Should Audio reviews include DSP?

[JRowland]

Who on earth would use an AVR without DSP on?

Folks who watch TV on the same system they use for 2 channel music I’d guess. The “direct” and “pure” buttons on most of the AVRs seem made just for that group. Purists with a shared space system as well maybe. To be clear I’m not advocating or admonishing just thinking of possible why.

 

[popej]

Who on earth would use an AVR without DSP on?

What about reviews? How often do you see a review with DSP processing analyzed?

 

[Sokel]

Folks who watch TV on the same system they use for 2 channel music I’d guess. The “direct” and “pure” buttons on most of the AVRs seem made just for that group. Purists with a shared space system as well maybe. To be clear I’m not advocating or admonishing just thinking of possible why.

Thanks for that, I had no idea that AVRs has stollen Yamaha's direct mode as a term and if they can do that (hard-core 2-chann here, so...)

 

[Sokel]

What about reviews? How often do you see a review with DSP processing analyzed?

Almost never, that's true, very, very few.

From the rare ones though we have seen , it's maybe worth it:

DSP Measurements and Rising Noise Floor

In several threads related to DSP platforms I've seen requests for measurements with filters engaged. I thought it unlikely that implementing filters in a DSP would have measurable effect on noise / distortion other than the obvious change in the fundamental, however @Sokel recently mentioned...

www.audiosciencereview.com

Not all DSP are flawless (and I mean totally flawless, as a signal in digital domain should be) and of the few we have now see tested MOST are not.

 

[Sokel]

What about reviews? How often do you see a review with DSP processing analyzed?

Also, here is a nice post that shows what a simple filter does to this AVR (30dB noise surge! ), at a glance:

miniDSP Tide16 - Holy Grail with 16 Channel Atmos/DTS:X, high SINAD

Anything using DSP is a suspect. The ones we know for sure are impeccable are RME and Fiio (I think, if these are the ones who use DSP dedicated chip). MiniDSP also applied a partial fix after the thread (and because of it) We've seen similar hits at Topping's implementation, or Bluesound for...

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[Mnyb]

It's worth pointing out that you cant optimally utilize very bass capable passive speakers without DSP good placement does not fix everything re bass, far from it .

Amir's adhoc adjustment to one of his known room modes is a good idea , if the room is large even better .

Just saying if you review speakers in a small and or boomy room , every large speaker with actual bass would come off as "slow" "tubby" "boomy"

 

[Mort]

Even without DSP, most reviewers spend less time on 100hz and below precisely for that reason.
The response depends as much on the room as the equipment being tested.

Frankly, I'm more interested in the timing and phase setting of the DSP than the Schroeder performance.

 

[Arindal]

Just saying if you review speakers in a small and or boomy room , every large speaker with actual bass would come off as "slow" "tubby" "boomy"

Agreed that the risk for boomy or dominant bass being higher with chunky speakers in a small room, but there are actually large speakers on the market, which you can put into a small room or position close to the wall and the bass would not get slow or boomy.

It is obvious that cardioids and dipoles belong to this category, but interestingly also some conventional closed or vented designs. ATC and Graham come to mind, as well as some compact models by Dali and MEG, from my experience.

 

[Flaesh]

It would be slightly interesting to see some mass-market subwoofer like these

drived directly by plain external amp without build-in DSP

 

[janbth]

I didn’t see Erin’s review, but if we are talking about measuring a Spinorama with a Klippel NFS - which provides anechoic data - then applying DSP to correct room modes doesn’t make sense.

 

[pablolie]

But there is no hack here... A car has loads of options that you can enable or disable. Do you think cars get reviewed without them? Should a 4x4 Jeep be tested in rough terrain without engaging the Four Wheel Drive? That doesn't make any sense...

Of course it doesn't make sense because that's no equivalency.

A competent offroad vehicle claim should be tested offroad (and many SUVs are utterly incompetent at that because they just get tested on the road).

DSP offers so many permutations that they shall never ever not once be thoroughly tested. The only reliable info is how competently/incompetently they were designed off the gate. If I HAVE to use DSP to make audio equipment remotely passable - personally I'd pass. I'd rather go for solid fundamentals without DSP. I know I can make those adjustments later - and minor ones preferably.

DSP stands on its own as a correction/adjustment. Not as a replacement for solid fundamentals.

 

[pablolie]

A better analogy is probably traction control, ie a function that tames the raw mechanical output in a way that makes it more pleasant. A car designed with TC in mind will be a very different experience when TC is disabled - and the same can be true of DSP.

That's not an analogy in any remote way, respectfully.

A car with traction and stability control is designed to save an incompetent user that would be otherwise be easily overwhelmed by the power of the car they bought. Most people are only and exclusively able to drive 200hp+ cars because of the idiot-safe parameters that were built into the cars.

DSP is great - but shouldn't be there to correct fundamental flaws. It can be more like selling a 500hp car that comes out with poor brakes unless you buy the optional brake upgrade package, sorry.

I like to see solid design fundamentals. That's what the primary review should be about. The ability to adapt those (hopefully minorly) to my room and such is a bonus. But I like to first establish the designers knew what they were doing with the standard output.

 

[EDMoser]

Who on earth would use an AVR without DSP on?
It's like like getting a miniDSP just to use it as a DAC.

OBVIOUSLY they have to be tested as in real use, that's their purpose and that's why they have a category of their own.

I only run 2.1 systems, and I use an AVR for its HPF, internal DACs and amplifiers - a one box solution.

DSP is done on my laptop which feeds the AVR via HDMI. I can even send DSP'd audio from my laptop via Bluetooth to the AVR.

AVRs are affordable and used this way sound totally transparent - to my ears anyway.

* And Yes, DSP should be part of a review if possible. Amir is already applying EQ to most speaker reviews here. If DSP is included in a product, it should be reviewed IMO.

 

[ivayvr]

It is a tough one to answer. Any review is better than no review when the reviewer is competent and objective, and the proper disclosures are made.
We saw reviews where the dip switches on the speaker were not used and the speaker was declared as having a weak bass...
Using the dip switches is not complicated and time consuming and in some instances they make quite a difference.

 

[Sokel]

I only run 2.1 systems, and I use an AVR for its HPF, internal DACs and amplifiers - a one box solution.

DSP is done on my laptop which feeds the AVR via HDMI. I can even send DSP'd audio from my laptop via Bluetooth to the AVR.

AVRs are affordable and used this way sound totally transparent - to my ears anyway.

* And Yes, DSP should be part of a review if possible. Amir is already applying EQ to most speaker reviews here. If DSP is included in a product, it should be reviewed IMO.

HPF is already DSP unless some analog circuit kicks in, depending the AVR (old ones maybe)
The post above with the +30dB quantization noise penalty shows just that, it's textbook lost filter precision.

 

[Flaesh]

Is it necessary to comment on this?

JBL One Series 104 Powered Monitor Review

This is a review and detailed measurements of the JBL 104 Powered Monitor (speaker). I purchased this recently for just US $90 including free shipping from Amazon. JBL shows the list price as US $129. These are hefty, egg-shaped speakers: That's the master speaker that houses the...

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[kharan]

The question is where do you start and where do you stop. Let's take for example de Dutch & Dutch 8C.

The crossover is entirely DSP, so without it, the speaker won't work at all, that obviously needs to be included it.

The next step is that D&D have a basic room matching system where you enter your speakers distance to the front and side walls and the speaker auto equalises itself to deal with SBIR. Do you use that feature?

The speaker also accepts filters from REW, there's even a tutorial on the website to help you do that. Should the speakers be reviewed with that correction loaded in?

And let's say a reviewer gets the speaker with a u-Bacch license attached to the speaker unit, should that DSP be included in the review?

Bonus question: the Focal Diva et Mezzo Utopia come with a basic room correction system where you play signals through the left and right speakers and match them by ear. Should a review do that procedure and load the resulting filter before reviewing the speaker?

 

[Oddball]

I would like to see AVRs/AVPs/Preamps with room correction evaluated with the correction engaged so we can see how engaging room correction impacts the raw performance that should of course continue to be measured. We might learn some interesting things about how various room correction systems work in that respect.

This might also help in evaluating specific manufacturer's implementation of given room correction system vs implementation of other manufacturers. Dirac comes to mind as present on multiple platforms and at least in some respects implemented differently.

 

[Marc v E]

I think it doesn't make much sense to include dsp in a review for a reviewer, because you need a common baseline to compare.

However, because it's so powerfull for the end result it does make a lot of sense for us as consumers.

If I'm not mistaken each speaker is implicitly tested for its eq-ability by testing:
- against the ideal response, on and off axis,
- and audibility of distortion at high power levels.

PS: Still would be great to get a comparison review between the eq solutions of a few of the big players, if only to form an idea of what they can do.

 

[Flaesh]

JBL M2 witout DSP