Ok, for those of you who are familiar with the EMPEG MKII architecture and software, how possible would it be to implement a variable delay on a per channel basis (L, R) in the EMPEG? (i.e., somehow pass the L and R audio signals through independent variable size buffers before being DACed - or alter the size of some software buffers that may already exist in the EMPEG, etc). The delay required would be on the order of 10 ms or less.... I could come up with some real sets of numbers if this was actually possible.

Why am I asking this? This is essentially the same thing many high end car audio head units do to compensate for your seating position in the car which they typically refer to as time alignment (although wat I described would just allow for compensation in the L/R plane, while some of these head units allow more complex permutations like F/R adjustment, echo effects for the rear, etc).

If you are not familar with time alignment or it's purpose.... the simple explanation is that it can be used to equalize the arrival time of the L and R channels for a given seating position in the car. For example, if you are in the driver's seat of a left hand drive car, then you are generally much closer to the left speaker(s) than the right speaker(s).... where as the ideal for a stereo recording is to be equi-distant between the left and right speakers. The time alignment just compensates by delaying the closer speaker. Speaker location can reduce the degree of this problem (such as kickpanel installations), but usually not totally eliminate it. The benefit of doing this is a potentially better soundstage and imaging (for the one seating position it is optimized for). I have a somewhat high-end system (with three way components in kickpanels) I use for IASCA competition, and even though the sound stage and imaging are pretty good without time alignment, the sound stage is notably better with time alignment. IASCA judges generally give the system much better subjective scores (which are largely based on perceived sounstage and imaging) with time alignment.

I know there are processors that can do this, or I can make a simple ADC/delay/DAC black box. In fact, I am using a Sony ES CD player to do this at the moment, but that is the only reason the Sony is still in the car for now. It would be nice if the EMPEG could do this since it could be implemented before the audio is DACed negating the extra AD/DA conversions... so I thought I would ask the experts.

Also, I thought that there might be at least a few others that would be interested as well if it were possible.

AudioControl's website has a brief technical paper on the problems with stereo in the car environment, if you want a better explanation of the problem.

http://www.audiocontrol.com/techpapers/tech1008.pdf

As they note, time alignment isn't the ideal solution, but it does give pretty good results for one listening position at a time, and it is relatively simple to implement (compared to adding a center channel, etc).

Whatever reaction you may have to this, thanks for reading through it :).

Mike