Why Don't You Use Digital Room Correction?

Removed a couple great posts because I’m keeping this thread very focused. 

I enjoy natural organic sound so I don’t use digital room correction at this time. I do use trees for diffusion and acoustic art work for absorption and diffusion, but not digital room correction.     

That said, I think - if they ever finish it - I’m moving into a new home next year. At that time I may purchase something to take care of bass nodes. But that will be active bass absorbers vs using any type of full on digital room correction. 

I don’t use room correction because I am not sure what is actually correcting. My room was built for 2 channel stereo. Room in room with according to the so called golden ratio dimension. But after a couple of years with it I realized it was too dull. IMO, with small room the only correction they do is reduce the RT ( bass region is apart which must be addressed and not necessarily with RC). 
 

Musical enjoyment is when you get the feel of ambience. With small room RC tend too maintain the RT low so that it is within the accepted level of agreed measurements. The good thing about our hearing is that we have the ability to filter the ambience reverbs so it doesn’t really matter. 
 

Unfortunately, being audiophiles we tend to evolve and accept what is not your natural preference eventually and some with RC would swear by them. 

I go all in on a low digital noise floor to optimize the performance from my DAC. When doing so, and targeting all aspects as carefully as I can, thinking about the cleanest "possible" power and cleanest "possible" ethernet signal, then i don´t want to add CPU sourced noise (DSP) in the digital domain.

In my mind that currently goes against what i am successfully doing currently, which has been very rewarding.

This is at least my thinking currently and i can´t say for sure that DSP will impact my current digital noise floor negatively. But I am assuming it will, considering how incredible sensitive the DAC is when you reach a very low digital noise floor.

43 minutes ago, StreamingOnly said:

I go all in on a low digital noise floor to optimize the performance from my DAC. When doing so, and targeting all aspects as carefully as I can, thinking about the cleanest "possible" power and cleanest "possible" ethernet signal, then i don´t want to add CPU sourced noise (DSP) in the digital domain.

In my mind that currently goes against what i am successfully doing currently, which has been very rewarding.

This is at least my thinking currently and i can´t say for sure that DSP will impact my current digital noise floor negatively. But I am assuming it will, considering how incredible sensitive the DAC is when you reach a very low digital noise floor.

 

Thanks @StreamingOnly

20 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Hi Guys, as some of you know I was on vacation at the end of last week. I tried to follow this closely, but not too closely because that's not what one does on vacation :~)

 

Anyway, I really love and appreciate the responses so far. It never dawned on me to directly ask people why they don't use DRC, and give them a space to reply without being told they are wrong, right, both, or neither. I think the responses likely speak for many more people because they hit so many good reasons and topics. 

 

In my quest to educate people, first about computer audio back in 2007, and continuing on all topics related to digital audio, I've usually taken a different approach. The responses here will help me immensely in learning how to best educate people. This isn't forced education, or telling anyone they are wrong, but rather education for those who want to learn. Another reason why I purposely excluded many replies in this thread.

 

This gets me jazzed about writing articles and I know it's a reason people come back here (or so they say when we meet). 

 

I encourage others to let their voice be heard on why they don't use digital room correction. There are no wrong answers, nobody is going to tell you you're crazy, and I'm guessing many people will nod their heads in agreement with you. This is a massively enjoyable hobby, let's keep it this way. 

First of all, i am new here. I forgot to mention that on my earlier reply.

Second, i really like your approach to this. I think many of us dig into one method and then you might stick to what you know and where you make great progress.

As i shared, i am all about low digital noise floor (and room treatment) at the moment. Having said that, I am very open to the fact that DSP might have been my preferred solution, if I could compare at home. (Here i am assuming that DSP is impacting the noise floor, which is not necessary the case in all situations)

So, even if your intention is not to hone in on DSP vs low digital noise floor I look forward to understanding more about this DSP subject.

On 9/4/2024 at 9:40 AM, The Computer Audiophile said:

. . .

 

This gets me jazzed about writing articles and I know it's a reason people come back here (or so they say when we meet). 

 

I encourage others to let their voice be heard on why they don't use digital room correction. There are no wrong answers, nobody is going to tell you you're crazy, and I'm guessing many people will nod their heads in agreement with you. This is a massively enjoyable hobby, let's keep it this way. 

Sorry to be late to the discussion - I should really check this site more often, especially considering all the help I've received here! 

Anyway, I do not now use digital room correction - but I did about 10 or 12 years ago. At the time, my subwoofer wouldn't behave itself and I couldn't adjust it manually to my satisfaction: it would fluctuate between ghetto blaster bass and seemingly no bass at all. I then acquired a Marantz receiver which had digital room correction built in. (I forget who made it - it was some predecessor of Dirac.) So after going through the set-up with the calibration microphone, etc., I tried recordings which I knew to be problematical. Wow! Problem solved - and I was a happy camper!

So why am I not using digital room correction today? After all, my JBL pre/pro has what I would assume to be a more sophisticated built-in system than my old Marantz receiver had. The answer is that we had to move the subwoofer because it had been situated in front of an unused fireplace. Once we started using it, I was out-voted by my wife and my cat (who loves sitting in front of the working fireplace at night!), and the only other place we had room for the subwoofer was along the back wall. I'd read that this kind of placement often doesn't work out too well, and a great deal of care must be exercised in the subwoofer's level and exact placement. HOWEVER, I was astounded that the subwoofer now sounded much better integrated into the overall system sound than I could ever have expected. Once again, I was a happy camper, and I've never looked back since then! Nor have I been tempted to experiment with the digital room correction since we made this change to have the subwoofer in back of us.

45 minutes ago, Chris from Lafayette said:

 

Sorry to be late to the discussion - I should really check this site more often, especially considering all the help I've received here! 

 

Anyway, I do not now use digital room correction - but I did about 10 or 12 years ago. At the time, my subwoofer wouldn't behave itself and I couldn't adjust it manually to my satisfaction: it would fluctuate between ghetto blaster bass and seemingly no bass at all. I then acquired a Marantz receiver which had digital room correction built in. (I forget who made it - it was some predecessor of Dirac.) So after going through the set-up with the calibration microphone, etc., I tried recordings which I knew to be problematical. Wow! Problem solved - and I was a happy camper!

 

So why am I not using digital room correction today? After all, my JBL pre/pro has what I would assume to be a more sophisticated built-in system than my old Marantz receiver had. The answer is that we had to move the subwoofer because it had been situated in front of an unused fireplace. Once we started using it, I was out-voted by my wife and my cat (who loves sitting in front of the working fireplace at night!), and the only other place we had room for the subwoofer was along the back wall. I'd read that this kind of placement often doesn't work out too well, and a great deal of care must be exercised in the subwoofer's level and exact placement. HOWEVER, I was astounded that the subwoofer now sounded much better integrated into the overall system sound than I could ever have expected. Once again, I was a happy camper, and I've never looked back since then! Nor have I been tempted to experiment with the digital room correction since we made this change to have the subwoofer in back of us.

Thanks @Chris from Lafayette