I wanted to report back on my DSP experimentation using Roon. I hope that this thread can be helpful to people, like myself, who are generally ignorant, interested in improving their sound, willing to invest a moderate amount of time, and who are wary of both new equipment and room EQ when presented as cure-alls. This was my proof-of-concept for room EQ via Roon.
I had already spent some time moving speakers around and measuring response curves using Room EQ Wizard (REW).
I had only done sweeps in REW previously, so, having found a useful guide online,
(
https://community.roonlabs.com/t/a-guide-how-to-do-room-correction-and-use-it-in-roon/23800),
I did pink noise averaging, generated the filters, and loaded the WAV file into my new, trial, Roon account as 20 Convolution filters per channel. I moved the family desktop into my basement listening room to connect it via USB to my DAC. There are a lot of steps to doing it this way, but I followed the recipe, and somewhat to my surprise, it worked. I hope at some point to post before and after response curves, if that would be helpful.
I've now spent a few days playing with Roon and listening to music with the filters in place. I'm not sure what I expected, but the difference is definitely perceptible but not dramatic. The improvement from repositioning my speakers was more noticeable, as it flattened the response curves to a greater extent and probably extended base response by 10 Hz.
With the Roon filters in place, I do not hear a difference on every track. However, my main gripe with my system has been overly-prominent treble, such as screechy violins and sopranos. Roon's DSP has helped with that. I would describe the change as if the performer had moved from a glass-enclosed space to a wooden one, which I guess makes sense. Notes in this range sound more resonant and less blown-out, to take a metaphor from photography. Beyond that, the midrange and upper base on some tracks sound fuller. The base is probably a little more articulate and even. The two channels still are not close to perfectly matched, so imaging only seems modestly improved. Those, at least, are my hot takes.
I would say that GDK's advice to give Roon a trial run was spot on. Although I don't think DSP can catapult my system far beyond what it was before, the change is noticeable, and if I'd spent $500 to get to this point in new equipment, I would not think I had been ripped off. Those things are hard to put a value on. I think I will likely stick with Roon, though with which subscription plan remains to be seen.
I hate that setting these things up is so complicated, and look forward to settling on a solution. Next step will likely be purchasing a Raspberry Pi 4 as an endpoint via Wi-Fi so that the family desktop can return to the second floor.
The experience has also convinced me that, at my stage, knowledge is more valuable than dollars in improving my sound, and less expensive, so I will likely hold off on buying a new amp or speakers for the time being. For example, I now wonder whether there is any advantage to getting fancy EQ features on active speakers if I can just do it myself in half an hour using Room EQ Wizard and Roon. Those tools would seem to give passive systems a big boost in general.