Don't like the DSP function. Wait, what?

A calibrated Dayton mic http://www.cross-spectrum.com/measurement/calibrated_dayton.html
Sound Devices USBPre 2 https://www.sounddevices.com/products/portable-audio-tools/usbpre2
Audiolense http://juicehifi.com/

Audiolense has a 5.0 beta version, but it’s still a bit buggy so I mostly use 4.13. Windows only…

I tried and in my setup DSP upsampling doesn’t sound better. Better dynamics, faster, leaner without the DSP.

ROCK fanless NUC 7i5 -> AudioQuest Carbon USB -> Chord 2Qute -> MIT Matrix 12 RCA -> Exposure 2010S2D -> MIT Matrix 18 -> ATC SCM-19

In on of my zones, I use an entry model Denon AV receiver (AVR-X1200W) that has some dubious internal DAC. Feeding it with pre-upsampled audio (192kHz in this case) subjectively sounds a lot better than let the receiver do the upsampling. in other zones with other DACs, it’s much less noticable, to the point that I can’t hear any difference.

Good discussion.
I’ve already wondered why the DSP functions found their way into roon software. I think in most cases you have some sort of amp at home, let it be pure stereo or surround.
There are so many amps that already have many options regarding DSP, room correction or equalizer. Why integrating such functions into roon software…?
And tube amps completely lack such DSP options - they know why ;-).
I see the Roon software mainly as a tool to organize your music and deliver it to an already existing amp to render it. Thus, the sound quality is mainly defined by the amp and speakers.

If you expect good or superior sound quality go for a good amp and good speakers or headphones. It’s that simple. Doing so you can forget about all these so called “sound improvements”. Listening stereo music is usually done best with all “sound improvements” turned off. And if expecting good stereo effect, you should simply place the speakers and yourselve correctly ;-). And if you should have problems arranging these you may think about an amp e.g. with Audyssey, including a microphone for full automatic room correction. Today, such amps are really affordable and deliver great sound.

Not sure I fully buy into this. For example, whilst I expect that all amps possess at least some form of equaliser, room correction using feedback is a rarer kettle of fish. Yes, I have that on my home cinema AVR, but not on my stereo amp. And that’s where DSP in Roon in combination with REW has been a useful step forward, for me at least. The stereo amp and speakers sit in our living room, and I don’t have the freedom to design a listening room from the ground up.

Looking for amps from e.g. Denon, Marantz, Onkyo or Yamaha you will soon find affordable ones with automatic room correction and great sound. Even for multiple zones.

If you want really good sound for listing, not just hearing, you have to invest in a good amp and good speakers.
And you’d get good sound for any kind of input, as long as the source material is of good quality.
I don’t like the idea of all the involved technical components having their own “sound improvements” influencing the final sound quality.

And for sure, you shouldn’t try to “optimize” SQ of heavily compressed tracks to get a good experience.

No argument - I’ve been a fan of QUAD for nearly 50 years - but there is also the additional component of the room, and that’s where room correction has a role to play. As I said, I haven’t the luxury to be able to rebuild the room, so I’m happy that I can allow for its quirks in Roon.

It doesn’t matter how much you spend - if your room’s bad you’re not going to be hearing all it can do. You could spend 100,000 on kit and not be hearing it’s full potential. In fact it could sound awful.

In theory if you spend those sort of sums you have a dedicated, treated space, but not necessarily. Certainly not everyone with 5-30k worth of hifi have listening rooms, and I consider this ‘spending money for good kit’.

If you can’t treat your room (or don’t want to - most often for aesthetic reasons) DSP room correction is a good solution to the problem.

Or sometimes you might just want more bass!!!

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I more or less agree ;-).
I don’t talk about spending nearly 5k for a good amp speaker combination. But, I prefer to use an amp with integrated room correction to be able to use this feature for any input you like, not only with roon. So, such an amp is much more versatile.
And having e.g. Audyssey on board the amp measures the speakers’ behavior thus, being able to do real magic even with rather limited speakers.

BTW: “more bass” is rather not a sign of good SQ ;-).

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@maddib @Geoff_Coupe @brian

No no no no.
I’m sorry - I started this thread when the DSP function was new and I was learning how to use it. We all were. Interesting discussion ensued. But since then, my understanding of how to use the tool has evolved, and I have better measurement tools, and I have written extensively about this - but in other threads. That’s the nature of a forum like this, information is spread out and not necessarily easy to find.

So let my summarize my evolved views, expressed elsewhere.

In my view, the things that affect sound quality are, in order of importance, 1) the room, 2) the speakers, 3) having electronics that meet a minimum bar of adequacy (e.g. amps with enough power), and 4) all the details that the corksniffers enjoy debating such as DAC architecture and MQA and cables and power supplies and operating system simplification. I’m not saying the corksniffing tweaks are not real, im just saying they are vastly, fantastically unimportant compared to the room and speakers.

Unfortunately, the cost also follows that list. And there are non-cost impediments to room modification, I don’t want to sit isolated in a separate room to listen to music. I enjoy my music in a room with a view of the lake and the mountains, and art on the walls, and furniture I like.

DSP-based room correction is one of those magical things that shortcut that relationship: it can dramatically affect the most important aspect, while costing very little. Indeed, when Roon added it, the cost became near zero. Not quite, you need a mike and measuring software, but it is still small.

And by having room correction in the Roon core, the marginal cost per room is zero: once I had the instrumentation, I can correct every room where I have an endpoint, and in the next few days I’ll bring my mike and laptop and correct my son’s room, because he has Roon too.

So this is one huge advantage in not having RC built into hardware. The other reason is that it is far better than almost all of them, because of greater processing power and, in many cases, greater skill and better design.

And it is not about the quality of the amps and speakers. After a lifetime with this hobby, I finally indulged myself and got a stupid-expensive system and set it up in a large room, it’s gorgeous, but the DSP improvement is still huge.

And I used DSP for a smaller room, 15 foot square, lined with books and one glass wall, with bookshelf speakers literally in the bookshelf, and the result is lovely. See the curves below, before and after.

But you have to be careful. Moving sliders at random doesn’t work. In my experience, PEQ even when measured and calculated with REW, is nowhere near as good as convolution calculated with Acourate.

(I believe, without evidence and thorough understanding, that the main reason is that convolution doesn’t just modify the amplitude response as shown in those curves, but also the phase and time response which is harder to illustrate and understand.)

So here are my results. Main room with big speakers:

Library with smaller speakers:

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Thanks for sharing your view.
But what about room correction with other inputs than roon, e.g. TV/video? I prefer one solution for all thus, in-amp integration ;-).
As you described, in order to accomplish room correction with a software-only solution you need additional tools and a deeper understanding of what you are actually tweaking. I prefer an automatic measurement/calibration with optional manual tweaking.
And finally, I don’t like the idea of turning on a computer every time you want to listen to music ;-).

But, back to your experience ;-). Room correction is only one part. What about your experience with correcting your speakers’ frequency response and latency? I think this may be even more important than room correction alone.
Classical music usually benefits most from correcting frequency response that cannot be accomplished just by an equalizer.

I’m still very convinced of Audyssey here. Before I got new speakers, I used it with my old ones - approx. 25 years old and about 300$. The difference when using/measured with Audyssey is AMAZING!

Other sources, that’s an interesting question. I find that I no longer use any other sources for music, Roon including Tidal. And I have lost interest in TV, I don’t care much about SQ there. So instead of listening in one location and choosing a source, I now listen to one source and choose location.

I agree, I definitely don’t want to turn on a computer to listen to music. Of course, an amp or receiver with Audissey onboard is a computer, but it doesn’t look like one. And I haven’t turned on a computer to listen to music, or to do anything else, in years. Roon is in a small box, smaller than a stack of five CDs, that sits somewhere in the house, I turned it on when I got it, I never see it or deal with it since then. When I want to listen to music, or read a book or a newspaper or a technical journal, I pick up an iPad and touch it so it lights up, and choose what to hear or see.

Yes, I didn’t mean just room correction, I meant correcting the entire system in the room, including timing.

5 posts were split to a new topic: I don’t like the idea of turning on a computer every time I want to listen to music

I use an Aqua LaScala Optologic as a DAC with Roon. Source is an old mid2009 MacBook Pro with core+endpoint.

I really did not know what to expect from the DSP, because that’s a rare case where the DAC has an FPGA, an R2R ladder, no digital filter (NOS). So not typical.

Upsampling brings however a big SQ improvement. It has to be PCM (Aqua is inherently PCM because of the resistor ladder) and not the “upsample to max” feature. I get popping sounds from the DAC using that. Otherwise it really makes the system sing. I never imagined that it would be that way, my former experience with DSP were not too good.

Hi @AndersVinberg it’s Anders Strengberg here’s I suppose that we are from the same country :grinning:?
Anyway I read that you wasn’t a big fan of Roon’s DSP! Is it something that you are missing in the DSP? Or is it not of the quality you have expected from Roon?
Are you a pro user of DSP software or? Excuse me for all my questions but it’s easier for me to now, what you want to have out more of the DSP!
I myself have not anything to complain about over the DSP! Okay I haven’t used any other programs, only Roon but I now that there’s others who are music streaming programs and that they have DSP, is it who’s what your compare with?
I work a lot in recording studios and there’s a lots of DSP’s to choose between, but it’s only the relay expensive programs that are better not always but mostly!
The DSP’s that comes with the different recording programs, doesn’t works better and are there similar to Roon’s DSP’s!
The only thing that I don’t like myself is the Sample Rate Conversion Filters, like Linear and Minimum Phase okay it’s been better since the Smooth have come so it’s not only Precise to choose between! I have a DAC without it but I have had DAC’s with it! (Read about that the Linear and Minimum Phase makes it’s like to choose between “The Plages and Cholera”! Because Linear works just fine on some songs or music and so does Minimum!
For myself I only use Headroom Management, Sample Rate Conversion and recently also the Parametric EQ (Who’s are just the same as I often use in the recording studio, it’s looks and works the same way! And does absolutely holding the same high quality)!
But the rest of the different “programs” in Roon’s DSP are only for testing and playing with, if you (and I don’t mean you Anders only but all Roon users)!
So if you need to use them so do you have serious problems with your speakers and listening room, and that do you need other things to use!
Well I forgot about the headphones part but I guess, it’s going under testing and playing with!

I guess what I have stuck out my jaw so I will get one or many hook’s, so we will see if I get knocked or not :grinning:
If there’s something who’s interested to get my EQ settings, that I often use to listen on music with and almost more or less using when I work as live engineer!
So write it here or send me a mail.

L&R
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Originally, yes we were from the same country.
But I’ve lived in the U.S. for 40 years.

As I wrote here, when I started this thread I wasn’t pleased but I think that was because of my inexperience, making my room correction not very good. I now use Acourate to measure and create the convolution and I’m extremely pleased. After doing my main listening room with big Meridians, I have since done a smaller room with bookshelf speakers.

My original work used PEQ based on REW measurements, and the frequency response shown by REW looked good, but as somebody told me, if you adjust frequency response straight, what you have is straight frequency response which is not necessarily enough for good sound. I have seen that before with a subwoofer with built-in digital PEQ, the system was flat down to 15 Hz but sounded loose and disorganized.

I don’t know exactly what Acourate does that makes it so good. Friends had recommended it. I personally believe time accuracy is important, based on various speakers I have used over the years, and Acourate pays attention to this, so that might be the reason.

EDIT:
Measurement of main music room, before and after correction, 20 - 20k:

Library:

Hi @AndersVinberg
What sounds great :+1:.
I haven’t used Accurate my self but I shall absolutely check it out!
Yes of course does time accuracy a lot and are important, especially as you mention on different speakers.
The measurement shows a great difference! It’s starting to get up around 60-50 HZ so that the bass/sub becomes steady and holding up the music.
And getting down around 250 HZ that is not so funny frequency, and when up between 6 to 9-10 kHz and have the peak at 8 kHz (my own favorite of the high frequencies it’s the one that is the most beautiful and also gives air to the music).
If it’s the purple/red colored that’s the speaker? What’s the blue colored? Or whose two are L-R speakers it’s sad that the blue colored doesn’t get down around 250 HZ as the other doing and getting up instead and having a great peak around 180-200 HZ!

L&R
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In both rooms, the blue and purple are left and right measurement before correction, the green and orange are left and right after correction. The slight downward tilt is intentional, that’s my target curve. So they are near perfect - the library is about 4.5 m square and about 2.5 meter high ceiling, so really deep bass is difficult to fit in, but it falls only 5 dB from 25 Hz to 20. The music room is bigger, about 8 meters square but open to rest of the house, the ceiling slopes up to 10 meters, so it can support response completely flat down to 20 and below.

You asked some other questions. I have tried upsampling but not found any difference, I guess my DACs already do a good job. And I’m not particularly interested in tweaking details, I focus on the big things.

That’s why I’m not interested in MQA in its current, hardware incarnation: the Meridian gear supports it, but I can’t use it with room correction. And room correction is vastly more impactful than MQA, or different filters and the like.

I have not compared the room correction with other systems. I’ve only evaluated whether it was an improvement overall. I found PEQ based on REW to be not a net improvement, overall; convolution based on Acourate was a huge improvement. This was true in both rooms, even though they are very different in size and shape and acoustics and speakers.

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I totally agree with you, thanks for sharing these things and photos to me. I shall definitely check it out.

L&R
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