give you great bass at the listening position. Every place else there is either too much or too little. With a good room and the right speakers you can get very even bass throughout the room varying only a few dB. The less these units have to correct the better.
We all love music. The love of music has little to do with being an audiophile. Most music lovers are not audiophiles. Most music lovers are not hyper acute listeners. Most audiophiles do not have a lot of experience listening to multiple systems. Maybe they have gone to a show, but not one of the best systems I have ever heard was at a show. Like most things in life, experience is everything.
tl, there are always better ways, it never stops. There are also a lot of dead ends like 8 track tapes. Analog equalizers are one of those dead ends. Like vintage turntables they are going to show up on the market and sentimental people will buy them hopefully at a good price. I'm sure they can make some systems sound better, but they are nowhere near the last word. I am extremely adventurous, a very early adopter. I have been using DSP in my system for 30 years. I have been using subwoofers since 1978. Both are now exploding onto the market as all good things will.
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@tlcocks
I am a gladly retired FP.
The shop I use to work with was Sound Components in Miami, FL when Peter McGrath owned it. Peter was heavily into recording and we had all kinds of professional equipment in house including equalizers. I have not used one in my current system. I do not have access to one and I certainly am not going to buy one.
Flat is boring and usually too bright. I have my own "house" curve that I use. How many target curves have you drawn and listened to? What happens if I boose 4 kHz 3 dB. What happens if I cut 125 Hz 3 dB. What happens if I do both? With a low Q? With a high Q?
@mahgister
I do not use the term room tuning. The most significant part of acoustic management is designing the room specifically for sound reproduction then you touch up with treatments as needed. The only acoustic treatment I use in my room which was designed for sound reproduction is 3 floor to ceiling rows of 4" acoustic tiles behind both loudspeakers. These kill the back wave of the ESLs above 250 Hz. Because they are line source Dipoles that is the only first reflection point. There is no rear wall. The room is open to the rest of the house. The nearest solid wall is 75 feet away.
The quality of music reproduction is not subjective. We may have different ways of trying to describe the experience and there is considerable variation to the live experience, so it is a moving target. If I blindfold you and walk you into a media room and you think you are at a live performance, that is a great system. This only works with certain types of music and requires a live recording. Studio recordings are fun and can sound great but they never convince me that I am at a live performance. The best test for imaging is the string quartet. Attend a live one to get a reference. Then play any one of the Luigi Cherubini string quartets performed by the Melos Quartett Stuttgart. Nr 1 in Es-dur is my favorite. If you can close your eyes and feel as if you are at a live performance you have a great system.
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@tlcocks
Studio gear is certainly not overbuilt as some home HiFi is. It is certainly more reasonably priced. I use commercial sound reinforcement amps to drive my subwoofers and I use a studio digital switcher with DAC and ADC capability. There is absolutely nothing special about studio gear and in many instances it is inferior to home equipment. This is particularly true of loudspeakers (monitors). The very best speakers are not studio monitors. That is not to say there are not some very good ones like the old LS3 5A. Put a subwoofer under the LS and cross at 100 hz and you will swear you are listening to Wilsons. I also would be willing to bet most studios are using digital equipment at this point. The analog stuff is being or has been phased out except in specialty studios dedicated to analog of which there are a few, not including MoFi😏
@mahgister
I assure you I have normal (nothing special) ears. I am a very careful, organized listener and certainly I do not use my nose to do that. As I said above, I have my own house curve. I wonder how I developed it. Must have done it with the third toe on the left. I also do not wax poetic about analog equipment. I am not a romantic.
tl and I agree that having EQ capability is an important asset. We go about it differently. That is why Howard Johnson's made 28 flavors.
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@tlcocks
I have played with analog EQ and the units back then did not please anyone present. We did adjust things in sort of an analog way by adjusting the gains on the crossovers, all Mark Levinson designed by Mr Curl. We had no way of measuring back then. USB microphones were decades away.
I know exactly what my system and room are doing because I measure it and have printed readouts of each individual speaker. Digital EQ is adjusted so that both channels are identical from 100 Hz to 12 kHz. In just about all residencial sized rooms at volumes in and around 90 dB flat is going to have thin bass and the highs will make you wince. There are a few records that were mixed at high volume and sound dull at low levels. The solution is to turn the volume up. If you think flat is not bright I would have your hearing checked or have your system measured, It is rolling off the high end. Many systems will do this depending on the impedance curve of the speaker and the output impedance of the amplifier. This is one big reason some people prefer tube amplifiers. For $300 you can get yourself a calibrated microphone, computer program and measure your system to see what it is doing. I promise you, you will be very surprised. Flat is a reference point. Units like the DEQX will go there automatically as a starting point. No system/room is flat to begin with and in some cases are so bad even digital EQ can not correct it all the way.
The vast majority of albums are now recorded digitally and most music is now listened to via digital program sources. It makes no sense to keep going back and forth between digital and analog. In digital you can easily do all the processing without adding any artifact whereas every time you pass the signal through an analog device there is always added artifact. Just a fact of life. However, some people actually like listening to distortion and that is their prerogative. I am of the other school and seek to minimize any distortion anywhere in the system I can. I use Electrostatic speakers because their distortion levels are a level of magnitude lower than dynamic speakers if run correctly (no low bass). There are no analog crossovers in my system. RIAA correction is done digitally. I can record vinyl to the hard drive in 192/24 and nobody has been able to tell the difference between the recording and the actual record. Once you are in numbers you can go almost anywhere you want. I use 10th order slopes for the subwoofer crossover, virtually impossible to do in analog.
In the end the system is adjusted to my preference, by ear. Subwoofer gain is adjusted by ear. Treble roll off is adjusted by ear. However, since I have measure the system I can go to the proper curve automatically without listening.
Now back to making a turkey stuffing.
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@tlcocks
The BACCH-SP is a computer program which cancels "crosstalk" by DSP. It is either Apple or Windows specific. It is not a preamp and does not have EQ capability. It is said to make the image more holographic. It also measures the system with microphones. The DEQX Pre 4 and Pre 8 are full function preamps with Speaker management, bass management, Room Control and EQ capability. I have not heard the BACCH-SP so I can not comment.
There is no magic with DSP. The computer has high resolution control over amplitude (volume at specific frequencies) phase and time, the time it takes for the signal to reach your ear. It controls nothing else that I am aware off although it can be used to add effects such as echo. I'll leave the effects to the artist.
Analog is the enemy of signal purity. Again, most music is recorded digitally. Keeping it there until the final conversion to analog at the listeners DAC is the only best way to deal with it. A number can not be distorted. It can only be changed.
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@mirolab
And you obviously do not understand digital signal processing. A number has meaning, distortion does not. That number represents amplitude, nothing else. When you change that number you change amplitude in a specific way. Distortion in meaningless. DSP changes the numbers in specified patterns to achieve a specific result. Can you change the numbers to replicate distortion? I'm not sure although I do not see why not. A number can not be distorted, it can only be changed.
Analog? It is essential only because that is what our ears understand. The only components that should operate in analog are speakers and perhaps amplifiers. Everything else is way better off operating in digital. Good examples are broadcast radio and the cell phone. Compare Sirius radio to standard radio, old analog cell vs what we have now. People who think analog signal processing is better are stuck at about 1981. As you yourself have just described, you can go almost anywhere with DSP and not necessarily in good ways. That is up to the programmer.
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I have a very fragile ego. I'm going to go cry in a glass of Tequila.
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@tlcocks I got my DEQX Pre 8 yesterday. I am part of the beta group and everything is not working yet including the remote:-( It has a Volumio processor in it, so it will stream anything Volumio carries. I have programmed it to my system but there are still a few glitches in the software which should be easy to take care of. EQ will be available by the end of February. It is certainly a work in progress but initial results have been excellent except for those few glitches. We got a very good price on our units to do this so I can not complain. I can operate it from my telephone while they get the remote programmed. It came with an Earthworks microphone which is dead flat 20 to 20 kHz so it does not need calibration.
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@tlcocks A demo is always possible.
@mahgister 1+ on the sanity issue. Beta testing the DEQX is already putting a strain on mine and it is only two days old.
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@tlcocks Not entirely true TL. Room control is going to change amplitude response across the entire audio band and it will give you a flat system to start with. All the Room Control units I know of also allow users to control amplitude just like an equalizer or by using target curves. Your preference settings will be different after room control is set up.
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@tlcocks I am currently looking at the only great DSP demo I know of and if you are ever in the area you are welcome to hear it. The owner of Sounds of Silence will be over with a friend on Thursday. Perhaps he will comment on this thread. It will be interesting because he is an analog guy and only listens to vinyl.
I have taken a big leap that has increased the complexity of the situation by an order of magnitude. I am now actively bi amping Soundlabs ESLs. Each transformer has it's own amplifier channel. The DEQX Pre 8 has a digital 4 way crossover. The DEQX software is in a very early state of development which makes life even more fun. I spent 6 hours yesterday running sine sweeps and staring at graphs only to discover that I can not lower the gain on the high frequency amp enough to match the other 4 amplifiers. They have to match perfectly or you are wasting bits and clipping filters. In-line attenuators are coming tomorrow. In the meantime the system is not listenable, the price of progress. Being an immediate gratification type has it's drawbacks. There is no going backwards as the modifications to the speaker back plates is permanent. Damn those torpedoes!
The DEQX equalizer is different than the others I have used. It puts up a graph with a flat line at 0 dB. Anyware you click on the graph the program will bend the line to go through that spot. Then each spot has a lever arm that you use to adjust the Q. It is very awkward at first, but you eventually get used to it and there are no limitations as to what you can do within the limits of the graph.
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