Do you use SAM?

[Pim]

The recent posts in this thread remind me of the 'Gui test'.  So no need to worry about jitter or Phase Signal Integrity if you don't want to, it is very easy to try this yourself, and indeed hear for yourself.  The 'Gui test' is as follows:

Test:
To experience for yourself what I'm hearing listen to a recording with no bass but high frequencies (single instrument, woman's voice) and many of room information (best is live recordings). Listen - switch off SAM on RC - listen again. Then you know if SAM alters something in your music...may sound better or worse...your comments.

https://devialetchat.com/showthread.php?tid=3714

I'm going home today for a week without the missus so I'll have plenty of opportunity to give that one a try.

OK, it took a bit longer to get home (bloody work getting in the way of having fun) but I've finally done the 'Gui test'. First last night on a cold system. I played 'Love' by Anouk from the 'The Lost Tracks' album. It's just her and a piano with sometimes just her or sometimes just the piano so it gives a chance to concentrate on the voice and the piano separately as well as together.

I put the song on repeat. SAM off and listened for a while over and over. After a while I started switching SAM on and off (0%) song after song and couldn't hear a difference. 

I just want to mention here how hard it can be; the song starts with just Anouk singing and there's much more spacial information to hear at the start than throughout the song. So if you don't keep that into account it's easy to fool yourself every time you start the song into thinking that it sounds better than before.

So I tried a different approach; I turned SAM on and off during listening. Still nothing. So I left the system on for the night and went to bed.

It's now morning and I tried again. At first I thought that it sounded a tad fuller when SAM was on but after trying on / off blind* for a while it was clear to me that there was no discernible difference between the two.

I also tried with 'It's so Hard' (2 meter session) from the same album. An acoustic very simple honest recording. Again I couldn't tell the difference.

So back to SAM at 100% and a little bump in the 250Hz region on Roon and the music sings again. It's fuller, more enjoyable and the spacial information stays as is. 

This has been an interesting exercise. It's clear to me that with my speakers SAM doesn't fix anything in the phase / timing domain. Maybe that is because Dynaudio has this covered. Maybe it is because I have spent considerable time setting up my speakers. Due to the smallish living room they're in, I had to set them up on top of my CD cabinets. So they're above my head. I made some blocks to lean them forward to line them up properly with my seating position. They don't point straight at me but a little down (probably towards my shoulders). This gives the most natural sound. SAM does give me that extra bit of bass extension and with these small speakers that's a bonus. The extra bump in the 250 Hz region I gave it in Roon again makes the system sound that little bit more enjoyable. 
Both setup and 250Hz bump are things I learned from reading Jim Smith's 'Get Better Sound'. I've read that book through and through and love where it's taken me. Not everyone would agree with Jim about what he's trying to achieve. He's not after the ultimate linearity. He's after the most emotionally fulfilling sound. To him, that's in the tone first and foremost and then in the spacial cues. I'm up with that.

* Being home with the dog alone it's hard to change SAM on/off without knowing you're doing it but I used the approach of just twisting the remote button left and right whilst concentrating on the music. After doing this for a while you forget what your left hand is doing and you just listen. It's the closest to a blind test I could do without re-configuring the whole system to have a SAM on/off button on the remote.