DSPeaker ANTI-MODE 8033 C SUBWOOFER ROOM EQ

DSPeaker Anti-Mode 8033 C Automatic Precision Room EQ for Subwoofer compatible with all subwoofers in all rooms and designed to flatten typical peaks and room nodes causes by reproduction of low bass frequencies. Designed to get rid of standing waves with effective use of DSP. Easy to use. Calibrates instantly with one press of a button. New Price $395. Please Note we do not have email access on Sunday or Monday and plan offers accordingly.

Anti-Mode 8033 Automatic Subwoofer Equalizer

A typical listening room resonates in low frequencies. Because of this, even the best subwoofer may not sound good enough. Much of the frequency content get masked by the resonances, introducing unwanted characteristics (such as "slowness" and "boominess") to the sound. This problem is most pronounced when subwoofer is placed close to walls or corners of the room.

The Golden Ear awarded Anti-Mode™ technology eliminates the resonances of the speaker and the room by equalizing both amplitude and time domain responses using very accurate digital signal processing filter structures and anti-phasing technology. This way, the listener can hear frequencies down to the cut-off frequency of the subwoofer. Transient response is also drastically improved in the process, making bass sound faster and more controlled.

Anti-Mode™ 8033 is very simple to use. The calibration process is completely automatic: it generates frequency sweeps to the desired calibration point (or multiple points) and measures the combined transfer function of the subwoofer-room system.

Anti-Mode™ 8033 uses regular RCA connectors, which can be found from vast majority of home theater equipment. Input to the device is taken from the line level subwoofer output of the (pre-)amplifier. Output is connected to the line level input of the subwoofer.

The Anti-Mode Technology

Room acoustics

Hi-fi enthusiasts often seek flawless frequency responses from their amplifiers and speakers. When a high-end equipment is installed in to the listening environment, such as typical living room, these curves are degraded. The distortion is caused by walls, floor and roofs of the listening room. The early reflections will inflict both constructive and destructive interferences, thus introducing up to +/- 6dB peaking or attenuation per single reflection. The worst of all are the modal resonances also known as the "standing waves", which will impair the bass response with even as high as 30 dB peaking and narrow resonances which decay slowly. Every room has commonly at least a couple of high-Q resonances.

Modal technology concentrates in modelling the mechanism behind these standing wave resonances with room geometry. Simple models can be derived from room dimensions, the larger the room, the lower the frequences. In reality there exists multiple resonance frequencies that can be modelle as standing waves, the room modes. As these resonances have very low frequencies, they are difficult to be tamed with absorbing materials which in general offer poor efficiency for the lowest ranges.

Compensating for room modes

Anti-mode technology is designated to eliminate the devastating room resonances, but it in fact also compensates for the response of the whole system.

The basis of the technology relies in measuring the transfer function from the sound source to the listener with microphone. As the counter-model of the room is achieved by sophisticated algorithm, both amplitude and phase characteristics of the system will be improved. The algorithm is capable of making crucial decisions of which phenomena can and should be compensated for. For example the steep gaps in the magnitude response are always extremely local by nature and hence should never be corrected by narrow peaking filters or such. As a result of the robust counter model designing algorithm of Anti-Mode 8033, the result is achieved with fully automatic process where the user is spared from the involvement.

The calibration program self-generates sweep-like measurement signals and picks up the data with included microphone. The process will autonomically define parameters of the room modes, such as center frequency, Q-value, gain, frequency antisymmetry etc. The DSP will further convert this data to complex zero-pole presentations into the Z-domain in order to derive optimal counter-model for the system. This will eventually lead to the designs of custom-fitted Anti-Modal Filters, AMFs. Up to 24 distinct AMFs can be designed, although far less are usually ever needed for one position. The extra AMFs give the algorithm more freedom when extending the effective area of the compensation for more globally improved results.

Furthermore, the DSP computes digital IIR coefficients for the AMFs to be used in real-time operation after the calibration. In computations, accurate 32/40 -bit integer arithmetic is addressed, which will virtually set unlimited space of parameters for the system.

In the operational mode the pass-trough delay of the signal is approximately 3ms. This is mainly due by converters and small enough to be inaudible. It can, however be taken care of with basically every A/V receiver on the market by adding distance of the subwoofer by 1 meter (3 feet).

Other existing approaches

Some products in the market utilize fixed band graphical equalizers when trying to struggle against room distortion. This kind of solution is very inaccurate and is potentially incapable against narrow resonances that can occur at arbitrary frequencies. They usually also involve the user for measurements and fine tuning. Some equipment also only tries to compensate for the amplitude response ignoring phase completely. In such cases the compensation will not lead to improved transition response. Another problem in he existing parametric equualizers is the limitations in their spectral resolution. Missing a center frequency by even as small a deviation as 1 Hz, the modal characteristic can be made even worse than the original. In 8033, the spectral resolution is improved and the computation power of 24 AMFs is enough to make even the worst room compatible with subwoofers.