A Confused streaming system - Mutec / SOtM Ultra

[Confused]

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Thierry’s latest filter is now getting very close to where it should be in terms of frequency balance, but I do not think it is 100% there.  So I think I shall be going back for yet another iteration,

Wow Confused, you’re really getting your moneys worth from HAF! I felt guilty asking for a third round of tweaks (to fix Roons grouping problem with filters longer than 500ms). That said I've added a PEQ layer which I’ve tweaked over months and really makes everything much better, so would like to incorporate back into the convolution at some point.

I think I was the same, and started to feel a bit guilty at about the third iteration.  I actually mentioned this in an email to Thierry, where I stated that I would be happy to pay a fee for further updates, I received a very positive response from Thierry, where he stated he was happy to do the iterations, to quote "I don't like giving up and it's always interesting & knowledgeable to understand customer needs."  I am sure there is a limit though!    For the record, the HAF filters I mentioned in post #202 are my fifth iteration, I have emailed some feedback to Thierry on these, and I am now waiting to see if he is happy to do a sixth version.

I am sure I will be giving Thierry more business in the future though.  I mentioned earlier about making some changes to my room and room treatments, all of these would have me going back for some new convolutions.  As I said before, the HAF service is the price of a modest USB cable or similar, or half the price of a modest LPSU, but the effect of HAF is an order of magnitude more than you might get from the latest Lush cable, PSU upgrade, or whatever.  It is seriously good value for money.

It is interesting that you use PEQ on top of the convolution.  I can see how this could work very well in terms of providing a little user fine tuning on top of a reasonably satisfactory convolution.  I would worry that this is a little extra processing though, something else in the signal path.  I am a bit of a purist, so part of me does not like the idea of adding convolutions, let alone PEQ on top.  To be honest I do not know enough about the inner workings of Roon to know if there are any detrimental effects of adding PEQ once you are already using convolutions.  Maybe it makes no difference once the DSP engine is engaged?  I just don't know enough to be sure on this point.  (Does anyone know the answer to this?)  Irrespective of all this, I could see a situation where you have a base setting of running the convolutions with PEQ off, and then have a small selection of PEQ's with specific uses.  Say one for those thin and scratchy sounding 80's CD's you sometimes get, this kind of thing.  For me, my aim is to get a Convolution that is as close as possible to what I think is correct, then just forget about it, if you then stumble across a recording that is a bit thin or whatever, just accept it for what it is.  There is a risk here of getting sucked in and end up worrying about PEQ rather than just enjoying the music.  I know that I might be susceptible to this, which is the key reason I would like to get the convolutions 100% as I would like them, then when satisfied these are optimised, it can just be set and forget.