will
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Hey Redox. I understand using a living room/listening room. I have the same situation. Luckily my adobe house has a number of segues and tucked away places in alcoves to hide room treatment. And the plaster over irregular adobe brick, with no regular surface planes, much of the room is diffusion of sorts, so reflections tend to be less of a thing. I built in treatments rather than trying store-bought stuff that tends to take more visual space, in my case, fundamental bass and absorption relatively innocuous visually.
I get your reservations on the DSPeaker 2.0. I tried it in what I guess was a similar way, as an Analog EQ component between gear. I did not love what I got from just running the measurements and letting it do its thing...too flat and "calculated" feeling, but telling in terms of room issues.
I use it now, with DSP, as the DAC for my DVD player. And with some effort, arrived at a good sound using many of its adjustment parameters on top of the DSP program it creates from measurements. Things like adjusting the bass compensation (the wrench symbol in settings), high and low pass adjustments and tilts, parametric EQs... After learning all that, I tuned it to be more musical in my room. I wonder if I would like it more as an EQ only now that I know more how to tune it. But I suspect, from using it for my movie DAC, not ideal...
I can say without question, though pretty good, in the big picture, the sound does not come close to my Mac Mini/Audirvana/Singxer/Gustard DAC combo. Clearly this is more than just DSP, but Audirvana player software does integrate EQ quite transparently without needing cables or another component, and working directly with the files before leaving the computer. ABing my home-made EQ off and on, every aspect of my sound is notably better with it on. It is really good off with some Torii adjustments and tube rolling, but great on. And starting with relatively balanced room frequency response, tube rolling (and other things) is more about individual sonic characters than modifying the frequency response , or shying away from otherwise great sounding tubes because they are darkish or brightish or something...
I ran a calculated test by ear originally, with a very narrow, hi-dB parametric EQ boost, sweeping the spectrum, and listening for resonance and null areas that I noted. Then I carefully adjusted with a bunch of smallish parametric EQs across the spectrum and some subtle shelves. This solved many more room related anomalies than the DSPeaker's low end test/adjustments could automatically, mine maxing at 500Hz. Doing my sweep by hand/ear, and adjusting by ear, it does not sound sterilized like DSPeaker tends to using its algorithm without other adjustments. The opposite in fact. Done carefully, with very fine tuning over weeks, it is really good across recordings, indicating it solves system/room issues here. And it is meaningfully more alive with EQ than without. So like cables and components, all DSP is not equal.
Based on your comment: "On one hand, the sound improved and yet on another hand, it lost its organic nature. Comparing the filter on and bypass, demonstrated that improvement whereby the bass was restored, but in doing so, the entire system was compromised."
Sounds like either way, comparing DSPeaker and your speakers without, your sound is compromised.
Your speakers are reputed to be clear, accurate, and extended, implying they should work, but are being compromised by your setup and room. And its sounds like you don't feel like you can adjust speaker placement much, or devise cleverly placed room treatment. I worry that if you can't do anything in your room...experiment with changing speaker positions and angles, try to implement effective and relatively hidden room treatment, and/or figure out some form of DSP, you will in-effect be left with EQing with components, speakers, and cables....very likely an expensive exploration....and though with luck improving things, likely leaving some similar compromises.
Don't know if you played with the settings menu in DSPeaker, but if you have a few hours one day, it might help to try and discover what is possible with your system/room using a range of user tuned variations on the DSPeaker sound.
For information sake, and maybe a working remedy, I wonder about digging into DSPspeaker utilizing a blend of its many settings beyond its own programing. This would be on top of the room measured adjustments. Their adjustments in place you could adjust the "compensation" parameters and try other fine-tuning experiments to fill in the bass for your space and tastes as well as articulating the rest of the spectrum if you chose to. For example, there are many mid-bass to upper midrange frequencies that could help the articulating aspects of the bass presentation...string hits, the sound of wood and strings, etc that fill out the sense of a real bass sound beyond low bass information...and if done carefully supporting the rest of the sound too.
Just raising the "compensation" would likely be interesting, additionally boosting bass areas the algorithm decided needed boosting, while still retaining its down balancing offending nodes. This in theory could compensate for the room's general lack of bass with frequencies that are not muddling. Or you could apply a low shelf low down, boosting maybe somewhere around 40-70 Hz, with a relatively gentle slope graduating down through the rest of the bass and mid bass to flat in the mids. This sort of filter on top of the algorithmic bass adjustment could also possibly compensate somewhat cleanly for overall lack of bass, the non-musical stuff attenuated. This same combination could also be applied manually with decent EQ in a digital player or software.
DSPeaker can do a "room response" measurement to read the whole spectrum if I remember correctly, showing general areas one could then apply careful parametric EQs up or down for fine tuning up into the mids and highs...And/or if it sounds better, an EQ shelf using their "tilt curve," attenuating or amplifying everything above a chosen frequency could help....say .5 dB for a relatively subtle experiment from 2-3 KHz up to subtly adjust "liveness" up or down. Or the "house curve" where you can bump up low bass similarly.
Could be too much trouble, but might be informative to play with the unit "by ear" to see what it takes to get the system/room better, and who knows, maybe create a more user friendly sound!
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