Looking for guidance on Sweet Room, Dual Mono and SAM

[Dev_Steve]

Hi Folks,

I've been trying to track what's happening with Sweet Room. I've seen a couple mentions that it doesn't work with SAM or Dual Mono due to bugs. Does anyone have definitive information on this? Given I have an Expert Pro 1000 and SAM is a huge component of the Devialet sound, I really don't want to go through the process of using Sweet Room only to find that it really isn't compatible with my system yet. Any guidance you all may have is hugely appreciated!

[G51]

Hi Folks,

I've been trying to track what's happening with Sweet Room. I've seen a couple mentions that it doesn't work with SAM or Dual Mono due to bugs. Does anyone have definitive information on this? Given I have an Expert Pro 1000 and SAM is a huge component of the Devialet sound, I really don't want to go through the process of using Sweet Room only to find that it really isn't compatible with my system yet. Any guidance you all may have is hugely appreciated!

Bug when using Sweet Room in Dual Mono - (there are 2 modes in Sweet Room - 'main' and 'alternate') No matter in which mode, the 'slave' gear will show 'alternate' only. But apart from the wrong display on 'slave' one, everything is working OK. In other words, you only read the display on the 'main' gear to know what mode you are actually applying. 

Bug when using SAM with Sweet Room - There are originally max 9 (frequency bands) corrections you could apply in Sweet Room if you do not activiate SAM. But if you activiate SAM, you could only have five (or six, not sure) (frequency bands) corrections to apply in Sweet Room. Devialet is working on this bug now.

Hope this help. And someone please correct me if the above information is not totally true.

[David A]

My understanding is that if you're using SAM you only get 5 filters working per channel rather than the stated 9 filters per channel. In other words, SAM and Sweet Room do work together but not as well as you should expect them to.

Is this a problem? That's a question with yes/no/maybe answers depending on your room. How many filters do you need, or are prepared to settle for, in order to get good results in your room if you use Sweet Room. Bear in mind that you can't fill in dips in response using room correction software like Sweet Room but you can reduce or eliminate peaks. Also, if you happen to have problem peaks below 150 Hz that are being excessively activated when you use SAM, not using SAM could actually be part of the solution for you and that would give you access to 4 more filters per channel. If you're using SAM to get more bass extension then you may not "need" SAM as much if you can deal with some of your low frequency room problems in Sweet Room so not using SAM may be less of an issue than you think.

What I would do is measure your room at your listening position, first with SAM active and then with SAM inactive, and see how many and what kind of issues you have that you want to deal with in both cases, and see whether any of the issues that show up with SAM active disappear or are reduced with SAM inactive. That will give you some idea of whether or not it's worth doing something with Sweet Room.

I can't make any comments about your other query as to whether there are problems with Sweet Room and dual mono configurations. I also can't comment on how well Sweet Room works since I haven't tried it.

If you can't use Sweet Room there is always the option of physical acoustic treatment of the room which has no problems related to SAM or dual mono configurations but it has its own set of issues you have to work through.

[Soniclife]

Hi Folks,

I've been trying to track what's happening with Sweet Room. I've seen a couple mentions that it doesn't work with SAM or Dual Mono due to bugs. Does anyone have definitive information on this? Given I have an Expert Pro 1000 and SAM is a huge component of the Devialet sound, I really don't want to go through the process of using Sweet Room only to find that it really isn't compatible with my system yet. Any guidance you all may have is hugely appreciated!

Bug when using Sweet Room in Dual Mono - (there are 2 modes in Sweet Room - 'main' and 'alternate') No matter in which mode, the 'slave' gear will show 'alternate' only. But apart from the wrong display on 'slave' one, everything is working OK. In other words, you only read the display on the 'main' gear to know what mode you are actually applying. 

Bug when using SAM with Sweet Room - There are originally max 9 (frequency bands) corrections you could apply in Sweet Room if you do not activiate SAM. But if you activiate SAM, you could only have five (or six, not sure) (frequency bands) corrections to apply in Sweet Room. Devialet is working on this bug now.

Hope this help. And someone please correct me if the above information is not totally true.

That sounds right to me.

[Soniclife]

Bear in mind that you can't fill in dips in response using room correction software like Sweet Room but you can reduce or eliminate peaks.

You can fill in dips, just not all of them, very sharp deep nulls cannot be fixed, but a lot of the wiggles can be improved a lot, and the affect is measurable and audible. It's complicated, and even if you can fill in the dip, you don't always want to, as it increases distortion, one of the great things with SR is the ability to create 2 sets of filters and swap between them instantly whilst playing music, so you can easily hear the difference, I've not found any other DSP that swaps as quickly as SR, it really helps tune in what you prefer.