Lyngdorf Audio TDAI 2200 RoomPerfect Digital Amplifier and Room-Correction System

Something Remarkable

Lyngdorf ’s RoomPerfect TDAI 2200 is a digital amplifier with a built-in, stand-alone (no computer interface) room-correction system of a new and unusually sophisticated sort. Visually, it is elegantly understated and rather smaller than one would expect a 200Wpc amplifier to be. Functionally, it is simplicity itself: The roomcorrection setup is all but automatic, and the amplifier includes a volume control, so only a digital source and speakers are needed to make a complete system. Sonically, it has real magic. RoomPerfect designer Jan Abildgaard Pedersen has accomplished something remarkable here.

The RoomPerfect amplifier/roomcorrection unit, correcting as well as driving my Harbeth M40s, produced some of the most nearly neutrally balanced and spatially convincing sound that I have heard in my own listening rooms, and in fact that I have ever heard from any audio system at any price. There are tiny aspects of the system I would like to see changed in the direction of giving the user more detailed control over the treble balance. But the system, as is, is so fundamentally correct that one listens and just says, “Yes.”

Ever since my first article about the Sigtech in TAS in 1992, I have been enthusiastic about room correction but accustomed to having a lot of control over the corrections applied, as in the Sigtech, Tact, and other units. By contrast, the RoomPerfect makes its own decisions. Because of this automatic character, I approached it initially with some skepticism. But hearing is believing. The automatic RoomPerfect corrections sounded extremely convincing, and I found nothing to second-guess outside of tiny bits of treble-tweaking with my Z-Systems rdp-1.

In a way, I suppose I should not have been surprised. The RoomPerfect measures the speakers in-room, not only at the “focus position” where the listener will sit, but also over the room as a whole. With user-controlled systems that measure only in the listening position or nearby, people can spend a lot of time trying to pick exactly the right “target curve” because of the invariable need somehow to take into account the room sound. The RoomPerfect system does the work for you, balancing the role of direct and early sound versus room sound—automatically and remarkably effectively.

Let me tell you more specifically about how it sounds.

First off, the amplifier itself, with the room-correction bypassed, is superb. I shall go out on a limb here. The question to my mind and ears is not whether this is as good as amplification gets, but rather whether you could find an analog amplifier as good as this in dealing with digital material. (No D-to-A conversion is required for CD standard and 96/24 inputs; they are accepted and processed digitally inside the unit.) Grain-free, utterly black in background, absolutely linear in dynamics, completely smooth tonally, completely free of digital artifacts, the RoomPerfect amplifier simply leaves nothing to object to. Of course, there are analog amplifiers that for all practical purposes also transmit their signal without damage, but to my ears none does so better than this.

Incidentally, for analog enthusiasts, the amplifier accepts analog inputs by doing a 96/24 A-to-D conversion, which to my ears is again without digital artifacts.

Some digital amplifiers have a quite variable response into different loads because of the output filter needed to remove extremely high-frequency noise. In the Lyngdorf amp, this is a small matter, on the order (according to the manufacturer) of +0.8dB at 20kHz into a 16-ohm speaker impedance and -0.4dB into 4 ohms. The amp gave very flat response with the Harbeths.

But, good as the amplifier is, the RoomPerfect room-correction system is what moves one into a realm beyond the ken of ordinary audio. For purposes of description, let me divide it up into tonal and spatial terms, although actually these aspects interact here, as in all systems.

The Harbeth Monitor 40s are already very smooth and neutral speakers, with one of the flattest frequency responses extant. But, of course, as with all speakers, this neutrality will be knocked around by the room, even in the most careful setups. I typically run my system with a little broadband digital EQ, for the bass in particular, using my Z-Systems rdp-1 digital preamp/EQ device. So I am accustomed to the sound of the Harbeths with essentially neutral balance in the broad sense. Thus the RoomPerfect did not startle me with a radically different overall balance.

What the RoomPerfect system did do was smooth things out to very good effect. The corrected Harbeths sounded as frequency-to-frequency smooth and neutral at my usual eight-foot listening distance as they do in truly nearfield listening, perhaps even smoother than that—which is very smooth, indeed.