As choosing the benchmark candidates will be only from whats available in the Swedish market, I have chosen to use the listing in Swedish. If enough many readers request it in English too, by adding a comment below, I might incude that in the near future.
As I see it right now, there are three distinct price classes here, each interesting for the individual person, depending on their budget. The low budget user with an amp up to 16.000:- (SEK) around 1.500USD, The medium budget user with an amp up to about 22.000:- (SEK) around 2.000USD and the high budget user with an amp up to about 35.000:- (SEK around 3.000USD.
Prices are set by the lowest prices google serches would find at the 1:st week of December 2023 and of local offers in Sweden only. Of course widening the search to outside Sweden might produce lower prices. But the prices are to identify the three budget classes, rather than finding the absolute lowest prices. In our case we would rely on local support for the best chances of a smooth and quick start of the testbeds.
The whole idea of investing in good DRC, is to be able to invest less in expensive loudspeakers and physical room treatment to get the same or better end result with a lower budget.
The future test bed would ideally be populated with one amp from each budget category, comparing them with different loudspeaker setups with and without DRC activated.
Also interesting is to compare and evaluate high end DRC – like Dirac – with medium DRC – like Audyssey XT32 – with low DRC – like Audyssey XT and others. Of course with different loudspeakers and music/film materials.
Where we will begin, is depending of what the swedish importers and agents might supply the testbed with, by lending equipment, supported by the international producer o the product hopefully.
Perhaps You could include a software solution too? Like Accurate or REW.
Some of us have the amps, but w/o DRC already, and have no need for a new amp, just to gain DRC.
Excellent idea! I´ll look into it.
I am in the process of upgrading my old multichannel amp, to something more modern with Internet streaming, HDMI, USB and better sound.
I am looking for answers of questions like how much better would DRC make my setup sound? How big difference would that be between the entry budget level and double that? What is the best choice for me among the contenders?
The rest with how difficult are they to set up, building quality etc I can read about in many places. But these central issues, no one else seems to cover?
Good luck now with getting support from the industry for the benchmark setup! Looking forward to Your findings Christian.
I don´t read Swedish, but the listing data is understandable anyhow.
Seems like a good and viable model with three budget levels. The candidates and the data they list also seems well thought out.
There are some questionmarks “?” in the model, what are they?
Hi Elmer!
Thanks for Your input.
The “?” in the model are data that I havn´t been able to find so far.
Please feel free to fill me in.