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AVR Room Correction ?


rebuy

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Distance can be set on the mains with a cheap laser measuring device, actually a tape measure if you really felt like it, and the subs can be set by getting fairly close then measuring with REW and a $75 microphone.  Basically $100 worth of tools that you should have anyway.  Jeff Mier at AccuCal tours the country doing this, minus the sub measuring, which I don't agree with.  

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Phase issues are all over the place when you have a bunch of different speakers in different location. Measuring a 2 ch and sub by ear wouldn't be to hard. But getting phase with all the speakers in any combo (like left front +rss+c+sub1+sub2+lss+rrs and so on). But I agree set up can be done with no auto correction and still sound great. We had no other choice back before avr got to that point. The eq side of it depending on what program is being used can be bypassed without losing any of the other things. But the full band phase (note I'm referring to macc) is a game changer. Just that one thing by itself makes the whole thing imo a must standard in most muti ch systems like ht. 

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On ‎11‎/‎4‎/‎2016 at 6:10 PM, nitrofan said:

Finally some people who agree with me about audyssey.  Cory said it best, it neuters  Klipsch to the point they no longer sound like Klipsch is supposed to sound.  

 

You're not alone and I don't even like using it with movies.  Its not room correction, its digital source content manipulation. 

 

 

I have never been able to get a correct sound out of the past two version of Audyssey and I have ran it so many times with so many configs I just gave up.  The boost and cuts here and there, time delays all just seem to run over the content and add compression.    Ok lets boost the cycles higher than 14K to make Aud happy with that sweep and lets cut out all of that  overly mid range goodness along with some of the "horn" dynamics to try and get a sound and flat cycle range that was never intended for my speakers.   I have always been left with a thin synthesized content that runs over any of the delicates that leaves me scratching my head how did this "room" correction improve the quality of my content.  Try and improve the room, don't put your content through a digital sausage grinder that has the topo cleanliness of a budget sound card.

 

 

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The problem with viewing it as room correction is that the software doesn't necessarily know the difference between room correction and speaker correction.  You have no way to stop it at the former wtihout it bleeding into the latter.  It could very well make your speakers sound different than they're supposed to, and you have no control over this.  The pro version seems to guarantee that this will happen, just totally kills the sound of RF-7ii's.  There have been interviews with Chris at Audyssey where he says they try not to get too crazy and suck the life out of the speakers since people bought them because they like the sound and they don't want to screw that up, but again, you have no control over this, there's no reference for the software to shoot for.  If they just looked for sharp spikes or dips I could understand this train of thought but when they try to make everything flat and you get a nice little printout showing how flat it is and how the top end rolls off whether you want it to or not, that's a different story.  

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I have listened quite a bit since re-running Audyssey. And although Audyssey sounds much better this time than in the past, I am sticking to listening to music in Pure Mode (Heresy's only, no subs, no room correction). They just sound "right" to me this way. I am fortunate to get bass into the 40's from the Heresy's in my room and the Heresy bass just sounds better by itself. Audyssey did a better job of not spoiling the Heresy dynamics in the mids and highs this time, but even those have a bit of extra dynamics when left alone. I will leave Audyssey, with it's DynamicEQ engaged, and the bass augmented with the subwoofers crossed over at 80hz, for TV and movies.

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Getting a flat response is not for everyone. House sound for music is probably the most popular (bumped bass small dip in mid and little bump to high end). For music house sound was to me the best tell I got the 904s. Every speaker before them I felt the flat response for music sounded thin. I couldnt stand running music on the same set up that macc spit out doing room set up. I ran a separate saved set up with everything done by ear. No idea why but the 904s love a flat eq (all the pro speakers I have seem to). Nothing I do manually can compete with what macc is spitting out on these. 

 

I have experience with Audyssey and the first few were pretty bad imo (If I remember right you were stuck with what ever it came up with. All or nothing?). But the newer xt and beyond gives full control of everything after it runs it program doesn't it? Its been so long sense Iv had my hands on it. 

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9 hours ago, Cinema_head said:

I have experience with Audyssey and the first few were pretty bad imo (If I remember right you were stuck with what ever it came up with. All or nothing?). But the newer xt and beyond gives full control of everything after it runs it program doesn't it? Its been so long sense Iv had my hands on it. 

 

Not really, you get to choose between reference / flat / off, and turn dynamic eq on or off, and that's about it.  The nicest and newest Denon & Marantz offerings supposedly have an app where you can customize the response curve but I haven't played with it, some people have said it's not ready for prime time.  Everything except for a couple of very fresh models though, you can't control the curve at all, and you can't tell what it came up with.  It shows you a chart showing what the correction values looks like but that's about it.  

 

On the pro side, in the computer program you can choose the target curve, but it's a one time thing, once it's ran you can't play with it in the AVR, you have to whip the laptop back out and rerun and re-upload some stuff.  You have a choice between an actual X-curve target, and a couple of rolloffs that aren't as aggressive.  You can customize the response by plotting out points for the graph to follow, but it's limited to a 3 db swing, they don't let you get crazy.  It also allows you to automatically insert a dip around 2-4 kHz.  

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9 hours ago, Cinema_head said:

The macc from what I can tell has toggle options for every bell and whistle. And from what I gathered the higher end Audyssey is even better than macc.  So id be surprised to hear that it doesn't give full control. 

I've been a MCACC user for years and have had Audyssey before that.  I will take MCACC over Audyssey any day.  MCACC can be tweaked post calibration. I hear all the time how people don't like Audyssey engaged, sub level is to low ect.  MCACC Pro is even better that the old MCACC.  This offers full sub EQ and all speaker phase control.  I have always felt the standing wave function in MCACC was just as important as sub EQ.  Also, Pioneer has always had a strong emphasis on phase control.  There are a lot of other things going on than getting a straight line FR, IMHO.

 

I also feel that every serious HT person needs something like REW, Omnimic or similar.  There is no mass market auto- correction system that can fully address all the individual preference and oddities of everyone's HT.

 

Also, importance is also given to how well an individual is able to use his autocalibration program.  This sound simple on the surface but, it is more than just plugging in the mic and running the program.

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1 hour ago, derrickdj1 said:

Also, importance is also given to how well an individual is able to use his autocalibration program.  This sound simple on the surface but, it is more than just plugging in the mic and running the program.

 

Realistically speaking, about the only thing you have control over is where to place the microphone.  Unfortunately it seems that most people have the best luck sitting the consumer version's microphone in the same seat for all measurements, but this isn't documented at all.  There's several microphone placement strategies floating around out there, I'm not entirely sure any one of them works the best for all rooms.  Other tricks like covering the back of the seat(s) with a blanket seem to be helpful.  

 

Another thing that isn't documented all that great or is at least ignored is that Audyssey really only uses the first measurement to get distance calculations.  Everything else is frequency response.  So, that first measurement needs to be spot on right in the sweet spot of the good seat.  

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No matter how much you do or don't like Audyssey, how you setup the room is 95% of the sound you get.  Put the speakers, subs, MLP or treatments (or lack thereof) in the wrong places, it doesn't matter what Audyssey does it still isn't optimal.

 

Using Audyssey as a shortcut to finding the right room layout and positioning is where it would fail.  If used in an effort to enhance the best positioning available, it is a simple matter of before and after measurements.  

 

I do agree, that Audyssey flat may be a better choice for some, especially if the room is treated.  If it doesn't sound better with Audyssey, turn it off.   It's not magic.

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I know this is counter to what most believe but, mic position can be a game changer.  Most of us were told to put the mic at the MLP.  Sometimes putting it 2-4 ft. in front of the MLP can lead to a better sound and blend of all the speakers in the HT. A foot or two behind the MLP can also work.  For example, if you have nearfield or rear subs and farfield subs in the front. Mic position can greatly influce which group will be strong at the MLP.  This can effect chest slam, speaker birghtness, imaging and sound stage.  Of course all of the things can be positive on negative.

 

This was one of the things I was talking about in knowing your autocalibration system.  This takes months and is not something you do right out the box.  Also, different auto EQ programs handle the XO different.  Some use a 12 db slop LR, some may employ a Butterworth 12 db slow.  The point is that some auto EQ programs have more optiopns to get the sound right than others.  This is not good or bad, it's just a fact that there are various grades of MCACC, Audyssey, ect.

 

Now, some of the more advance auto EQ programs are doing 1000's of things in the setup.  Tweaking these to much can undo a lot of the DSP that is hard to correct by ear in a multichannel system.  To much adjustment via Omnimic or REW can also undo some of the DSP.  Things that might be affected, Standing wave, reverb correction, phase and other things in the time domain.

 

We don't know all the things going on in the auto EQ.  The only way to learn is experimentation which is time consuming but, necessary.  It not as much a good auto EQ or bad auto EQ program but, knowing what they can and cannot do before you step in.

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On 11/8/2016 at 9:35 AM, MetropolisLakeOutfitters said:

 

Not really, you get to choose between reference / flat / off, and turn dynamic eq on or off, and that's about it.  The nicest and newest Denon & Marantz offerings supposedly have an app where you can customize the response curve but I haven't played with it, some people have said it's not ready for prime time.  Everything except for a couple of very fresh models though, you can't control the curve at all, and you can't tell what it came up with.  It shows you a chart showing what the correction values looks like but that's about it.  

 

On the pro side, in the computer program you can choose the target curve, but it's a one time thing, once it's ran you can't play with it in the AVR, you have to whip the laptop back out and rerun and re-upload some stuff.  You have a choice between an actual X-curve target, and a couple of rolloffs that aren't as aggressive.  You can customize the response by plotting out points for the graph to follow, but it's limited to a 3 db swing, they don't let you get crazy.  It also allows you to automatically insert a dip around 2-4 kHz.  

Wow ok I see the issue. Its basically run the program and hope you like it. And if you don't its turn it off and do everything manually. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 11/7/2016 at 10:20 PM, Cinema_head said:

Getting a flat response is not for everyone. House sound for music is probably the most popular (bumped bass small dip in mid and little bump to high end). For music house sound was to me the best tell I got the 904s. Every speaker before them I felt the flat response for music sounded thin.

There have been some studies that indicated that most people participating preferred a smooth, tilted down curve, with the bass about 10 dB louder than the treble.  I think Harmon did one of those.  I prefer the bass boosted as above. with the mid and treble flat (Audyssey FLAT with the bass tone control (not the sliders) turned up for mid-bass boost and the sub boosted for low bass boost), unless it's a bad, edgy recording, in which case I like Audyssey Reference, which has a little dip around 2K and the treble rolled off about 1 dB at 8k, 2 dB at 10k, and 6 dB at 20K.

 

 

 

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