Genelec 8030C vs Neumann KH 80 DSP?

[Miguelón]

An open question that I had when trying the Neumann KH 80: will the analogue to digital conversion, and ulterior reconversion to analogue after DSP treatment affects fidelity in an audible way?

It doesn’t concern only this speaker, some other monitors (mainly the smaller ones) integrate DSP but lack of digital input, so redundant AD-DSP-DA path is the only option.

Is there any discussion about the topic on ASR? If not maybe interesting to open a thread

Post editing: I suppose that instrumental analysis done by Amir should be enough to answer my question, but still have some doubts

 

[Rednaxela]

Post editing: I suppose that instrumental analysis done by Amir should be enough to answer my question, but still have some doubts

Your question seems to cover more than one comparison.

1) two different speakers where one happens to be DSP based, most notably but not exclusively for crossover duties
2) two otherwise equal speakers where one is DSP based and the other is not
3) two equal DSP based speakers, one fed with a digital signal and the other with an analog signal

Which one would you want to focus on for this instrumental analysis?

 

[Miguelón]

Your question seems to cover more than one comparison.

1) two different speakers where one happens to be DSP based, most notably but not exclusively for crossover duties
2) two otherwise equal speakers where one is DSP based and the other is not
3) two equal DSP based speakers, one fed with a digital signal and the other with an analog signal

Which one would you want to focus on for this instrumental analysis?

The third, I’m thinking concretely on Neumann kh 120 ii to do that: I had one at home and has analogue XLR and SPDIF inputs.

My subjective sensations was analogue path sounded different than digital one, analogue sounded less clean (more noise, phase inaccuracies and or IM distortion?). But it could be just psychological.

It is in the context of a more general question regarding how a digital conversion of an analogue signal (that came from a digital file) and then back to digital will differ from the original file, or more practical one, how the final signal will differ from the analogue signal before digital conversion.

1- digital file => DAC => amplifier => speaker

2- digital file => DAC => ADC => DAC => amplifier => speaker

Clearly the intermediate ADC will add more quantization noise to the signal, and new harmonic distortion, but will be audible?

 

[YSC]

The third, I’m thinking concretely on Neumann kh 120 ii to do that: I had one at home and has analogue XLR and SPDIF inputs.

My subjective sensations was analogue path sounded different than digital one, analogue sounded less clean (more noise, phase inaccuracies and or IM distortion?). But it could be just psychological.

It is in the context of a more general question regarding how a digital conversion of an analogue signal (that came from a digital file) and then back to digital will differ from the original file, or more practical one, how the final signal will differ from the analogue signal before digital conversion.

1- digital file => DAC => amplifier => speaker

2- digital file => DAC => ADC => DAC => amplifier => speaker

Clearly the intermediate ADC will add more quantization noise to the signal, and new harmonic distortion, but will be audible?

IME it isn't audible, at least modern dac and adc if done correctly add minimal noise to be remotely audible under blind testing, if you've ever tried those golden ears tests you will find you will have difficulty hearing deliberately added distortions into audio clips with the distortion is below like -40db, most modern dac and adc have SINAD of 100+db, so those noise are highly unlikely if not impossible to hear, I remember once heard some comparison files of a "raw" file ripped from a CD, and then a guy do the ADC->DAC->ADC conversion for a dozen times and basically if unnamed ppl have severe difficulty hearing which is which, more of a blind guessing chace of identifying.

And in reality, you won't do the extra ADC->DAC for no reason, for actives, if it is to correct phase or FR linearity, the benefit is quite if not very audible, so the gain is definitely worth it compared to the loss. The only loss one might notice is actually the delay in signal, all DSP have some intrinsic delay to the signal, usually very low in the single digit milisecond, for music playback it definitely isn't an issue, but some can hear the delay relative to say, movie dialogue or FPS shooting games, I personally can't discern that ms difference but YMMV

 

[Miguelón]

IME it isn't audible, at least modern dac and adc if done correctly add minimal noise to be remotely audible under blind testing, if you've ever tried those golden ears tests you will find you will have difficulty hearing deliberately added distortions into audio clips with the distortion is below like -40db, most modern dac and adc have SINAD of 100+db, so those noise are highly unlikely if not impossible to hear, I remember once heard some comparison files of a "raw" file ripped from a CD, and then a guy do the ADC->DAC->ADC conversion for a dozen times and basically if unnamed ppl have severe difficulty hearing which is which, more of a blind guessing chace of identifying.

And in reality, you won't do the extra ADC->DAC for no reason, for actives, if it is to correct phase or FR linearity, the benefit is quite if not very audible, so the gain is definitely worth it compared to the loss. The only loss one might notice is actually the delay in signal, all DSP have some intrinsic delay to the signal, usually very low in the single digit milisecond, for music playback it definitely isn't an issue, but some can hear the delay relative to say, movie dialogue or FPS shooting games, I personally can't discern that ms difference but YMMV

Thanks, I imagine it was under audible threshold, because if not the Amir’s review of Neumann kh 80 (which only supplies analogue connection) should show higher distortion.

As you, I’m not concerned about delays as short as 10 miliseconds, even more, though as instrument monitors could bother a little bit but probably they aren’t use for playing a guitar or a digital piano

 

[Ktacos]

Neumanns ADC/DAC in their speakers is totally transparent IME.