Dspeaker Anti Mode 8033 S Ii

For a few hundred dollars, your sound installations could amend exponentially. Stephen Dawson looks at a new subwoofer DSP from DSPeaker.

Y'all'd call back that with the all-encompassing digital signal processing (DSP) and automatic calibration built into modernistic home theatre receivers, your subwoofer'due south output would be optimally matched to your listening room. Just in most cases that is not correct, because most receivers largely neglect important parts of subwoofer calibration.

The DSPeaker Anti-Way 8033 Movie theatre addresses that in a big way, using a modestly priced, rather modest box of electronics.

What Y'all Get
The box uses a low voltage wall wart for power and as well comes with a measurement microphone with 5m of cable. It has one RCA socket equally in input, another as an output and a 3.5mm jack on the front for the microphone. There are 2 button button controls and four LEDs.

The unit provides three different functions. One is discovering and eliminating – or at least reducing – resonant room modes which boost some bass frequencies. The second is to optionally provide some deep bass boost. The third is to filter extremely deep bass below 10Hz in order to protect the subwoofer.

Now with just one input and one output, clearly the Anti-Style is used primarily for 1 subwoofer. The visitor also has a two channel version, the Anti-Manner 8033S-Two, available at higher cost (most $100 more), with a few more filter functions and covering a wider frequency range.

Information technology's easy to jump to the conclusion that this device is an automatic room EQ device, and it sort of has that effect in practice. But its main role is to identify those resonant modes in the room, equally measured at the listening position, and control them. All rooms enhance certain frequencies according to their specific dimensions and the degree of these peaks varies according to where you are within the room. Dissimilar a full EQ organization, the Anti-mode does not boost frequencies which the subwoofer is reproducing relatively weakly. Information technology does reduce those which are too strong.

To do that it applies digital filters for which it tin can adjust the frequency, forcefulness and 'Q' – essentially the width of the frequency band which is affected. Information technology acts like a special kind parametric equaliser in which each band can only be turned down, not additional.

Incredibly it tin employ upwardly to 28 filters in the frequency range from 16Hz to 160Hz. That works out to an average of more 8 filters available per octave. If all works equally DSPeaker says, that ought to give it excellent fine control. The company says that each one is tuned to an accuracy of inside 0.5Hz.

That's the main function. The second role simply applies heave at low frequencies. There are two options for this: the band from 15Hz to 25Hz boosted, peaking at 7dB at 20Hz, and from 25 to 35, peaking at 7dB at 30Hz. Because really deep bass can damage your subwoofer, these both include an infrasonic filter that nominally cuts frequencies below 10Hz. That filter is applied alone is the third role.

Since the input and output are both analogue, the unit incorporates an analogue to digital converter and a digital to analogue converter. Information technology specifies the system frequency response at 5Hz to 160Hz at the -3dB points and a dynamic range of greater than 90dB. The DSP is a 32-bit model for highly authentic calculations.

Doing it
That seems quite a lot of functions given that there are only two command buttons on the unit, simply they are cleverly designed to exist used singly, in combination, or held to give all the functions required. Clear labelling on the front panel means that you won't have to pull out the transmission time and time again.

That's aided past the fact that setting up the system actually could not be easier. You have the cable that usually connects your dwelling house theatre receiver's subwoofer output to the sub and plug information technology into the Anti-Mode instead. You lot utilize some other cable to plug the Anti-Mode's output into the subwoofer. (Or you lot might observe it more than convenient to put the unit of measurement at the receiver cease of the subwoofer cablevision).

Plug in its ability pack. Plug in the microphone. Roll out that microphone's cable and stick it to something so that it's about where your caput will normally be when using your system. Then press and hold the two buttons for iii seconds. I of the indicator lights volition start flashing and you volition hear a tone sweep up from the deep bass to around 160Hz. Each sweep takes nigh ninety seconds and the sweep is completed half-dozen times.

And that's it. Unplug the microphone, roll up the cable and put it abroad because you lot're washed.

Well, not really. You should then run the auto calibration on your home theatre receiver. The overall level of the subwoofer is likely different since some frequencies will accept been reduced. The manual suggests that the average level is raised past 3dB to recoup, and my tests confirmed this, merely this may still non be the right overall level.

In addition the unit of measurement adds a very slight filibuster to the indicate – merely 2.7ms. If your receiver sets the subwoofer distance in its machine-scale routine information technology will adjust for this. Otherwise just add a metre to the manual subwoofer altitude setting.

Polish
So did information technology work? Absolutely… and extremely well.

I should note that my subwoofer is considerably more capable than most. A 15" unit of measurement in a large sealed enclosure with 400W of ability, it happily outputs 16Hz, which is the bottom frequency the Anti-Way unit is capable of adjusting. The test listening position has a significant suck-out of frequencies centred at 35Hz. This should be a challenge for any bass adjustment arrangement.

You can see for yourself the results. The measurements shown in Figure 1 are with the Anti-Mode'due south 'featherbed' mode engaged (i.east. the point is untreated). Those in Effigy 2 are with the DSP doing its work in 'flat' mode (i.eastward. neither of the two 'elevator' modes engaged).

For those graphs the level is 3dB per segmentation. And it is obvious how much smoother the response is. Aside from the suck-out, the response is 15Hz to 75Hz +/-two.5dB. Information technology would probably have extended college were it not for the receiver's crossover. That was set at 200Hz (its maximum) when I made these measurements, so it was contributing to the curl-off at the higher frequencies. Untreated the aforementioned 15Hz to 75Hz required an envelope of +/-7dB.

The Anti-Mode reduced the suck-out depth is reduced considerably too, from 14dB beneath the average level to about 10dB.

It wasn't merely the measurement that was improved but the general sound of the organisation, especially when using smaller speakers with an 80Hz crossover. The integration between subwoofer and speakers had occasionally suffered a little with some combinations of frequencies. With the Anti-Way in place, doing its stuff, the whole organization tightened up remarkably, with a smooth joining of speakers and subwoofer into a seamless whole across a broad range of music.

I checked out the boost functions and they did pretty much what DSPeaker says. Another way of putting that is that they took a nice authentic subwoofer signal and made it less accurate in ways that might be pleasing to some listeners, but would probably not exist appreciated by enthusiasts.

If I had a proposition to make, I'd consider dropping those and instead offering a couple of switchable high laissez passer filters, say at 20Hz and at 40Hz. They'd be quite useful settings for belatedly dark operation. The deeper the bass, the more it penetrates structures and upsets neighbours. Also some music contains deep spurious noise, clearly not noticed past the engineers. Existence able to command those deep frequencies while keeping the bulk of the subwoofer'south operating band working would be highly useful.

Determination
It's hard to think of any other unmarried $375 dollar enhancement to a subwoofer-equipped abode amusement system that could come shut to producing equally much audible and measurable improvement as the DSPeaker Anti-Way 8033.

It'southward hard to recall of whatever system, in fact, which would not benefit from it.

Source: https://connectedmag.com.au/review-dspeaker-anti-mode-8033-cinema-subwoofer-dsp/

Posted by: howardsciallsolle.blogspot.com

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