I am very sensitive to phase issues and comb filtering. These drive me mad and are why I can’t use Xitone wedges that use the Dayton amps. Their DSP induces horrible phase artifacts that drive me mad.
Or it might be the latency and I just didn’t know it!
It actually might be latency.
FWIW, I haven't used Dayton amps or Xitone wedges...it's possible they just suck. But, in general, outside of specific
flaws, "phase artifacts" in this context usually just sound like EQs.
Almost all EQs work via phase distortions.
Linear phase digital EQs "fix" the phase distortions they cause (while maintaining the change to frequency response), but they do it at the cost of a LOT of latency....like a factor of 10x to 200x depending on a few details. And they cause other artifacts (pre-ringing) as a side-effect.
Most of the time, to me and to a lot of people, the "phase artifacts" from a minimum phase EQ sound better than the pre-ringing from a linear phase EQ once the EQ changes are significant enough to hear either.
Through a lot of research, people
can generally hear latency above some individual threshold. But, it's a lot harder to hear the phase-y part of an EQ (as opposed to the EQ change). (ETA....or associated just phase distortions, e.g., from an all-pass filter.)
If nothing else,
rooms act as minimum phase EQs...worse than that, they act as incredibly complex minimum phase comb filters. If your room is halfway normal, you've got
hundreds of very tight-Q boosts and cuts, some probably of 10-20dB, spread out from 200Hz to 20kHz from playing a sound in your room. Even if you're in a7-figure (just for the room) studio with a Trinnov, you've still got quite a few. And that's ignoring the potentially-weirder effects below ~200Hz (depending on the Scrhoeder frequency of your room).
Do rooms sound phase-y?
No. Your brain just ignores it like everyone else's does. One room might sound brighter than another. But that happens in addition to the ridiculous amounts of comb filtering in literally every room (that isn't an anechoic chamber).