DSP is Run on the core Torebn you already do this for your headphones. It’s no different.
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Not exactly sound quality related, but one huge improvement for me was subscribing to a streaming service (Qobuz in my case). I started out as a serious music listener in the 70s with vinyl, then on to CDs, SACDs, etc.
Being able to listen to anything I want whenever I want for no extra cost has exposed me to all kinds of music I would never have considered when I had to pay for physical media. I got stuck in ruts.
If you’re younger than about 30 you probably have no idea what I’m talking about, and that’s good. Technology marches on.
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I have a very good and revealing headphone system in which there is nothing I want to change. It is endgame so to say. The OMG moments are for me related to the mood I am in when listening. There are evenings when I am tired or distracted. Then after a while I feel I am wasting my time and do something else. But then there are the evenings when I have an incredibly great time with my music.
Why do I say this? We talk almost exclusively about gear, but never about our own hearing and mental states while listening. I think this is a big mistake and blind spot. Listening to music as a holistic and bodily experience is more than just cables.
Not so sure what to make from this but I find it obviously lacking from the debates.
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When people talk of audible improvements from questionable “upgrades” or “burning in” of new stuff, I often wonder if they would have heard the same improvements in a lesser state of mind.
Mood dictates my choice of music. I gues this is the same for many other people.
I love my system, most of the time. Sometimes, no matter what I play, I can’t get into it. That’s when I realise I’m actually not in the mood to listen to music, and I go off and do something else.
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I did a real time thread on the process on the naim forum which may also be helpful.
It is indeed one of the best upgrades I have done.
.sjb
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I would say the biggest factor for me enjoying music is my mood, wrong mood I try but it generally annoys me, Bit I have to say its the Music itself that gives me Oh My God moments not the kit its played on. I can get these from the lowliest of bt speakers if the music and mood is just right.
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Many people mentioning DSP room adjustment. In one of my rooms this did indeed produce an OMG difference. Prior to joining this forum early this year it was not on my radar at all, I’m very happy the community here introduced me to the concept.
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When I hooked up the 1940’s cabinet radio I hadn’t expected to work at all to my turntable and found that it sounded great for the 1930’s jazz recordings I own.
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When I replaced the tubes in my Rogue Sphinx V3 with RCA clear tops and realized what “warm tube sound” meant
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When I first demo’d the B&W 603S2’s I own and heard things on “Are you experienced” I hadn’t realized were there.
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Analog Productions “Kind of Blue” on vinyl.
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More money spent will generally give a better sound quality but diminishing returns sets in very quickly. After a certain point a doubling of money spent may only give a very small improvement in sound quality. More often than not it’s not an improved sound quality but a different sound that better matches your tastes, room dynamics and expectations in the music you play. If I had to pick one item that I would expect to give a greater difference in sound quality, I didn’t say better, it would be the speakers. Where that price point is depends on your own circumstances but part of the hobby for audiophiles is trying new equipment to find where their own sweet spot is. I also have a lot of guitars, pedals etc and we have a word for this obsession called GAS or gear acquisition syndrome. All part of the enjoyment so spend as much as you comfortably can and enjoy your music.
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It was a huge OMG moment for me, back when I was around 8 or 9, to finish making my first crystal radio out of some enameled wire and an oxidized penny. Hearing the local top 40 AM station through a crystal earpiece-- with an apparatus I constructed from nearly nothing-- started a lifelong obsession with all things related to technology. It was easy to understand how AM radio worked, even as a child. It’s nice to see that the basic utility of that technology has gotten a reprieve recently:
It seems to me that many long forgotten, understandable technologies have been replaced by black boxes that few, if any, people understand. It’s going to get worse-- and more opaque from here. To be fair, I’ll bet the raspberry pi kids of today get that same OMG thrill from constructing their first streaming endpoint. But you’re not going to build a raspberry pi out of a razorblades and a pencil lead, like soldiers did in WWII.
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I have to say, though, that the biggest OMG moments I had in audio were when I worked as a high fi salesman in the 80s. What really made my jaw drop was when people couldn’t hear the difference between something like a bass reflex Cerwin Vega speaker and acoustic suspension speakers like AR, Advent, or Boston Acoustics (at that time). Or, better still, between a receiver like the Pioneer SX-780 (we sold thousands of them, priced from $199-$229) and Sansui, Yamaha, or Denon products that were competitive (around ($300). The Pioneer’s secret? Lots of chrome, and Sanyo STK chip amp modules that were prone to thermal runaway and blowing up. I recall it was like listening through a toilet paper tube in a very reflective bathroom.
Today, people on the internet still swear by those old Pioneers, SX-780s can fetch $600. They wax poetic about their sonic qualities. And all I can say is Oh My God! Vintage crap is still crap. I would say the same about most Technics, but then people will want to engage you in fisticuffs over their sacred cows.
People can, and do, hear what they want to hear. I don’t feel like declaring a jihad to correct their baffling opinions. I just scratch my head. So many times, I would try to convince people to listen carefully to hear differences-- and all they heard was the music they wanted to hear.
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I made my first crystal radio in a similar fashion and remember positioning the point of a safety pin on the crystal to tune in stations.
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I had a moment recently. It was unexpected.
I have what audiologists categorize as moderate hearing loss. I’m 54. I have listened to a lot of live and recorded loud music. I scuba dove for years. I ride motorcycles (mostly the moderately loud German variety in preference to the outrageously loud American variety). These things have taken a toll and it shows up in hearing assessments and has an impact on my ability to hear conversations and make out dialogue in movies and TV. My reduction is in the mid band, my perception of low and high frequencies is measured as “normal”.
Many of you have likely read the research and articles establishing a correlation between hearing loss, cognitive decline, and dementia. Briefly, even moderate hearing loss is strongly correlated with cognitive decline. When the population with moderate hearing loss wears hearing aids, their likelihood of decline becomes equivalent to the non-hearing-loss population. This is compelling. While my personal hearing loss didn’t feel to me like the sort of thing that would lead to hearing aids, my audiologist and ENT suggested I give them a try. So I did.
I went with the Widex Moment - Danish brand, very small, rechargeable. Popular with musicians and music enthusiasts. The body is behind the ear with very small in-ear “receivers” which are essentially just drivers. The tips on mine are perforated silicone circles which are designed to allow ambient sound through so the amplified sound merges and supports what I hear ambiently. This allows them to be tuned so, in my case, they’re amplifing the mid range but ignoring low and high frequencies.
The “wow” moment for me was the first time I put them into “Music” mode and started listening to music. It honestly shocked me and was an emotional moment. It’s hard to explain what the difference is - it’s not just detail it’s separation and clarity. It’s as if a minor muffler was removed from my speakers. I’m appreciating the benefits of hearing aids in conversations, restaurants, movie theaters - I did not expect to appreciate them for music. My experience is very limited to my own hearing differences and to the very specific product I ended up with. It likely doesn’t apply to people with different kinds of hearing loss or to people using different kinds of products. But it seems like it fits in this discussion and maybe gets someone considering doing something similar.
This is an image of one of the receivers - it plugs into the aid itself and then a small tip is attached.
A recent study on the correlation between hearing loss and cognitive decline: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(23)00048-8/fulltext
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My wife is profoundly deaf in one ear, and totally deaf in the other. She has worn hearing aids since she was a child, and every three or four years (for the last 30+ years) she has had to adjust to new hearing aid technologies. A huge shift occurred when she got her first digital hearing aid when we were in grad school in Minneapolis (circa 2005 or 2006). It was like learning to hear all over again. Around the same time, I started shopping for my “dream” speakers at Audio Perfection. She came with me as I compared a pair of Vandersteen speakers (I don’t recall the exact model, 2 series) with, at the salesman’s suggestion, Magnepan 1.6s. It was a real OMG moment, after being a box speaker listener for 30+ years. There was simply no comparison. After that, I ended up (eventually) getting a 2 channel 1.7i set up, and a full Maggie 5.2 home theater with wall mount MC-1s and MMWs for surround.
The one who may love it the most, though, is my wife. When we watch movies she can understand the dialog much better; she hears music in a deeper and better way. I listen to music with so much less fatigue than listening to boxes, and both of us are able to listen deeper and longer than ever before. People think she’s crazy sometimes, when she talks about really enjoying my borderline audiophile set-up-- but I know better. The unmitigated joy of listening to the music and being able to walk around the room without being pounded by pistons is downright liberating.
As her hearing declines, we look forward to every new advance in hearing aid technology. So far, it’s not only beating the normal arc of decline it’s making her hear a little better from year to year. The cognitive decline thing is real, but it’s also worth noting that she’s a professor at an R1 research university-- deafness doesn’t have to make you demented or dumb.
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Hi, @Jeff_Ward2. I hope my post didn’t imply otherwise. That wasn’t my intent.
Your wife’s story is inspirational and hopeful to me. I appreciate you sharing it.
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No offense taken-- what you’re talking about is real. I have another friend who is a deaf and mute professor-- again, we started out in grad school in Minneapolis. He’s more deaf than my wife and has difficulty adjusting to and using hearing aids and I worry about him more. He’s one of the smartest guys I know. He only became mute a few years ago (lost his tongue to cancer) and he still teaches effectively, recently a scoring a new position that allows him to bail from Florida’s screwed up University system to Nevada. It’s amazing what a person with a positive attitude can adjust to.
On the other hand, I watched my father (born with a perforated eardrum) get worse and worse, more withdrawn though never demented, simply because he couldn’t hear what people were saying to him. He’d smile and nod, but I was always sad that he wouldn’t try hearing aids. It’s really true that our lives can be improved by technology.
It’s also worth mentioning that a good audiologist is worth their weight in gold. A hearing aid is only as good as it’s calibration, so off the shelf units can be hit or miss.
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Do you know how hard it is to build a pencil? Or for that matter a modern razor blade? 
We stand on the shoulders of giants.
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The first pencil was invented in the 16th century, the modern pencil in the 17th. The safety razor in the 19th (1880), though pins work as well and I’m sure that technology is a bit older. 
Probably not that many AM stations to tune in back then though.
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@gTunes, @Jeff_Ward2 I did not expect this direction, but it is absolutely apropos! My hearing is precious to me, for you GT and your wife Jeff to have meaningful benefit from modern hearing aid technology is wonderful to hear.
I have members of my family with hearing loss that resist hearing aids (for, I believe, vanity reasons). Their issue is not musical enjoyment but following a conversation, especially in a noisy room. @gTunes your link is an eye opener for me. I must find a way to tactfully present this to my family.
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My „Oh My God“ moments are when I realise again and again how much my mood, stress level, tiredness, etc. influence my listening. The difference is bigger than any component change I‘ve ever made.
Apart from that, the DSP filters by Home Audio Fidelity made a big difference.
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