Why tune your system with exotic cables rather than DSP room correction and equalization?

[jabbr]

6 hours ago, Jud said:

 

That assumes more expensive cables will look better.

 

But personally I could not give up performance for looks, at least in audio.  Automobiles, perhaps.

 

Yes! But performance itself is subjective ... I have several audiophile friends who feel compelled to show me their cables and tell me how much they cost ... all the while I'm thinking: "I hope your girlfriend gets turned on by them ... but doubt it...:" I just act interested, we turn on some jazz and then drink bourbon -- my empirical measurements have told me that if I act more interested, they break out better bourbon... 

[jabbr]

31 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

Just "A."   Does this file sound to you as if it has jitter?

Talking Heads?

 

[jabbr]

I object to the concept of jitter being baked into a file. Unless you have sampling rates in the Ghz, what you have might in some sense be the effects of jitter-- but only in some sense

 

if we are learning what jitter sounds like better to listen to jitter.

[jabbr]

20 hours ago, esldude said:

 

 

I have heard a few artificially jittered samples.  At the level I know it is jitter for sure we are talking not far from what it sounds like to sing in front of a metal bladed window fan.  A near stutter or auto-tune effect.  I am sure with some training one could do better than such a gross mistiming effect. 

 

The history of jitter in audio has been people worried about it as soon as someone said it could be a problem and were willing to sell you a solution.  After that anytime digital didn't sound good to someone they were prone to guess it was jitter. 

 

There are different effects of so-called "jitter" but the effects might surprise you.

 

Most everyone has seen an FFT plot of a tone. A pure tone should be a single vertical line but the line is typically widened and looks somewhat like a Gaussian -- that's "jitter" -- the more, the wider the peaks are -- and then closely spaced tones interfere with each other (nonlinear effects) -- that's jitter -- and then there's the 1/f amplifier noise that interacts with the 1/f phase noise ...

 

So when you blur your frequencies what does that sound like ? ... and when you particularly blur your bass (1/f) what does that sound like? That's jitter...

[jabbr]

18 hours ago, cjf said:

IMO, I would only attempt to use room correction or eq if it took place entirely in the digital domain before the DAC Input. There are several devices on the market that include DSP in a DAC/Pre hardware combo but none of them IMO use hardware that is transparent enough or of high enough quality to match their separates competition as of yet.

 

ROON's latest attempt is promising but still has bugs to work out before its ready for primetime I feel.

 

For these reasons I would prefer to continue to use cables as a tuning option over DSP.

 

HQPlayer allows you to load a correction kernel.

[jabbr]

5 minutes ago, wgscott said:

 

No.  My point was that many of those who claim to use cables to obtain a particular sort of sound (rather than simply as a status symbol) are also against using something like DSP that could alter the sound in a well-defined, predictable, and measurable way, and that could be tailored to an individual's need.  (In other words, it should be a simple matter, with DSP, to obtain the same sound qualities one seeks with cables, tubes, vinyl, or whatever.)  

 

Personally, I am far more interested in erasing any coloration imposed my room, my speakers, cables, amp or whatever, using DSP.

 

I agree entirely in principle -- in practice there appear to be subjective differences between DSP systems that probably need to be better characterized -- biggest reason is that the factors than make cables cognitively popular are entirely opposite from DSP : you just plug them in -- they are anti-measurement -- DSP requires measurement  

[jabbr]

4 minutes ago, esldude said:

In this particular exercise and paper they did not try flat exactly.  They have done a number or these kinds of things, and have done flat.  They have used groups with different native languages.  They have done different cultures all to see if the primary preference response changed.  It did not.  Trained vs untrain, young vs old, all the same general preference comes out on top.

 

Also they have tried putting dips or humps in the response and the smoother more even the response the better it scores in their testing.

 

Also I tried flat or as close as I could get more than once.  When helping others setup room correction everyone wants to hear flat to see if they like it.  We all have the same reaction.  Too light, no enough low end, too bright.  Clearly less enjoyable to listen to.

 

So everything about that test and others points to flat not being preferred making it easy for me to believe.  And I was trying out flat for years before I read about their testing.   The B&K testing listed earlier with similar conclusions was more than 40 years ago.

 

I know of one person on a forum who likes it flat.  If you enjoy it flat, that is one more great thing about DSP, you can have it any way your prefer.

 

This should be considered like photography where a great deal of effort might be spent with monitor and printer profiles so that the printed image has the same coloration to that seen on screen. Just because a printer is extensively calibrated does not mean that he colors themselves, or contrast, is not perhaps extensively adjusted.

 

In an ideal situation, a person could identify the eq curve that they prefer (as you say generally not flat from empirical tests) and then a person could go from room corrected system to a different room corrected system and get a similar experience -- ideally.

 

I don't think that simple eq tells the entire story but I would also say that it is incumbent upon "exotic" cable manufacturers to provide reproducible measurements that justify what they call their technology -- else admit that their appeal is purely psychological, which is ok.