Deciding on first high end outboard piece, Would love advice

Hey hey...just throwing it out there, but do you like your conversion? A year or so ago, I found a good deal on a Burl Bomber ADC, and it's earned its keep. Sometimes I think it's solved a few of the problems that I might have bought outboard to attempt to overcome...specifically, the bass on Burl tracked stuff feels easier to manage and mix, and overall, it just sounds "analog" honest - I rarely notice the kind of artifacts (e.g., resonances, high freq distortion, etc.) that I'd gotten used to recording in studios with Rosetta 800/Lynx Aurora (earliest version).

More and more I am seeing the benefits from DSP based room / speaker correction, but it sort of becomes a chicken or the egg question, which comes first? The problem is this I have heard speakers in specific rooms that don’t benefit from it and I have heard systems where the character of the speaker was completely changed by DSP.
So unfortunately for the bank account I would say you need to purchase together to both reap the benefits and see what you’re really getting into. Trinnov isn’t cheap but it probably is the best overall, the budget option of Dirac and Mini DSP digital I/ O boxes give you the advantage of picking your own conversion.
Nobody wants to hear this especially Trinnov fans, but where these systems don’t just excel but will make your jaw drop is immersive audio. Yep you thought the speakers and power will was going to kill your budget.

This is where it gets complicated, speaker design is at its heart a series of serious compromises to overcome the limitations of very imperfect drivers. Sometimes a designer will use phase and frequency response choices to compensate for a driver’s distortion. That’s where these systems fail. While this isn’t as prevalent in Pro Monitors you see a lot of it in high dollar consumer speakers.
The other thing is soundstage/ imaging has a lot to do with the phase response, on a few very large systems and a couple of small systems that offer stunning imaging a phase correction can just kill it.
Where DSP can bring huge improvements it’s the Crossover, but for good reason these systems don’t let us play with crossover slopes or points. A couple of months ago I was talking to a designer known for his large scale mains who has used DSP for years and we were talking about how often you can do more room compensation by moving the x over point a little or change the type of filter. He also had a story about some studio where the new owner invested in room correction had it all dialed in for those sitting on the couch, but when you sat at the desk it just didn’t work.

I thought that was the beauty of the Trinnov. One preset for the sweet spot, and one preset for the client couch.

You're only gonna get perfection one spot at a time!