To SAM or not to SAM and DRC

[Soniclife]

The most difficult thing in this test is the transparency of your system chain...I know, I know, everybody in this forum would claim his system for being very transparent   .
But may be there is a here and then of someones system resolution being a little bit better than the average   ...you know what I mean   .
For those having a 'highly' transparent system the effect the test discovers will be of a large amount, I promise. Saying that we did this test with 'highly' tuned rooms and systems here.

"I've made up my mind, don't confuse me with the facts."

There is no point proposing a subjective test if your going to reject the samples that don't agree with your theory.

There are so many reasons for why different people and systems could produce very different results here.  Of the top of my head hear are a few.

1) The different transform functions of the different SAM profiles may act, or not on the relevant frequencies.
2) In general the smaller the speaker the larger the group delay that would need fixing, so it might be critical to have SAM on for small speakers, but off for large speakers.  Same goes for the response equalisation.
3) 2 way vs 3 way, depending on the crossover frequency some SAM profiles might need to, but won't from my understanding of how the measurements are done, take account of the output from the midrange unit if shallow slopes are used in the crossover.
4) Doppler effect of moving small drive units a large amount more than originally designed might impact midrange performance.
5) How SAM'able a speaker is.  I've been curious why some speakers cannot be SAM'ed, but other similar designs can, e.g. Fact 8 (can) vs Fact 12 (cannot, they have tried and failed more than once apparently), makes me wonder if there is a sliding scale of how well SAM works, with some just qualifying and others ideal.
6) Multiple bass units vs one, I'm  guessing multiples are harder to correct than single ones, they must be harder to measure.

I expect anyone who has studied sound, or loudspeaker design will have many more, and this is before we get to such standard hifi reasons as peoples rooms, the recordings used and personal preference.  I'm amazed it works at all.