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Originally Posted by freeflier /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Loa Tzu couldn't have said it better.
BTW, I'm not trying to "force" anything on anyone. I'm simply pointing out that there are new solutions to old problems emerging with the delopement of digital technology that many people are too closed minded to even consider. My ONLY beef is that some are so resigned to the compromises of old technology that their minds are closed and preconceptions dominate thier thinking. Many people who were around when "Stereophonic" sound was first introduced rejected it because it didn't conform to the "in a barrel" mono sound they were conditioned to accepting. More to the point in this case...in the past, it has been widely accepted that the less "processing" you did to the signal the better. This is a fundamental principle in analog technology as it applies to Hi Fi. You are taking that principle and applying it where it has no relavance. How does a Big Ben "process" the signal? That implies distortion and coloration. It simply reclocks it to reduce jitter. How does a Squeezebox "process" the signal? It simply relays data accurately from your computer. The paradigm shift that many people can't wrap their minds aroung is that digital doesn't transmit the picture...it transmits a "description" of the picture. You can't distort the picture by processing the data the way you can distort analog by going through extra devices. Think of reading text as an analogy for how digital works. Whether the text is faded or discoloured or undersized makes no diference to your understanding of the meaning (as long as you can read it). Analog on the other hand, if it is not implemented correctly, has the potential of actually changing the meaning of the text.
THESE ARE VERY DIFFERENT PARADIGMS!
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uh..I think you are essentially describing what BOSE does. which IMO sounds like POS.
True to your post regarding an active cross over, in which I believe you discussed means of acquiring impulse response curves in the time domain and convert hose impose responses gathered into a transfer function that will give you the end result of what perceived to be a balanced FR.
Couple things I have heard with system employing this type of cross over: BOSE and Bo Olf. both claim to do exactly that, and both sucked to no end IMO. And those systems were well over $5000 IIRC.
One of the fundamental paradigm of designing a good audio system is that any piece of audio equipment cannot be designed via equipment alone. The most important step is 'voicing' That step is purely subjective and consequently equipments that were voiced correctly sound great, those weren't sounded bad, despite their respective prowess in the measurement department.
To apply the same analogy, instead of using your ear and some 'ancient' mechanical technique to 'voice' those speaker to your room, you are applying one or a selection of sets of pre-determined/ or measured transfer function to your signal. Your active cross over know no more about what music is than the equipments that are used to design amplifier/speaker/CDP, you name it. To blindly trust a DSP program to 'come up' with an optimal set of TF is like designing an set of speaker in software.
I do not proclaim to know much about DSP except that I designed and programed one of the TI DSP chips when I was in college to perform as a sound card (IIRC I used matlab to design the filter TF). So basically I spent about a year learning DSP. know enough to get myself in trouble
One more things to consider: one cannot judge speaker output by merely looking at the FR curve. I hope you know that by now as should most ppl here on this forum.