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"[...] I will give you a bit of background information: Back in 1992
I bought a 50% stake in the high-end speaker company Snell Acoustics.
Kevin Voecks, who is now head of REVEL - the Harman owned speaker
company, was the chief engineer. At the time I was also the majority
shareholder of NAD electronics. The president of NAD electronics was
Marty Borish who had previously been president of AR speaker company.
AR had a very bright engineer, Bob Berkowitz. Bob was probably the
first person to realize that someday it would be possible to do room
correction. Bob also made some of the first mathematical equations
that would someday lead to the development of room correction systems.

During one of many meetings with Marty Boris I became intrigued by
the idea of room correction, so when one day Kevin Voecks came to me
with the idea that Snell Acoustics should cooperate with an
engineering company to make a 6-channel room correction system, I was
all for it. Kevin then worked with Sigtech for some time to develop a
6-channel version of their correction system. After a short time
Kevin realized that the drawback of the Sigtech was the lack of
correction resolution at low frequencies, which was – and still is –
20 Hz.

At this time my company in Scandinavia (AudioNord), the largest Hi-fi
retail company in Europe, was the distributor of Audio Alchemy, the
company owned by Mark Shifter. Knowing that AA was capable of making
very nice digital electronics I connected Kevin Voecks and AA/Mark
Shifter and subsequently (Autumn 1992) Snell entered a development
agreement with AA to design a room correction system.

Mark Shifter announced in "Stereo Review" in April 1993 that Audio
Alchemy/Snell Acoustics would have the correction system
available "this spring". However, after working on the project with
AA for one year it became apparent the AA was not able to make a
workable solution and Kevin gave up the project with AA.

Then in the autumn of 1993 Kevin met Dr. Radomir Bozovic (Boz) at the
AES convention in New York. Boz was showing his DSP engines which
were capable of astounding performance - far beyond anything Kevin
had experienced. In November 1993 a development contract was signed
between Snell and Boz and within a few months Boz had designed a
correction system that in Kevin's opinion was far superior to
anything on the market. The product was later sold as the Snell RCS
1000 at a retail price of $18,000.

In 1997 I had bought all of the shares of Snell Acoustics and become
the sole owner. In 1997 Kevin was headhunted to Harman International
to start up the Revel speaker company. Harman also tried to hire Boz,
but Boz and I decided it was better for us to use the technology in
NAD Electronics, which was still controlled by me. I found another
excellent engineer – Dave Smith to head the development of speakers
at Snell Acoustics and sold the company to my good friends at Boston
Acoustics. Boz and I continued to work together developing products
that were intended to be sold as NAD products. However, in 1998 Boz
and I decided to start a new company owned 50/50 with the purpose of
developing the world's best sounding audio products. I had become so
involved and enthusiastic about this new venture that I decided to
sell NAD to some of my other friends at Lenbrook industries in
Canada. (Selling NAD actually hurt a lot. I had been closely involved
with the company since 1978 and very involved with product
development. NAD have consistently made products that just sound so
much better than almost any products in the price category. ) .
The room correction system is now in the fourth generation since the
first system designed for Snell. The unique combination of talent at
TacT Audio has catapulted the company to become the most successful
start-up in the high-end arena.

In the daily development of the room correction systems, Boz is
responsible for all the advanced mathematics and DSP code. With
regards to resolution, distortion etc. there is no match for the
systems designed by TacT audio. When it comes to listening tests,
etc., I am the person responsible for that department. My office and
listening rooms are in Denmark. Denmark with a population of 5
million educates more specialized acoustical engineers than the USA,
so it is no coincidence that Denmark has some of the best speaker
driver manufacturers in the world: Vifa, Peerless, Scanspeak,
Dynaudio, Dali and Audiotechnology, and the most famous manufacturer
of acoustical measurement equipment and microphones: B&K. I know the
engineers and/or owners of all of these companies, so any questions
regarding measurement techniques etc. have been bounced on a number
of the best brains in the industry. The engineer that developed the
first B&K microphone worked as a consultant for me for 5 years, and
he is still a good friend. For good measure, I own the very
successful speaker factory, DALI with some of the best acoustical
engineers in Denmark.

What I am trying to say in not so few words is: Boz and I did not
just stumble over a few lines of code and decide to make a correction
system. One of the things that were discovered very early on when Boz
and Kevin started to work on the correction system (before I got so
heavily involved) was that none of the standard measurement methods
were useable for correction. A big part of the development has been
concentrated around making measurements that are consistent with what
we actually hear and at the same time do not lead to side-effects.
When you want to measure the perceived frequency response, you can't
treat all frequencies equally with regards to filtering, gating and
smoothing. Also, you have to take into account the wavelength versus
correction resolution, the way the sound decays at different
frequencies etc., etc.

It is a mistake to have flat frequency response as your target,
unless you live in an anechoic chamber. To get a natural sound you
need to adjust the target curve in a way that mimics the response you
would be getting in an average listening without any specific
resonances, cancellations etc. In other words it could be the average
response of a thousand different good rooms. To put it in simple
terms, you do not want to get the frequency response you would get in
an anechoic chamber, but the response you would get in a real
listening environment without any specific resonances etc. The target
curves suggested by TacT are meant as a starting point for
correction. "TacTA1" Is the most universally accepted for large
speaker systems with good bass extension. This curve has an increase
of around 6 dB in the lower bas region – to mimic the room gain at
low frequencies and a gradual roll-off at higher frequencies to mimic
the higher absorption of higher frequencies in listening rooms.
The curve can be modified very easily with a drag and drop tool where
you can directly compare your loudspeakers' response with the target
curve in the target curve editor. (The measurements brought into the
target curve editor are the calibrated – and thereby accurate –
measurements. The measurements on the main screen are for quick view
only.)

If you wish to maintain the general character of your speaker system
you can tailor the target curve to follow the general tendency of the
speaker itself.

[...]

Peter Lyngdorf, TacT Audio"

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