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 December 1, 2007Integra DTC-9.8 Audio/Video Processor: A Brilliant Solution to Room Interactions
So here’s a gauntlet thrown down at the feet of the Purity Patrol: The Integra DTC-9.8 is the best-sounding processor I’ve ever used, because it can electronically address room-driven frequency anomalies. The frequency response of each channel’s signal can be shaped to suit the anomalies of your listening room. The name of the room-correction software is Audyssey MultEQ XT. Remember that name: Audyssey’s program is set to ignite a firestorm of controversy. Back in the audio-only days, when everything was analog, nothing mattered so much as maintaining the clarity and purity of the audio signal. The concern was understandable; consider the potential for mayhem done to the waveform from a vinyl record as it makes its way through cartridge, cartridge leads, tonearm, turntable, phono cable, phono stage, preamp, interconnect, power amplifier, speaker cables, speakers -- and then there are the room interactions. In those days, it was easy to spend a small fortune on the first 11 problems because the audio world supported an entire array of cottage industries devoted to solving them. Problem 12 -- room interactions -- was looked at as an undefeatable side effect of listening to music in the home. Your only hope was a multiband parametric equalizer, and an audiophile buying an equalizer would be like Mother Teresa asking Little Richard out on a date. Oh, there were the Tube Traps, RPG Diffusors, Echo Busters, and various sound deadeners, but these were unpredictable in uneducated hands and in that case did as much harm as good. Don’t think I look down my nose at audiophiles. I was and am one. I spent hours trying to perfectly align my cartridge, bought separate phono stages, and went through a half dozen or so preamps, turntables, and tonearms. I spent days making micro-adjustments of speaker toe-in. And cables? Don’t get me started. Coming from this pursuit of ultimate purity, the idea that a processor should shape what you hear at your listening position using equalization to compensate for the acoustic characteristics of the room itself is a frightening jump. But jump you will when you hear how well Audyssey MultEQ XT can clean up the sounds of your movies and music. In fact, it’s so good, I predict that we’ll be seeing Audyssey processing all over the place. Except in the ultra-high-end. From makers of really high-end products -- A/V processors that cost more than $5000 -- we’ll hear something like: "We reject the idea of using electronics to cure a physical problem. These programs only work for one position in the listening area. Plus, it’s our responsibility to preserve the signal, not tamper with it." That’s a laudable goal. We should always strive for playing the cleanest possible signal through room-appropriate speakers into a room that is as acoustically neutral as possible. There is no better solution for room issues than properly designing it in the first place. But given the fact that all listening spaces are compromised, which link of the audio chain should we turn to for help in taming room resonances? I want it done in the digital domain, by a powerful processor with flash memory and an easy-to-use interface. Enter the Integra DTC-9.8. Integra, a division of Onkyo, has been around for eight years now, and has developed an honorable reputation for producing great-sounding products at prices that, to high-enders, look low. Integra always uses cutting-edge components, which in this case means that the DTC-9.8 is among the first that is THX Ultra2 Certified. The DTC-9.8 comes with a long list of features. The most important, other than Audyssey MultEQ XT, are HDMI v.1.3a, the 1080p HQV Reon VX video processor, and Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD decoding. For those of us lucky enough to be living close to a good HD Radio station, the DTC-9.8 does that too. For everyone else, and for a monthly fee, you can set up an account for XM Radio or Sirius Radio. The DTC-9.8 has four HDMI inputs and two HDMI outputs. The HQV Reon VX lets it pass along or scale video images up to 1080p -- even your dusty old VHS tapes should look dramatically better.
On top of all this, the DTC-9.8 can also serve as a media hub. Its three sets of outputs -- Main (audio and video), Zone 1 (audio and video), and Zone 2 (audio only) -- can be addressed individually. You could be watching a football game via Main while your spouse watches Food TV via Zone 1 and your kids rock out to Linkin Park via Zone 2. The best feature of all is the DTC-9.8’s price: $1600 USD. If it works as well as we hope, it will be one of the great bargains in home theater. The DTC 9.8 was deceptively simple to set up. All that complexity offers a lot of controllability, so take the hour or so and read the manual, highlighting the things that seem nonintuitive. You’ll be glad you did. If you have only four sources, all with HDMI outputs, setup is truly simple. Just plug them into the DTC-9.8’s HDMI inputs, use one of the Integra’s HDMI outputs for your display, and you’re ready to roll. If you have a turntable or CD-R, or want to use the analog output of your SACD or DVD-Audio player, there are plenty of connections on the DTC 9.8’s rear panel. Fans of balanced cables are accommodated, with a stereo balanced XLR input. And connection to your power amp is easy: RCA or XLR? Take your choice. Both are there. The Audyssey setup is simple, too. Just fire up your display so you can read the instructions, plug in the supplied microphone, keep quiet, and stand back. The program will ask you to place the mike in at least three different locations: where you sit, where your significant other sits, and somewhere in the middle. The whole process takes about 15 minutes. When the DTC-9.8 finishes, it will have determined how far each speaker is from the listening area, its best crossover frequency and volume level, and what EQ is required for the flattest response. Pretty neat. At this point, if you’re feeling intrepid, you can dig deeper into the setup menus, where you’ll find out how to control a number of different parameters for each input: where the sound and video come from, what type of sound you want to default to, and what the trim level should be to make the sound consistent from different inputs. The manual seems to have been written by a native English speaker, and it’s organized in baby steps, clearly telling you everything you need to know. For knowledgeable folks only: If you feel like instructing your Reon chip to follow your orders rather than the default settings, you can access the chip’s menu by holding down the display button for 8 to 10 seconds. I used it as programmed and made any changes I wanted to at the projector. But it’s nice to have the choice. How it works Let’s start with the HQV Reon chipset’s setup menu. I left all settings in their factory defaults, then began using the bypass test to see if there was any improvement. I have my Oppo DV-981HD set to 480p video output. Why would I do that when I can set it to 1080p? Simple. I want to keep the signal as close to the original resolution as possible until the last second where it makes sense to change it. My system (and yours, probably) has three scalers: the DVD player’s upscaler, the processor’s scaler, and the TV or projector’s scaler. The worst possible thing to do would be to have each scaler re-scale a signal already scaled by a device earlier in the chain. Even small idiosyncrasies can become problematic when you chain them together. The Oppo, Integra, and JVC HD1 D-ILA projector all did a fine job. I settled on using the JVC’s video manipulation, not because I thought it did a better job than the Integra, but because it came later in the chain. The JVC is outstanding at scaling and conversion. With some other projectors I’ve reviewed, the Integra would have been the better choice. In any case, the differences between the scaling done by the Integra and the JVC were almost undetectable. Once you know how to get into Reon chip’s setup menu, you can easily use it to make global changes to the picture. The good news is that the Integra did nothing to detract from the quality of whatever I fed it. If you can set your display to be a merely passive reproducer of the pixels it’s fed, try letting the Integra handle everything. Beautiful picture guaranteed. But the real deal -- the one that had me on the phone to Integra the second I heard about it -- is the inclusion of Audyssey MultEQ XT room correction. Again, mark my words: you are going to hear a great backlash from people who just don’t like the concept. If they even try the Audyssey, they’ll probably react negatively to the change in sound. All of us subconsciously prefer recordings that flatter our systems. If we make a big change -- and using Audyssey is a big change -- those same recordings may no longer sound so flattering. So if you already believe that all digital manipulation is bad, you’ll seize on the change in sound of your favorite recordings as proof that it doesn’t work. It does work, and better than anything I’ve ever tried in my home theater. My room has an uncontrolled resonance at 45Hz. To keep it under control, I’ve always sacrificed some of the bottom octave. A few months ago I tried a JL Audio subwoofer, which did a splendid job of suppressing that resonance, and allowed me to get beautiful sound in the 20-45Hz range. Audyssey MultEQ is far more sophisticated, and did a splendid job of flattening that resonance. The net result was a lot more low bass and much less muddy midbass. I went straight for music. In "So What," from Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue [CD, Columbia/Legacy 64935], Paul Chambers’ woody double bass is mixed a little back on the soundstage, but a properly balanced system will convey the bass’s weight and body. The sound was superb. Yes, back when I listened only to analog two-channel stereo, I heard a slightly more "audiophile" sound -- a liquid sort of sound with a slightly scooped-out midrange. It made for wonderful depth of soundstage, but it wasn’t real. The Integra got the frequency response mostly flat. Things sounded real.
The next surprise was that the improvements weren’t confined to the bass, or to a single "sweet spot." My wife sits about 30 degrees off center (Position 2 in the Audyssey setup routine) and sometimes has trouble hearing the output of the center channel. After I’d run the Audyssey software, she could hear all the delicate, quiet sounds of the tinkling glass chimes in Curse of the Golden Flower without having to turn the whole system up. Scenes of bombast, too, seemed more alive. We could clearly hear the work of the Foley artists in the battle scenes in 300 and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Even the sounds of light musicals such as Top Hat opened up, with convincingly fluttering dresses and banging taps. I can’t imagine anyone buying the DTC-9.8 and then not using Audyssey MultEQ XT, but if you occasionally want to hear an analog source sans Audyssey, all you have to do is plug it into the Integra’s multichannel audio or one of its several analog inputs, then switch the listening mode to, respectively, Multichannel or Direct. You’ll definitely hear a difference between the sound with Audyssey and without. In all, the Integra DTC-9.8 romanced the best sound I’ve heard from any multichannel processor. Integra has leveled the playing field. From now on, anyone who wants more than $1600 for an A/V processor had better offer something pretty good for the upcharge. …Wes Marshall Integra DTC-9.8 Audio/Video Processor Integra Website: www.integrahometheater.com
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Unless designed
by a brilliant acoustician and built with unlimited funds, every listening room has nasty
nulls and ragged resonances. Humans are adaptable creatures, so we eventually get used to
these abnormalities, but that doesn’t mean the problems have gone away. Once, a
friend and I were standing in my kitchen listening to a little Scott Hamilton through the
overhead Niles speakers. We could also hear the same tunes playing through my main ATC
speakers, in another room. The ATCs cost about 15 times as much as the Niles speakers, so
my friend was a little shocked when I said I thought the Nileses sounded better in
the kitchen than the ATCs sound from the kitchen. We’ve been told for decades
that great sound radiates everywhere, so saying the Niles sounded better was heresy. But
the hypothesis was simply verifiable, and verify it we did. 
On the sound side, the DTC-9.8 has
7.1-channel balanced XLR and RCA outputs, and enough processing power to not only fix your
room acoustics, but to decode all current audio formats, including the high-definition
soundtracks on HD DVD and Blu-ray discs. More important, if you’ve yet to hear the
advantages of lossless sound formats, you’re in for a treat. There’s also a
phono preamp with plenty of gain for any moving-magnet cartridge.
