Heck. As long as we're delving into exotic means of helping speakers sound their best, we might as well write about the mother of all loudspeaker helpers: Digital Signal Processing, better known by its acronym, DSP.
DSP has been around a long time. My first encounter with it was at a Chicago CES in the early 2000's, when engineer Doug Goldberg introduced me to the concept of room correction through loudspeakers. Within another month's time I sat for a second incredible demonstration–this time by mathematician Robert Kay; who was so smart I hadn't a clue what he was talking about. But what I heard, worked. At least sort of. The change in sonics was specific to a very narrow sweet spot–but within that tiny window, miracles happened.
Over the years DSP has gotten far better, and more widely accepted. Our friend and dealer, Walter Liederman, owns a company called Emerald Physics who make a line of affordable loudspeakers using DSP, and his demonstrations are equally impressive.
Though I am not personally a fan of aftermarket DSP as a radical correction solution for room or speaker anomalies, I do recognize its potential and power. Used for complete systems, as Walter and others do, it can be quite good. For example, I have a small pair of B and W MM-1 destop speakers that are amazing sounding–and all thanks to DSP.
Tomorrow we'll start by explaining what it is. At least we'll get started, because it's a LOT.
