More correct, less alive

In 2025 I held up my room correction unit as the proof that the room matters. I still accept the proof. I no longer think the box belongs in a pure analogue chain.

The MEN220 is Lyngdorf's RoomPerfect in a McIntosh chassis, and it does real work. It improves imaging, soundstage, levels and timing. In my old room, with the right speaker pushed against a glass wall, it had a lot to correct, and it corrected it.

But it is a digital processing system, and it adds things to the sound. Put it inside a pure analogue chain and it converts everything to digital. You lose the airiness of the tubes, the long tails, the shimmer on metal instruments, the dynamics.

How can I put it? The sound becomes less organic, less natural: better balanced, perhaps more correct, but less alive. That is harsher than what I said about the same device a year earlier, and I would rather admit it than pretend my view stood still.

A correction box can fix what the microphone hears. It cannot give back what the music loses on the way through.