As for ‘fixing’ digital, we already have formats and transports than can deliver with zero error a 192Khz sampled / 24 bit data stream (or a DSD stream) losslesly, with no jitter.
It’s called DenonLink 3 and / or DolbyTru-HD or DTS-MA HD.
Any of those can deliver bit-perfect replicas of the bit streams on the ProTools HD master tracks.
If fed to an advanced PreAmp like the denon AVP-A1HD, then all decoding and fully balanced D/A happens inside the preamp. Very clean, not much to improve there.
Could any of the above be better, possibly, but there are much richer targets to address.
Amplification is an area where more sensors, feedback and basic intelligence could be engineered into the units. But it seems a waste to do it separate from the speakers.
My thoughts are that the best designs are those where the speaker designer picks the active crossovers, EQ and amps and creates an ‘ideal’ system. This is what Meridian does with its DSP speakers.
But the real area where investment could indeed make a difference is in the speakers themselves and the room interfaces.
Getting a transducer to meet all the conflicting criteria we have for them is a tall order, and we’ve only seen a small sub-set of possibilities .
So I’d expect material advances, active crossover / active correction devices to dominate speaker engineering for a while.
The interface to the room is the most important factor, and often the least discussed and engineered for, as it’s highly variable and causes the most impact.
<RantOn> Audiophiles who obsess over the ‘sound’ of Power cords are missing the point when their rooms are causing +20dB peaks and valleys in their response, screwing with imaging (reflections), etc.</RantOff>
So if I were throwing money at a problem, it would be on how to generate sound in variable dimensioned/shaped rooms while minimizing room induced side-effects.
Some technologies are making good progress on that front, such as Audyssey room correction.
But that’s barely a beginning, there is sooo much more to do there.
For example, think of a 6’ tall cylinder covered in a matrix-array of small speakers (think Yamaha Soundbar tech) or better yet, a matrix addressable single membrane covering the cylinder. Five of these in a room would be set up by a process that measured their performance in YOUR room, and used the multidirectional / steerable soundfield generation capability to not just EQ/time align, but to do active reverberant field and room induced anomaly corrections.
Better yet might be entire walls made of this matrix addressable sound generating membrane.
I could go on, but then, I’ve run out of coffee.
Anyone need an R&D Lab director for this project?
