Active analog monitors vs active DSP monitors

[stereotactic]

I did some searching on other sites with mixed results regarding this specific question, but thought I would try this topic here first before subjecting myself to the dedicated recording engineer crowd.

3 professional engineers I work with, including a mastering engineer, are against any DSP between playback and monitors, including driver time correction, or crossovers. It does seem somewhat conspicuous that lots of low priced powered monitors have DSP in them. I know people here like Sceptres, and having spent a lot of time with Urei's I'm partial to coaxial designs as a baseline reference for mixing and tracking/crafting sounds as we do with the Axe.

So here are two related questions:

1) Does anybody here care to weigh in on the DSP question in smaller near field monitors, whether you hear any fidelity difference between simpler analog powered monitors like the Yamaha's and something complex/DSP like the Scepters?

2) Assuming no sub and DSP, which near fields have the most accurate bass reproduction and which design do you think is best: infinite baffle, front port, rear port, transmission line?

Thanks for any input!

 

[lqdsnddist]

I don’t think anyone can “hear” the DSP so it’s more or less confirmation bias etc in the opinions folks may have for a given product.

Fulcrum, Presonus, etc are some of the best products on the market and used by countless professionals. The results stand for themselves, but those folks could also do great work on any other high end offering.

It’s like an amp vs an Axe III. No one is going to tell a difference and a great song is going to be a great song regardless of what gear was used.

In reality though, room acoustics are going to matter much more than any difference between monitors.

I see more people obsess over all the specs and then they stick whatever they bought up against the walls or in a corner of an untreated “studio” aka spare bedroom, den, office etc.

Let’s face it, most of us have to work with the space we’ve got and few can have a big studio mixing desk in the middle of a proper sized and well treated room. I know I can’t, and as a result, my room is affecting my bass response way more than the difference between brand X and Y.

Likewise, how many of us are doing final mixes on Grammy winning artists albums or film scores for the next Hollywood blockbuster ?

Know what I play through my fancy Scepter S6’s ? YouTube clips, music while I’m doing other computer work, and occasionally music I’m actually working on. I don’t run a studio etc, I’m just a guy who bought fancy tolls becasue I have the money. Just like a golfer who can’t break 100 but who feels they need a $2000 set of golf clubs used by the pros.

You can try 10 different monitors, just like you can try ten different OD pedals, but finding “the best” isn’t going to change how you play, have you suddenly crank out hit song after hit song etc.

In other words, it is not going to make any real world difference towards ones talent as a guitar player, hit song writer etc, if you have DSP in your studio monitors. Doesn’t mean we can’t get all OCD about it and spends countless hours of research etc, but it’s simply not going to matter.

 

[stereotactic]

I don’t think anyone can “hear” the DSP so it’s more or less confirmation bias etc in the opinions folks may have for a given product.

Fulcrum, Presonus, etc are some of the best products on the market and used by countless professionals. The results stand for themselves, but those folks could also do great work on any other high end offering.

It’s like an amp vs an Axe III. No one is going to tell a difference and a great song is going to be a great song regardless of what gear was used.

In reality though, room acoustics are going to matter much more than any difference between monitors.

I see more people obsess over all the specs and then they stick whatever they bought up against the walls or in a corner of an untreated “studio” aka spare bedroom, den, office etc.

Let’s face it, most of us have to work with the space we’ve got and few can have a big studio mixing desk in the middle of a proper sized and well treated room. I know I can’t, and as a result, my room is affecting my bass response way more than the difference between brand X and Y.

Likewise, how many of us are doing final mixes on Grammy winning artists albums or film scores for the next Hollywood blockbuster ?

Know what I play through my fancy Scepter S6’s ? YouTube clips, music while I’m doing other computer work, and occasionally music I’m actually working on. I don’t run a studio etc, I’m just a guy who bought fancy tolls becasue I have the money. Just like a golfer who can’t break 100 but who feels they need a $2000 set of golf clubs used by the pros.

You can try 10 different monitors, just like you can try ten different OD pedals, but finding “the best” isn’t going to change how you play, have you suddenly crank out hit song after hit song etc.

In other words, it is not going to make any real world difference towards ones talent as a guitar player, hit song writer etc, if you have DSP in your studio monitors. Doesn’t mean we can’t get all OCD about it and spends countless hours of research etc, but it’s simply not going to matter.

Thanks for the input, and sure the room matters quite a lot, mine could do with some treatment.

I imagine what they may be referring to is a certain quality of the sound which results from extra conversions, as opposed to years spent working with either non powered monitors or active analog ones. Human beings are very adaptable and can get used to all sorts of things, good and bad. The types of gear widely available at any given time do you have an influence on the way the end products sound, say for instance, early stereo records were a huge difference sonically from earlier mono productions. Metal records from the 80s, hip hop from the 90s, I would say both these types of music have sonic artifacts/character of the gear used to track and mix the end product. So while I agree that people can get completely OCD about audio stuff, clearly the gear we use influences how we perceive and make music...

 

[stereotactic]

Maybe I shouldn't have said that the engineers I know are against DSP between play back and the actual speakers, though I think that is what they meant. Maybe the question should just be, do any of you hear any difference in the character of analog powered monitors and DSP powered monitors?

 

[yeky83]

3 professional engineers I work with, including a mastering engineer, are against any DSP between playback and monitors, including driver time correction, or crossovers. It does seem somewhat conspicuous that lots of low priced powered monitors have DSP in them.

Why are they against DSP in playback?
There's nothing conspicuous like "lots of low priced powered monitors have DSP in them" therefore DSPs are bad. Lots of high priced powered monitors have them too. For example, the high-end of popular brands like Genelec or Adams have DSP, and some very expensive high-end stuff like Kii, Dutch&Dutch, etc. are DSP driven. Not a low-end thing at all.

1) Does anybody here care to weigh in on the DSP question in smaller near field monitors, whether you hear any fidelity difference between simpler analog powered monitors like the Yamaha's and something complex/DSP like the Scepters?

All monitors sound a bit different. That's it.

If you're comparing the Sceptre and the Yamaha, they use different drivers, different enclosures, different crossovers, different everything. It's not an analog vs. DSP difference.

That said, monitors using DSP have an advantages towards better design cus there's no component tolerance, filters are "free" as needed, etc.

2) Assuming no sub and DSP, which near fields have the most accurate bass reproduction and which design do you think is best: infinite baffle, front port, rear port, transmission line?

Your question is bad, cus there's more to a speaker than what basic design it's following. But all else being equal, "infinite baffle" will be best for accuracy.

 

[yeky83]

Maybe I shouldn't have said that the engineers I know are against DSP between play back and the actual speakers, though I think that is what they meant. Maybe the question should just be, do any of you hear any difference in the character of analog powered monitors and DSP powered monitors?

No. And unless you have two identical speakers except for the fact that one is analog and the other is DSP, you will not be able to make this generalization.

And in the case like the Atomic CLR where there was both an passive analog version and a powered DSP version of the same product, no appreciable difference was heard provided you used a good power amp. There is no "DSP sound."

 

[stereotactic]

Why are they against DSP in playback?
There's nothing conspicuous like "lots of low priced powered monitors have DSP in them" therefore DSPs are bad. Lots of high priced powered monitors have them too. For example, the high-end of popular brands like Genelec or Adams have DSP, and some very expensive high-end stuff like Kii, Dutch&Dutch, etc. are DSP driven. Not a low-end thing at all.

Ugh, I did not mean to start a discussion about whether DSP was "bad" across the board, which is not what I or most people I know think, anyway.

As I said above, I suspect it's mostly the extra conversions and maybe they prefer the sound of an analog signal being driven through a shorter analog signal path with transformers etc, on into the drivers, once the signal is out of the box. The same reason some mix engineers like going throug a summing mixer, instead of staying in the box the whole time...

All monitors sound a bit different. That's it.

Yes of course, but is it an extra step of conversion and a different approach to say, crossover design that is part of the reason? I don't think it's unreasonable to say it could be. I have a very nice hifi setup with an all in one DAC that has crossovers, room correction and an analog preamp before the speakers that go with it. All DSP is done in one box, before the analog signal is sent to the drivers. That makes sense to me, feeding an analog signal into a speaker, then going back to digital again, then analog again before the drivers, makes less sense. And then there is the additional DSP speaker latency for those of us tracking in the control room or playing at home.

If you're comparing the Sceptre and the Yamaha, they use different drivers, different enclosures, different crossovers, different everything. It's not an analog vs. DSP difference.

Agreed that there are many factors, are extra conversion steps one of them? I can certainly tell the difference when I go AES into my external TC reverb from the Axe, instead of using the Axe analog outs and inputs of the TC. It sounds clearer and more detailed when I use the AES input for the TC, likely because there are less conversions from A/D/A

That said, monitors using DSP have an advantages towards better design cus there's no component tolerance, filters are "free" as needed, etc.

Certainly DSP has many advantages, or I never would've bought my nice DAC or an Axe..

Your question is bad, cus there's more to a speaker than what basic design it's following. But all else being equal, "infinite baffle" will be best for accuracy.

Assuming one answers the question I asked, how is it bad to ask which analog, powered nearfeild monitors have the most accurate bass response and why, in one's opinion, they think so?

 

[stereotactic]

No. And unless you have two identical speakers except for the fact that one is analog and the other is DSP, you will not be able to make this generalization.

And in the case like the Atomic CLR where there was both an passive analog version and a powered DSP version of the same product, no appreciable difference was heard provided you used a good power amp. There is no "DSP sound."

To be clearer, I am speaking about mid to low priced near fields with DSP and analog inputs, not high end ones with AES inputs and clock settings.

It's good to know the passive and active CLRs don't sound noticeably different. But I think there are different levels of ambition on what can be accomplished with internal DSP speaker processing, some of it price driven some of it not...

 

[yeky83]

As I said above, I suspect it's mostly the extra conversions and maybe they prefer the sound of an analog signal being driven through a shorter analog signal path with transformers etc, on into the drivers, once the signal is out of the box. The same reason some mix engineers like going throug a summing mixer, instead of staying in the box the whole time...

Again, this is moot. How would anyone know they "prefer the sound of an analog signal being driven through a shorter analog signal path..." if they have not had an experience with two same speakers, one being analog and one being DSP? People are comparing A speaker which happens to be analog, to B speaker which happens to be DSP driven.

Yes of course, but is it an extra step of conversion and a different approach to say, crossover design that is part of the reason? I don't think it's unreasonable to say it could be.

If you want to think in this direction, you'd have to argue the whole of DAW practice. Are you advocating for an analog-only studio?

There's not really a different approach to crossover design with DSP. It's filters, analog or digital.

Agreed that there are many factors, are extra conversion steps one of them? I can certainly tell the difference when I go AES into my external TC reverb from the Axe, instead of using the Axe analog outs and inputs of the TC. It sounds clearer and more detailed when I use the AES input for the TC, likely because there are less conversions from A/D/A

Of course ideally less conversion the better. But you're suggesting that you can pick out and hear that one extra conversion when comparing speaker A to speaker B... I think not.

And then there is the additional DSP speaker latency for those of us tracking in the control room or playing at home.

This is the only downside to DSP usage in monitors that I can tell.

Agreed that there are many factors, are extra conversion steps one of them? I can certainly tell the difference when I go AES into my external TC reverb from the Axe, instead of using the Axe analog outs and inputs of the TC. It sounds clearer and more detailed when I use the AES input for the TC, likely because there are less conversions from A/D/A

Depends on the quality of the A/D/A. Maybe your TC reverb's converters aren't great, cus I've not heard anyone say they can tell the difference between Axe-Fx's analog output vs. AES/SPDIF output.

Assuming one answers the question I asked, how is it bad to ask which analog, powered nearfeild monitors have the most accurate bass response and why, in one's opinion, they think so?

Sorry, I was being cranky.

Sealed enclosure speakers have the most accurate bass response. There's less group delay, and so less bass smearing. But typically, they don't go as low as ported speakers. Transmission line... there's no transmission line near-field monitors.

To be clearer, I am speaking about mid to low priced near fields with DSP and analog inputs, not high end ones with AES inputs and clock settings.

Doesn't really make a difference to the point though, you can use the high-end ones with analog inputs too.

 

[pauly]

Hi Stereo,
In my humble opinion, DSP in the vast majority of cases, is there to try to mitigate physical limitations or design errors in the enclosure/drivers/positioning etc. IE; trying to polish a turd.
It's rare to my ears that speakers employing DSP ever make music sound 'real'. They can sure sound impressive, or surprising, but overall - I'm with the guys you have been speaking to. I've done experiments physically lining up (for example) the voice coils in speaker cabinet designs (between drivers) and things such as this (time alignment) can make a huge impact on the speakers perceived quality. Doing it electronically (in theory) may be fine, but mixed results due to the squillions of variables is usually the result.
I'm sure there are other opinions however that's mine
Thanks
Pauly

I did some searching on other sites with mixed results regarding this specific question, but thought I would try this topic here first before subjecting myself to the dedicated recording engineer crowd.

3 professional engineers I work with, including a mastering engineer, are against any DSP between playback and monitors, including driver time correction, or crossovers. It does seem somewhat conspicuous that lots of low priced powered monitors have DSP in them. I know people here like Sceptres, and having spent a lot of time with Urei's I'm partial to coaxial designs as a baseline reference for mixing and tracking/crafting sounds as we do with the Axe.

So here are two related questions:

1) Does anybody here care to weigh in on the DSP question in smaller near field monitors, whether you hear any fidelity difference between simpler analog powered monitors like the Yamaha's and something complex/DSP like the Scepters?

2) Assuming no sub and DSP, which near fields have the most accurate bass reproduction and which design do you think is best: infinite baffle, front port, rear port, transmission line?

Thanks for any input!

 

[chrisjnyc]

What active speaker doesn't use DSP? I would bet pretty much every active speaker has some type of DSP built in.

 

[stereotactic]

Again, this is moot. How would anyone know they "prefer the sound of an analog signal being driven through a shorter analog signal path..." if they have not had an experience with two same speakers, one being analog and one being DSP? People are comparing A speaker which happens to be analog, to B speaker which happens to be DSP driven.

No it isn't moot, unless you think the entire experience of someone who worked without any DSP, aside from rack effects until Protools, is moot. Some people use summing mixers for exactly this reason: they like the sound of transformers and other analog components with signal driven through to the point that they can hear the characteristics of the signal path, which is also what happens when they turn up their analog monitors and what happens when people turn up their consumer electronics...

Insisting on only pure apples to apples comparisons is not tenable in myriad instances of human communication, because it's simply not practical most of the time. In fact, if you're going to get all scientific about it, one must make inferences first before one can even define what any direct comparison/experiment should be. Inferences by their nature are guesswork and intuition informed by experience. So insisting on pure comparison as the only measure is moot, unless you want to keep people from expressing their experience based opinions.

If you want to think in this direction, you'd have to argue the whole of DAW practice. Are you advocating for an analog-only studio?

No, and your jumping to such conclusions is not helpful in getting answers to my original questions.

There's not really a different approach to crossover design with DSP. It's filters, analog or digital.

No, you can do things with crossovers in the digital realm that you cannot do in analog, which is a potential point in DSP's favor. For someone who insists on only exact comparisons all the time, you can't possibly tell me that they are exactly the same thing and give exactly the same result, or that the consumer knows exactly the goals of a DSP crossover design vs what an analog circuit would be in the same speaker.

And further to that point as Pauly mentioned above, some speaker DSP designs are ambitious and aim for greater accuracy and clarity. Some speaker DSP is there to cover up for short cuts in the design or component quality. Those are two very different goals, and it's hard to know with the hype which approach a speaker manufacturer is taking, hence my question about people's experience with mid to low priced DSP monitor sound quality.

Of course ideally less conversion the better. But you're suggesting that you can pick out and hear that one extra conversion when comparing speaker A to speaker B... I think not.

It's actually 2 more conversions, input A/D/A to amp to driver.

This is the only downside to DSP usage in monitors that I can tell.

Well, thanks for acknowledging I have at least one point.

Depends on the quality of the A/D/A. Maybe your TC reverb's converters aren't great, cus I've not heard anyone say they can tell the difference between Axe-Fx's analog output vs. AES/SPDIF output.

I seriously doubt there is no difference in sound between ANY device's analog and digital outputs, there are converters and transformers and an entire analog signal path out. I have a Bricasti M7, that I have used both analog and digital, and I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that there is a difference in the quality of the sound between the two of them. I personally prefer keeping it all in the digital realm when possible, but I know people who prefer the sound of the Bricasti's analog outputs because of their particular quality, something which Bricasti brags about.

Sorry, I was being cranky.

No big deal, but if you keep it up I'm going to start calling you "The Quibbler" and call Batman on you..

Sealed enclosure speakers have the most accurate bass response. There's less group delay, and so less bass smearing. But typically, they don't go as low as ported speakers. Transmission line... there's no transmission line near-field monitors.

Thanks for the input, this concurs with other people I've talked to.

And yes, there are near-field transmission line monitors:

http://media.soundonsound.com/sos/jan03/articles/pmcdb1.asp

Doesn't really make a difference to the point though, you can use the high-end ones with analog inputs too.

Yes, and are you willing to bet that nobody could tell the difference between the 2 at the same SPL? If they sounded exactly the same why would anybody prefer one over the other?

 

[stereotactic]

What active speaker doesn't use DSP? I would bet pretty much every active speaker has some type of DSP built in.

If Yamaha HS8's, one of the most popular near-fields in the world, have any DSP inside, they are keeping it a secret..

 

[yeky83]

No it isn't moot, unless you think the entire experience of someone who worked without any DSP, aside from rack effects until Protools, is moot. Some people use summing mixers for exactly this reason: they like the sound of transformers and other analog components with signal driven through to the point that they can hear the characteristics of the signal path, which is also what happens when they turn up their analog monitors and what happens when people turn up their consumer electronics...

Yes, people like the "sound of transformers and other analog components" that color the sound. But it's not really the purpose of a monitor to color the sound, so we're not talking about the same thing here.

Again, you haven't addressed how people can tell a "DSP sound" out of monitors. In your example of Yamaha (HS8?) vs. Sceptre, how are you picking out what the "DSP sound" of the Sceptre is?

Insisting on only pure apples to apples comparisons is not tenable in myriad instances of human communication, because it's simply not practical most of the time. In fact, if you're going to get all scientific about it, one must make inferences first before one can even define what any direct comparison/experiment should be. Inferences by their nature are guesswork and intuition informed by experience. So insisting on pure comparison as the only measure is moot, unless you want to keep people from expressing their experience based opinions.

There's other more significant factors when you compare Speaker A to Speaker B that do away with general experienced based opinions on "DSP sound" from monitors. That's what I'm suggesting.

Equator D8 sounds different from Sceptre S8, which sounds different from Neumann KH80, which sounds different from... yet they're all DSP utilizing monitors. No one can realistically draw conclusions about some common "DSP sound" from these monitors.

No, you can do things with crossovers in the digital realm that you cannot do in analog, which is a potential point in DSP's favor. For someone who insists on only exact comparisons all the time, you can't possibly tell me that they are exactly the same thing and give exactly the same result, or that the consumer knows exactly the goals of a DSP crossover design vs what an analog circuit would be in the same speaker.

The purpose of a crossover, analog or digital, is to provide filters for multiple driver integration.
Can you do other stuff with the DSP? Yes, for example the Sceptre certainly does. But then we're not talking about the crossover.

Some speaker DSP is there to cover up for short cuts in the design or component quality.

Which studio monitors use DSP like this? Can you point some out?

And yes, there are near-field transmission line monitors:

http://media.soundonsound.com/sos/jan03/articles/pmcdb1.asp

Oo, good point, I forgot about the PMC stuff.

I checked out the DB1's measurements available online, and it actually behaves like a ported design rather than a transmission line design. No real effect of a TL design in that monitor according to measurements. I dunno what PMC is doing, maybe all their "transmission line" designs are like this? I haven't seen their other monitor measurements (nor am I very interested), so I can't comment on their product line as a whole.

TL design depends on the quarter wavelength resonance. This means big box sizes since low freq wavelengths are long, so TL design isn't really suited for small-box near-field monitors.

Yes, and are you willing to bet that nobody could tell the difference between the 2 at the same SPL? If they sounded exactly the same why would anybody prefer one over the other?

We prefer the digital input cus it's more transparent, we agree on this.

 

[lqdsnddist]

Dude, look when it’s to music/audio, a lot of people are stuck in their ways, they’ve done things a certain way, think it should always be done that way, and reject anything that isn’t just way. More power to them, they aren’t wrong, but they aren’t “right” either.

I can show you hundreds if not thousands of threads talking about how it’s impossible to model a tube amp, nothing but a tube amp is worth using, how people can ‘always’ hear a difference etc. It’s simply what some people believe, and it’s almost a religion of the glowing glass bottles.

Equal number of people think a unit like the Axe sounds amazing, can’t tell it apart etc, even some that used to be in the “we can never replace tubes” camp.

Times change, attitudes change. As Rocky said, “we all can change”.

Doesn’t mean we have to, we can stick with what we like, or what we think works best, but it doesn’t make anyone else wrong.

As I said previously though, what does it ultimately matter ? This stuff is merely an academic debate in 99.9% of cases because I don’t think any bedroom producer is going to experience any meaningful career boost or hinderance based on the dsp in their monitoring method.

I really wish that wasn’t the case. I for one have way more money than I do talent. If buying the “best” of everything was the key to success I’d be pretty famous by now. Instead I’m just another dude with well researched high end gear, no fame, who spends too much time on the internet. It’s cool, it’s cheaper than owning a boat or a drug habit lol.

At the same time though, how does it really matter ? It’s the same talk, different subject, and it’s happening on forums across the Internet.

I also have a photo hobby and come across huge threads debating software optical correction in lenses vs true optical correct. Dudes equally see that as a religion but does it matter jack squat as far as if a photo looks good to the end viewer ? Nope...but we can still spend hours arguing it, so carry on

Buy what you like, or buy what someone told you was better. Or don’t... all good

 

[stereotactic]

Yes, people like the "sound of transformers and other analog components" that color the sound. But it's not really the purpose of a monitor to color the sound, so we're not talking about the same thing here.

You are missing my point, maybe I didn't make it clear. Firstly, I haven't made up my mind about anything, I'm just asking questions. The impression I got from talking to my friendly engineers is not that they were traditionalists for the sake of it or personal taste, but more that the analog approach to signal path post box mimics the reproduction on the consumer end. Most people don't have DSP in their computer speakers or headphones, so knowing what it sounds like through a conventional analog signal path, albeit a much better one in the studio, gives some indication of how it will reproduce on similar but lower fidelity consumer systems.

Again, you haven't addressed how people can tell a "DSP sound" out of monitors. In your example of Yamaha (HS8?) vs. Sceptre, how are you picking out what the "DSP sound" of the Sceptre is?

It's not my job to answer for other people's opinions, I am trying to solicit more opinions so I have the benefit of other people's experience. I think Pauly made a stab at trying to characterize the sound above. I wouldn't know because I haven't auditioned enough speakers with DSP, but suggesting that there MIGHT be a difference in both the quality of monitoring and it's effects downstream when it's reproduced on other systems without DSP, seems like a completely legitimate question to me.

There's other more significant factors when you compare Speaker A to Speaker B that do away with general experienced based opinions on "DSP sound" from monitors. That's what I'm suggesting.

Equator D8 sounds different from Sceptre S8, which sounds different from Neumann KH80, which sounds different from... yet they're all DSP utilizing monitors. No one can realistically draw conclusions about some common "DSP sound" from these monitors.

Maybe, maybe not. Maybe somebody who has only worked with an all analog signal path out of the box can detect differences that someone who has worked on more modern gear cannot. Again, it's not my place to decide who is right and wrong in their impressions, I am only seeking other people's experiences. It was never my intention to get into a full blown analog versus digital discussion.

The purpose of a crossover, analog or digital, is to provide filters for multiple driver integration.
Can you do other stuff with the DSP? Yes, for example the Sceptre certainly does. But then we're not talking about the crossover.

Whether we are talking about the crossover or other things DSP does, it's still doing something that an analog circuit could or would not. The idea that whatever it's doing might have some characteristics which are different from an analog signal path still seems plausible to me. If one can identify any characteristic differences between them, those differences may wind up being an improvement, who knows. Again, I'm just soliciting people's experiences and opinions.

Which studio monitors use DSP like this? Can you point some out?

This from the Tape Op review of the Scepter 8: "TQ Temporal Equalization, Fulcrum Acoustic's proprietary DSP algorithms that work with the physical design of the speaker to extend and flatten both the frequency and phase response to a degree previously unheard in speakers of this size and cost. TQ is also used to effectively eliminate reflections in the horn, so high-mid and high frequencies sound more natural." That may all be true and the result may be good, but it does sound like they are compensating for other trade offs in design. The S8 horn is proportionally bigger than the one on the all analog Urei coax speaker, could that be the reason why they need DSP to control reflections? I don't know, but obviously many, many top selling records were mixed on the Urei's, without the need for DSP correction and control. It would be very interesting to hear the little Urei's next to the S8, I might very well prefer the S8's but they are a much more complicated speaker and that may be a good, bad or neutral thing in terms of its use as a reference tool for tracking, mixing and a positive consumer reproduction experience.

Oo, good point, I forgot about the PMC stuff.

I checked out the DB1's measurements available online, and it actually behaves like a ported design rather than a transmission line design. No real effect of a TL design in that monitor according to measurements. I dunno what PMC is doing, maybe all their "transmission line" designs are like this? I haven't seen their other monitor measurements (nor am I very interested), so I can't comment on their product line as a whole.

TL design depends on the quarter wavelength resonance. This means big box sizes since low freq wavelengths are long, so TL design isn't really suited for small-box near-field monitors.

I looked at their current products, box dimensions on the small near-fields didn't seem that big, but certainly not compact. Interesting speakers, I would love to hear them but it doesn't seem there are very many people using them in the states.

We prefer the digital input cus it's more transparent, we agree on this.

Yes, and again I am not trying to be contentious for the sake of it, I really just wanted other peoples opinions and experiences on any differences they perceive between the two approaches to speaker design...

 

[stereotactic]

Dude, look when it’s to music/audio, a lot of people are stuck in their ways, they’ve done things a certain way, think it should always be done that way, and reject anything that isn’t just way. More power to them, they aren’t wrong, but they aren’t “right” either.

I can show you hundreds if not thousands of threads talking about how it’s impossible to model a tube amp, nothing but a tube amp is worth using, how people can ‘always’ hear a difference etc. It’s simply what some people believe, and it’s almost a religion of the glowing glass bottles.

Equal number of people think a unit like the Axe sounds amazing, can’t tell it apart etc, even some that used to be in the “we can never replace tubes” camp.

Times change, attitudes change. As Rocky said, “we all can change”.

Doesn’t mean we have to, we can stick with what we like, or what we think works best, but it doesn’t make anyone else wrong.

As I said previously though, what does it ultimately matter ? This stuff is merely an academic debate in 99.9% of cases because I don’t think any bedroom producer is going to experience any meaningful career boost or hinderance based on the dsp in their monitoring method.

I really wish that wasn’t the case. I for one have way more money than I do talent. If buying the “best” of everything was the key to success I’d be pretty famous by now. Instead I’m just another dude with well researched high end gear, no fame, who spends too much time on the internet. It’s cool, it’s cheaper than owning a boat or a drug habit lol.

At the same time though, how does it really matter ? It’s the same talk, different subject, and it’s happening on forums across the Internet.

I also have a photo hobby and come across huge threads debating software optical correction in lenses vs true optical correct. Dudes equally see that as a religion but does it matter jack squat as far as if a photo looks good to the end viewer ? Nope...but we can still spend hours arguing it, so carry on

Buy what you like, or buy what someone told you was better. Or don’t... all good

While I appreciate your thoughtful response, I never asserted that DSP in speakers was necessarily bad, only that some engineers I spoke to were skeptical or didn't like what they thought they heard. As I said above I certainly never intended on turning this into a full-blown analog versus digital debate. I was only interested in what DSP speaker controls were attempting to do versus what they actually sound like, as compared to a similar analog design. If it really is a brave new world with higher fidelity at lower cost, I'm all for it. But it appears that not everyone thinks the results of DSP in near-field monitors are always good.

There are many people on this forum who have extensive studio experience, I was hoping to elicit their experiences with both types of speaker designs, nothing more controversial than that...

 

[yeky83]

The impression I got from talking to my friendly engineers is not that they were traditionalists for the sake of it or personal taste, but more that the analog approach to signal path post box mimics the reproduction on the consumer end. Most people don't have DSP in their computer speakers or headphones, so knowing what it sounds like through a conventional analog signal path, albeit a much better one in the studio, gives some indication of how it will reproduce on similar but lower fidelity consumer systems.

To that end, products like Auratones or NS-10 are popular. But their sound has nothing to do with DSP or not, IMHO it has mostly to do with their limited and colored frequency response.

Maybe, maybe not. Maybe somebody who has only worked with an all analog signal path out of the box can detect differences that someone who has worked on more modern gear cannot. Again, it's not my place to decide who is right and wrong in their impressions, I am only seeking other people's experiences. It was never my intention to get into a full blown analog versus digital discussion.

You wanted opinions and experiences, you got mine.

Whether we are talking about the crossover or other things DSP does, it's still doing something that an analog circuit could or would not. The idea that whatever it's doing might have some characteristics which are different from an analog signal path still seems plausible to me. If one can identify any characteristic differences between them, those differences may wind up being an improvement, who knows. Again, I'm just soliciting people's experiences and opinions.

And again, if you're simply soliciting people's experiences and opinions, that's what you're getting from me. Mine just happens to be an opinion in the opposite direction, and it seems perhaps you weren't soliciting those...

This from the Tape Op review of the Scepter 8: "TQ Temporal Equalization, Fulcrum Acoustic's proprietary DSP algorithms that work with the physical design of the speaker to extend and flatten both the frequency and phase response to a degree previously unheard in speakers of this size and cost. TQ is also used to effectively eliminate reflections in the horn, so high-mid and high frequencies sound more natural." That may all be true and the result may be good, but it does sound like they are compensating for other trade offs in design. The S8 horn is proportionally bigger than the one on the all analog Urei coax speaker, could that be the reason why they need DSP to control reflections? I don't know, but obviously many, many top selling records were mixed on the Urei's, without the need for DSP correction and control. It would be very interesting to hear the little Urei's next to the S8, I might very well prefer the S8's but they are a much more complicated speaker and that may be a good, bad or neutral thing in terms of its use as a reference tool for tracking, mixing and a positive consumer reproduction experience.

To keep it in context, you'd said, "Some speaker DSP is there to cover up for short cuts in the design or component quality." The TQ tech isn't for covering up shortcuts in design or component quality. It's for bettering some inherent issues with compression driver tweeters, Urei included. Here's an easily digestible short video on it:

Yes, and again I am not trying to be contentious for the sake of it, I really just wanted other peoples opinions and experiences on any differences they perceive between the two approaches to speaker design...

Honestly, I'm not trying to be contentious for the sake of it either. Let my opinions and experiences be that, and perhaps we can move on.

 

[stereotactic]

To that end, products like Auratones or NS-10 are popular. But their sound has nothing to do with DSP or not, IMHO it has mostly to do with their limited and colored frequency response.

You wanted opinions and experiences, you got mine.

And again, if you're simply soliciting people's experiences and opinions, that's what you're getting from me. Mine just happens to be an opinion in the opposite direction, and it seems perhaps you weren't soliciting those...

To keep it in context, you'd said, "Some speaker DSP is there to cover up for short cuts in the design or component quality." The TQ tech isn't for covering up shortcuts in design or component quality. It's for bettering some inherent issues with compression driver tweeters, Urei included. Here's an easily digestible short video on it:


Honestly, I'm not trying to be contentious for the sake of it either. Let my opinions and experiences be that, and perhaps we can move on.

Thanks for the video, certainly very interesting.