What is “Digital Room Correction – DRC”?
Think about a car that meets an upslope, it goes slower so You compensate by pushing the gas pedal, You could call that “speed correction” and it could be done automatically with a “cruise control“. More gas in upslopes, less in downslopes, to make a flat and even speed profile.
Now think about your sound equipment. Your system is a bit low on treble, so You compensate with the “tone control“. Now expand that to ALL the faults (it’s what’s called distortion) of your system, tonal curve (not just the treble) jumping with peaks and dips all over the place, standing waves (bumbly bass mostly), and “megaphone type sound” (often phase faults), ringing and a dozen others… You then turn on your “audio cruise control” of your system, to automatically take care of this. That’s “Digital Room Correction”. Resulting in flat and even frequency response and in better DRCs, corrections of impulse, phase response, room reflections and ringing too.
In your HiFi installation, up to 85% of the distortion is from the room, hence the term most often used is “Room Correction”, perhaps 15% of the distortion is from the loudspeakers and only a fraction of a percent from DAC´s, cables, amplifiers, processors and power lines. So guess what gives most bang for the bucks? Better room and loudspeakers OR better cables?
Then there is the material….
The material is what it is, from really bad sounding, low bandwidth, highly compressed material 64kbs mp3s, to high bandwidth, lossless 320kbs flacs, wmals, alacs and DSD bitstreams and of course analogue sources from cassette tapes, copies of master tapes on reels, and the vinyls.
Listen to the usual low-quality material, like most – but not all – clips from Youtube or streamers like Spotify, and “room correction” can´t help. In fact today “room correction” can´t help the material at all – perhaps it could do in the future?, at least partly?, but that’s another story of another decade. Until then, we focus on using good material and correcting the chain from our “player” and forwards. Hopefully with good DRC.
To clarify the use of terms and abbreviations here: I use Digital Room Correction – DRC, even in situations where Digital Speaker Correction – DSC, or Digital Signal Processing – DSP, might be more descriptive. In fact, I will put everything about sound signals, that are deliberately changed in the digital domain, to better Your listening experience, under the term “DRC”.
Ready? Let´s Go!
This is my first blog. All my blogs are listed below.
- www.drc.one was my first blog, it is about getting Your HiFi-system sounding “like a million bucks” by signalcorrection with inverse digital filters, today common in many better amps. In English.
- www.rationellametoder.se this is my business site, dealing with rational methods for problem-, decision-, risk- and situation-analysis, nowdays converted into a blog. In Swedish.
- www.rationell-riskhantering.one promoting quantitative riskanalysis in aworld full of risks! In Swedish.
- www.radonbloggen.one dealing with the problems of radioactive radongas in indoor air and private waterwells. In Swedish.
- www.nedisusersblog.com gathering users of Nedis IOT-products, like cameras, sensors, powerplugs in a forum. In English.
- www.tyuausersblog.com gathering users of Tuya IOT-products, Nedis is an OEM-buyer of these as are others as Qlima (heat pumps). THIS blog is therefore much broader. In English.
- www.solpanelerochbatterilager.se A “one stop shop” for knowledge about solar energy, energy storage (battery tanks) and solar economy for everyone. In Swedish, but Google translate works quite well for this blog. Probably the broadest and deepest in the world!
- www.lidingo-civil.se Lidingö Civilförsvarsförening, the link between the military defence of Sweden and the local civil society. In swedish.