Experienced only: What have you done with room correction?

@jeffseight 

i was pondering a low cost experiment with the DSpeaker system for about $300, but when I noticed the analog in/out I started thinking about the extra D/A conversion and decided for now to focus on room treatments, which is also what the above responses suggest anyway.  Will be giving GIK a call next week…

My experience with room correction involves two different correction systems.  The first DSP/RC was part of Sanders 10 speaker system.  Roger Sanders programmed and included a dbx VENU360 DSP/digital crossover with the system purchase of his 10 series electrostatic speakers.  I bought a dbx from Sanders to use with Innersound EROS speakers.  The EROS speakers are the predecessors to his Sanders 10 speakers.  The crossover portion of the dbx is necessary for use with Sanders or Innersound speakers.  The DSP/RC RTA (real time analyzer) in the dbx is set up using a microphone.  Full set up process is easy to do and gives the music the right weight and resolves room and bass resonances.  In other words, the music sounds really good!  Check the Sanders web site for more information.

My current RC system is a Lyngdorf TDAI 2170.  While this unit is an 80 watt integrated amp with Room Perfect room correction, I don't use the amp portion of the 2170.  The 2170 is very flexible and I can use it as just a preamp with Room Correction, which I do. Room Perfect allows me to set the crossover point for the high pass and low pass filters so I send the high pass to a Sanders Magtech amp which drives Magnepan 3.7i speakers.  The low pass is sent to a Dayton Audio sub amp driving four AudioKinesis subs.  Room Perfect room corrects by analyzing, via a microphone, various test tones and sweeps taken from random microphone placements (usually seven or eight locations) in the room.  The correction produces a sound without the negative influences of the room.  The bass is clean and articulate (though I believe the four sub system from AudioKinesis has a lot to do with that).  Soundstage, depth and detail are outstanding.  The sound I hear makes my toes tap and when my toes are tapping I know the sound is good.  Hit the Lyngdorf website for more information.

Passive room treatment (if it's allowed) is always the best first choice.

I'm currently using one of MiniDSP's Dirac Live boxes, which corrects both frequency and time domains.

My system is pretty basic - homemade speakers using Alpair 10.2 full-range drivers, FLAC rips on a PC played through Foobar2000, and a tpa3620-based chip amp.

The Dirac Live correction makes a profound difference. This is in a rented pre-war NYC apartment, which isn't optimal acoustically. I can't play loudly, so also dialed in some "smiley face" EQ. 

It's night and day better with room correction.

Before that, I used MathRoomEQ, a plugin for Foobar2000. That made things better, but Dirac Live puts more there, there.

I built my system around the principles of Edward Choueiri and his BACCH system. It’s the last piece I have to add. As of now I try to find room spaces when I move that are not square which help with avoiding standing waves (Modes /Nodes) and keep the speakers off the walls as much as I can. There is lots of great information here and ways to do this. I have large full range 20.1 Maggie’s which are as close to line source as I could get, four large subwoofers (also asymmetrically placed in the room) and measured the room (speakers and listening position) with Room EQ Wizard and then input that data into Multi Sub Optimizer via an Earthworks M30 microphone to generate filters everything running out of my Mini DSP with balanced connections which is processing all filters at 56bit/ 96kHz. There are no A/D conversions, it’s digital from start to finish. I’ve ripped out the analog crossovers and use the Mini DSP to input directly into the amps which power the speakers actively. As others have alluded it is almost impossible to correct a bad room with room correction alone. You can very effectively do it by adding more subwoofers. . . Most of the shorter wavelengths die fairly quickly on reflections and room treatments work great for those, the worst offenders are the lower order notes that cause all the issues. It’s crazy to listen to the system before the filters are built (scared the daylights out of me) and to also see the filters that are created after all the processing is complete. The results are stunning.

Thanks,

Steve