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AVR Room Correction ?


rebuy

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My Onk 717 AVR has Audyssey and I love it for 5.x.  That's because I have a bastardized mish-mosh of speakers and Audyssey makes them all play nice together.  On my own I would never have ever been able to get my ultra-efficient Khorns play nice with my MTM dome tweeter center.

 

The people who don't seem to like it are the sophisticated users who seem to know exactly what they like.

 

My advice is use Audyssey to set up your system, then tweak the AVR's EQ to personal taste.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I'm a big fan of Audyssey.

Sometimes it runs it and comes out great, other times not so much.

If it doesn't sound great, run it again.

If it still doesn't, change how you're doing it in some way, and try again.

 

When it's right, it's amazing.  The whole soundstage expands thing etc.

When it's wrong, you know it, but at first may not be sure -- if it isn't right straight away...do it again.

 

Good luck, I think you'll find it helpful.  

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Until my Heresy III's, using my Audyssey XT32 had always seemed to be an improvement. For whatever reason, even after many varieties of attempts, Audyssey's "smoothing out" of the Heresy's seems to rob them of some of the dynamics they are famous for. Bass blended well with the subs, but on music sounds better without Audyssey or the subs. So I listen to music using the Pure Mode on my Onkyo receiver but use the subs for TV and movies. No Audyssey in either case however.

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2 hours ago, Kevin S said:

Until my Heresy III's, using my Audyssey XT32 had always seemed to be an improvement. For whatever reason, even after many varieties of attempts, Audyssey's "smoothing out" of the Heresy's seems to rob them of some of the dynamics they are famous for. Bass blended well with the subs, but on music sounds better without Audyssey or the subs. So I listen to music using the Pure Mode on my Onkyo receiver but use the subs for TV and movies. No Audyssey in either case however.

This is a common finding with many room correction system.  Not using allows for some peakiness in the FR and the presentation may be a bit more lively.  The flatter FR by auto EQ is going to better produce what the studio mixers intended.  I personally shoot for what I enjoy,

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Folks at Audyssey used to say "reference vs. preference". But there are only reference standards for movie audio, not music. Music is definitely recorded to the artists/producers preference. So I have evolved into the "preference" camp for music listening as well.

 

I have made some changes in speaker placement recently to achieve my music "preference". So, I am going to re-run Audyssey in the near future, and use it only for TV/movie viewing. 

 

 

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5 minutes ago, Kevin S said:

Music is definitely recorded to the artists/producers preference. So I have evolved into the "preference" camp for music listening as well.

Insofar as music is concerned, I only listen to multichannel and use the Dolby PLIIz for everything and never adjust anything and it sounds Awesome and well balanced. :) 

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So I have re-run Audyssey this morning, using a new microphone placement that I had never tried because it doesn't conform to all of the recommendations. I placed the microphone on a short tripod, and placed it at even intervals spanning about 8 feet of the top of the back of my 10 foot long couch. My Heresys are 10 feet apart, inside edge to inside edge, on the floor against the wall and toed in to fire at the opposite ends of the couch. This roughly 45 degree of toe in gives a sweet spot the width of the couch. The center image is very stable along the entire length of the couch, but varies a bit depending on the recording. Initial listening to music sounds much better than I recall my previous attempts as sounding. Maybe I have found a way to get a preference out of the reference with these microphone placements. We'll see if this hold up as I listen further. FWIW, as in all previous calibrations, Audyssey reports the Heresys as being 3 db down at 40hz.

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I'm torn on it, starting to fall out of love with it to be honest.  It tends to neuter Klipsch speakers in my opinion, at least with the pro version, at least on Reference speakers.  You end up with a pancake flat response that has the upper treble falling off, and if you choose to, the lower treble has a dip.  Basically Klipsch doesn't sound like Klipsch anymore afterwards and just plain sounds funny.  The consumer version doesn't neuter nearly as much.  It does do a nice job on the subs, but, the EQ and phase/distance settings nothing that a mild enthusiast can't do with primitive measuring tools and a MiniDSP.  

 

Best part about it is the dynamic EQ, that is almost required for movie watching at low volumes, otherwise your upper treble and sub response suffers a little.  The worst part, at least on the pro version, is if you run it then it neuters your speakers, then you use an AVR like Marantz with MDAX which alters the frequency response of compressed music like boosting the bass and treble back up, it just sounds straight up awful, sounds way better with no digital altering at all.  

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It does seem to me that since everyone plays with the microphone positioning until they get it to sound "right", that even when used, it becomes "preference" not "reference". I would think that there should be a standardized "reference" criteria for microphone positioning, and thus, true "reference" results. As it stands, it seems to me to be a very sophisticated, yet easily manipulated, equalizer. 

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11 minutes ago, Kevin S said:

It does seem to me that since everyone plays with the microphone positioning until they get it to sound "right", that even when used, it becomes "preference" not "reference". I would think that there should be a standardized "reference" criteria for microphone positioning, and thus, true "reference" results. As it stands, it seems to me to be a very sophisticated, yet easily manipulated, equalizer. 

A set position as reference for the mic would not work in a lot of HT/2 ch systems.  Just get close and you are good to GO!

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41 minutes ago, Kevin S said:

It does seem to me that since everyone plays with the microphone positioning until they get it to sound "right", that even when used, it becomes "preference" not "reference". I would think that there should be a standardized "reference" criteria for microphone positioning, and thus, true "reference" results. As it stands, it seems to me to be a very sophisticated, yet easily manipulated, equalizer. 


People don't even read the instructions though.  For example the Audyssey pro setup guide specifically says to vary the height of every microphone position.  When have you ever seen anybody do that? :)  

 

This is a big reason why I'm wanting to switch to using external amps and a DSP that I can set by hand.  You're totally at the mercy of whatever Audyssey comes up with.  Pro lets you change it up a bit but not much, and you don't have the smooth control that you do with a DSP.  

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38 minutes ago, Cinema_head said:

When you pack a bunch of speakers all over the room phase is a huge issue that room correction can fix. When I toggle the phase correction on off its a pretty large change. Trying to get all those speakers to play nice is a pretty big job. Doing it by ear would be difficult imo. 

Impossible!!!

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