In one guise or another, Lyngdorf has been at the cutting edge of digital amplification for as long as there has been digital amplification. Its best-known digital product, the Millennium, was the first and best of the digital amp breed. Much of that Millennium genome can be found in the more down-to-earth TDA 2200 integrated digital amplifier.
This is a very digital, very modular affair. In its basic layout, the TDA 2200 doesn't even process analogue signals, save to output them to other sources or to loudspeakers. The A/D module brings line-level analogue inputs to the party, but the more significant module is the Room Perfect system. Together with a long length of cable and a very, very accurate measuring microphone, ‘RoomPerfect' attempts to minimise the deleterious effects of room, listening position and loudspeaker idiosyncrasies to deliver the best possible sound. RoomPerfect isn't designed to make every system sound the same, though; it's designed to maintain the tonal balance of the speakers, but also compensate for the room's influence and mild peaks and troughs in the speakers' frequency response. In other words, it's designed to bring out the hidden ‘inner speaker' inside your existing loudspeakers, no less.
Click to enlarge |
Here's how it works. Entering the RoomPerfect set-up menu on the scrolling blue dot-matrix front panel display, you position the microphone as close as possible to your optimum listening position. The TDA 2200 then goes through a series of eerie BBC Radiophonic Workshop style sound effects (your neighbours will think you are sitting through a Blake's 7 retrospective) and then prompts you to reposition the microphone. This is the ‘focus' measurement. You can make eight ‘focus' presets on the TDA 2200, so you could have different positional settings for sitting slightly forward or back in the chair, or sitting to the side and so on. Next, place the mic randomly in the room (not between the speakers) several times until you have achieved a 90 per cent (or more) ‘Room Knowledge'. Now you have a ‘global' setting established. Fortunately, all this is guided by the menu system and is no more complex than setting up a home cinema system. Don't try to skip using the microphone stand, though, as the subtle micro-movements and your pulse will give false readings that will be automatically rejected by the TDA 2200.
You can add more measurements and refinements like your speaker/rear wall distance, too. These settings are attached to all the filter options on the amplifier. You can also by-pass the whole RoomPerfect system by pressing ‘0' on the Arcam/Linn-like remote handset (some better labelling would be nice).
