(04-Jan-2017, 19:26)maxijazz Wrote: If Gui is right, that delays (did you mean jitter only, Gui?) have major impact on SQ, then phase alignment by SAM should have positive influence on sound (correcting phase delays), too. Improvement in bass seems just side-effect.
Obviously, implementation is key. If SAM implementation changes more than Devialet admits, then it might have impact on non-bass frequencies.
If Devialet's implementation is good, then maybe, maybe those reporting worsened SQ with SAM are just complaining they are missing inaccuracies they got accustomed to love?
I am wondering, who is right? I don't have SAM-ed speakers myself nor heard any with SAM on. Hence, the speculations.
By looking at waveforms of the best speakers on SAM page, it seems that the best ones really don't need the time alignment.
Naturally every delay, be it digital (jitter) or analogue phase shift, has an impact on the 3D-mapping of the music and can also be heard sonically (boomy bass, sibilance etc.). Calculating time delay is the way the human ear/brain works to locate any sound in his environment. Back in the past and even today this ability was/is critical to survive hence we're so good in recognizing differences in time delay. In nature there is no phase shifts in single sounds. If you suddenly hear a loud noise in your back you instantly know if it is near or far away and what origin the sound was (most times). You can locate it instantly.
Now if you have an instrument played through your audio and there are several frequency patterns of this instrument coming too fast or too slow to your ears (time delay/phase shift) it will first not sound natural anymore and second you cannot locate it precisely. Side effects are sonical hiss/sibilance/boomy bass etc.
But as ever there is a distraction in the perception by some people. I witnessed several occations where people heard better location of instruments when information of room reflections in the recording were lessend due to bad phase shift. They found the soundstage improved because everything got "clearer" to them hence their brain had less to work (less to get it all together). That's mostly because there're several bad phase shifts left they couldn't get together. For them it was easier to get by with more sibilance and boom and restless background than the only partial improved time delay patterns.
It's a very personal perception game we're playing here hence all the different opinions.
gui
"Oh, you can buy the other. But then it is a cost intensive learning process"
berlin
