that learning curve is steep, for sure.
id love to read your ebook.That's because vast majority of this hobby have a fundamentally different view to us. For them, it's more akin to wine appreciation or luxury watch appreciation. They think there are countless manufacturers, all offering slightly different takes on a Shiraz, and each must be tasted to assemble the best system possible. Sure, there are $10 wines that get you as drunk as a $1000 wine. Some of them are even good! But no, they have elevated taste, likely can't pick the two wines apart in a blind test, but will swear till the cows come home that their $1000 wine is better. And of course, that $1000 wine needs expensive accoutrements - maybe a crystal decanter and wine glasses blown by a hermit in Moravia who makes one wine glass a year (and he has 10 of them). Those $10 wines are viewed with condescension, it's what the masses drink.
After I wrote my REW eBook, I made an announcement at the Melbourne Audio Club. A few members downloaded the book and started reading. One of them told me that he was blown away by the information in the book, he never realized that a microphone could tell him so much. I pointed out that a microphone is cheaper than his audiophile speaker cable, and if he knows how to use it, it will save him a lot of money. I have been talking to him for a month now, and he's been sharing his measurements with me. He is slowly being converted
thanks a milli!
To be clear, there's no necessity for a permanent computer. It all depends on what you get. I got MiniDSP stuff. You use a computer to set it up but then it's gone.
Guess through how much DSP almost any music track went before it even entered your house? Unless you only listen to < 80s pressed CD and LPs, all of it would have gone through a massive amount of all the things audiophiles despise: regular cables, massive amounts of DSP processing, proper DACs, ADCs, and over their dead body: opamps... huge amounts of them!
This occurred to me when I wrote the OP. I deliberately ignored it, because so many of the DSP haters don't seem to think about that or specify what DSP even means - which is kind of the point I guess. Cause whatever it is, it's bad for music. Among The Faithful there seems to very little systems thinking going on.
TIFIFY
I have repaired a lot of audio gear over the decades and even the expensive equipment had the usual JRC4*, TL* and NE55* opamps.
Then it might have been the sensibly designed, expensive stuff. Many of the boutique products will either yield a specialized high-end opamp (whatever that means), or will claim that a discrete circuit is vastly superior because of... reasons...
intentionally.
