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Originally Posted by Last Sight
Hi all, I'm a regular poster at Bimmerfest but this forum has a lot of great audio info on it so I joined up  . Thanks to everyone who contributed, what a wealth of info!
Could someone please help me understand why some opt for a DSP such as the MS-8, others opt for an amp, and lastly some get both? While I understand which each does individually, I am still trying to grasp all of the audio knowledge. I apologize if this has been asked but I swear I've searched and looked through page and page of info to the point where my head is about to explode. |
An MS-8 is a low-power amp AND a DSP. It can drive a stock 4 and a tweeter about the same as a Logic 7/HK amp can.
If you are starting with base Stereo, the MS-8 does signal correction.
If you are starting with Top HiFi, it does summing.
But it always does acoustic self-adjusted optimization.
Now that Andy W is no longer at JBL, I have less problem saying this in public: The MS-8 has been a huge disappointment for us, we don't sell it actively any longer, we have had too many fail, we have had too many Bluetooth echo problems. We no longer use DSP in our Level One, Two, or Three systems other than in base Stereo situations, and in those systems we use other means of signal correction.
DSP as it's being used by the MS-8, the H800, the P-DSP, etc., is a way to perform several acoustic processes with minimal sonic side effects:
- Equalization
- Delaying the signal in time to compensate for different speaker distances
- crossover filtering by amp channel that uses steeper attenuation slopes than are possible in most amps
- channel-by-channel output level adjustments
The time is actually a bigger deal than the EQ.
Andy and JBL were of the opinion that DSPing a crappy speaker could make it sound like a great one. If this were true, we'd all have active-suspension cars by now, I'm afraid.