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How many here turn off Audyssey


robc1976

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4 hours ago, RoboKlipsch said:

I would submit this theory to being how Audyssey really works for most people --

 

If the average person who listens to music a lot, turned on Audyssey and calibrated it only at the MLP (whether 1 or 3 or 8 measurements), I would suggest that 90% of people would like the improvement.  It would simply EQ the response at that one spot and make it flat or close -- it has no restrictions in fixing that one measurement.  It may take a little while for your ears to get used to it, but arguing that flat is a bad starting point for reference seems suspect to me.  You have to start somewhere.  

 

There's a much much bigger challenge attempting to make multiple listening positions sound "good", and even harder to make the graphs look good.  

So when the average user turns on Audyssey and follows Audyssey's suggested pattern, the result can be, quite simply, mediocre.  

 

Garbage in...garbage out.  If the room doesn't support having a great sound at more than one place, then there's no way Audyssey can overcome that.

So a lot of time has to be spent figuring out how to make more than one measurement look and sound good.  For those with multiple row theaters, it's a particularly big challenge as one row is hard enough...two rows is inevitably a compromise.

 

In most cases there is some flexibility in speaker placement but not a lot.  Moreso people have the ability to treat their room -- or buy more subs, or whatever they believe will make the sound more consistent across the listening area.   And that is the key -- sure going up to the platinum audyssey may improve it a bit, but not as much as finding out exactly why the left seat, or right seat, or whichever seat...doesn't sound good with or without Audyssey.  

 

 

I guess I'm lucky, because after Audyssey calibration with a microphone spread of 3 seats (8 mic positions), the sound is better with Audyssey than without in all 5 seats (5 seats across, fairly close together, on a couch in a room 16.75 feet wide).  I hear that Audyssey is now recommending a closer mic cluster than it once did.  Before I started, I put in a medium amount of absorption and there is a large amount of diffusion.  The only thing that seems worse in the farthest apart seats (seats number 1 and 5) is the imagining, and it is not too bad with movies.  And, I'd say that even in the extreme seats, the imaging is better with Audyssey than without.

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37 minutes ago, garyrc said:

 

I guess I'm lucky, because after Audyssey calibration with a microphone spread of 3 seats (8 mic positions), the sound is better with Audyssey than without in all 5 seats (5 seats across, fairly close together, on a couch in a room 16.75 feet wide).  I hear that Audyssey is now recommending a closer mic cluster than it once did.  Before I started, I put in a medium amount of absorption and there is a large amount of diffusion.  The only thing that seems worse in the farthest apart seats (seats number 1 and 5) is the imagining, and it is not too bad with movies.  And, I'd say that even in the extreme seats, the imaging is better with Audyssey than without.

Im in the same boat. I like it a lot and get improvement at all positions.  Many arent into complicated setup though and I wanted to explain my view in still getting something good from it.   i dont think the suggestions are different just that some peoples room dont sound good at the outside seats and the averaging makes every spot bad.  

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2 hours ago, RoboKlipsch said:

Im in the same boat. I like it a lot and get improvement at all positions.  Many arent into complicated setup though and I wanted to explain my view in still getting something good from it.   i dont think the suggestions are different just that some peoples room dont sound good at the outside seats and the averaging makes every spot bad.  

I prefer it off with some tweaks, I have a dedicated theater. Just added a row of seats and 8 more panels to the room and it sounds insane. I am not saying it sounds bad with it on, but more dynamic and crisp, not muffled with it off. It took me 6 years to come to this conclusion though lol! 

 

I do like its delay/distance settings

I do like its sub distance measurements

I do not like the curves it gives you but understand why it does.

 

This is a large room

Just added another row of seats

6 more panels on the ceiling

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Anything such as the versions of Audyssey that are included in AVR's, that has been found so hard to use successfully by it's primary customer base and that has spawned volumes of pages with "tweaks" to it's implementation in order to "trick" it into successfully doing what it was designed to do, is a failure in my opinion.

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5 minutes ago, Kevin S said:

Anything such as the versions of Audyssey that are included in AVR's, that has been found so hard to use successfully by it's primary customer base and that has spawned volumes of pages with "tweaks" to it's implementation in order to "trick" it into successfully doing what it was designed to do, is a failure in my opinion.

100% agree

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On 4/25/2017 at 3:28 PM, Kevin S said:

Anything such as the versions of Audyssey that are included in AVR's, that has been found so hard to use successfully by it's primary customer base and that has spawned volumes of pages with "tweaks" to it's implementation in order to "trick" it into successfully doing what it was designed to do, is a failure in my opinion.

 

success is hard to measure when you haven't defined what the goal even is 

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2 hours ago, racebum said:

 

success is hard to measure when you haven't defined what the goal even is 

I think Audyssey clearly defined their goal. My opinion on whether or not they have reached it was previously stated.

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15 hours ago, Kevin S said:

I think Audyssey clearly defined their goal. My opinion on whether or not they have reached it was previously stated.

 

this doesn't make sense. audyssey is not watching a movie in your living room nor are the people who designed it. their goal isn't the reason people turn it off. our goals are why people turn it off and that is why success is hard to measure if you have not defined a goal. 

 

even my personal tastes..audyssey is alright in my large living room on klipsch speakers, in my bedroom on B&W however i hate it. i could go into details on why i suspect this is but the point is you can not have a perfect EQ curve when you aren't sure of the users preference. the time alignment and level settings it does however get right more times than not but even here reflective rooms seem to fool it into making more drastic cuts than are necessary 

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I think the argument that there isn't a tool that can fix every room to every listeners tastes with the simple click of a button or following directions 1-2-3 is quite obviously an argument against something that doesn't exist.

 

When I go out and buy a saw or a sander, I may or may not know how to use it well....Audyssey imo is a lot like that.  It can be used with no experience or knowledge or used with a lot of experience and knowledge.  In no way does that mean someone who doesn't like Audyssey is wrong, it's simply that the expectations of the program are too high.

 

To release a program that can actually work at all in most rooms, setups, and be as prolific as it is imo is a massive achievement.  I clearly recognize that it can be done better, and that Audyssey is no magic potion or program that can't be replicated.  It is an excellent tool though.

 

One of the biggest problems I see with how it is viewed is that Audyssey calibrates from home theater, not for music.  It cannot and will not somehow know someone's tastes in music, or biases due to having listened in a certain type of room for a long time.  Audyssey can and will screw up also from time to time, it is most definitely not a push the button and done program, even if it appears that way to some.

 

 

 

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Since this slowed down a little I thought I would ask a question instead of a new thread.

Although not Audyssey but MCACC, but the question is more general, do these mic's used have to be specific to the brand or will any mike designed for auto correction work ?

 

I ask because I picked up a old AVR and it has no mic or remote with it, I went through the book and set it manually and I think it sounds good but am I missing alot ?

It's an old AVR but it has more power and a few features my other avr did not including a couple of better sound formats like dd ex, dts ex, and I forget what else. It does more than my other avr and has hdmi and more power, very clean and completely working, I plan on using it until I do something else, it was only $100 so I gave it a shot. It's a Pioneer VSX-82TXS, I know it's old but working. After reading this thread I'm thinking about just leaving it set manually compared to buying a mic for $50 and then fighting with setting everything, which is a little confusing for me, a 2 ch guy.

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If the mike works, for $100 I wouldn't change anything unless you locate say a used one for that exact model for $5 to $10

The mics are calibrated for the particular model.  They have correction files that say with this mic lower this area this much raise this this much but it's not a huge amount.

 

Easiest thing to do is try it with and without the calibration, and see what you think.  You should have a digital on/off selector in the menu somewhere.  Listen to both and see what you think.   Autocorrection at the most basic level does some good things for the most part.  

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here is what i have tested

 

an audyssey mic will give me the same numbers as a yamaha mic on a yamaha receiver. an audyssey mic will give me the same numbers as a pioneer mic on a pioneer car stereo when you set those for time delay {disclaimer i hate pioneer car decks for SQ} 

 

does this work on every receiver in that brand? i have no idea but the mic from a marantz sr5007 works fine on an advantage 740 or said pioneer nex. 

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8 hours ago, RoboKlipsch said:

If the mike works, for $100 I wouldn't change anything unless you locate say a used one for that exact model for $5 to $10

I found the mic's and they are $50, since the unit is so old I hate to do that.

 

8 hours ago, RoboKlipsch said:

Easiest thing to do is try it with and without the calibration, and see what you think.  You should have a digital on/off selector in the menu somewhere.  Listen to both and see what you think.

What I did was to set the MCACC to manuel, it's what the book says to do, and just entered the distances to each speaker and it sounds great. I need to go back and use the db meter and test tone in the receiver and see if that helps, it's how you had to set the receiver it replaced. I think I'm going to skip the auto adjustment in this case, unless I run across a cheap mic to try.

 

6 hours ago, racebum said:

does this work on every receiver in that brand?

I was wondering if they were interchangeable, probably some are and some don't match up, just depends I guess.

 

 

I have to say this receiver has a different sound than my last, I like it better, but I will say Pioneer's are a pain to learn. I spent 2 days reading the book and trying things to even get to this point, everything seems to work fine once I figured it out. One day I will get a new model and by then it will all be new to me again, and it will be time to dust again. :o:lol:

 

I would think this was a good receiver in it's day, it has a ton of features and adjustments.

 

Thanks for the help :emotion-21:

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I don't have Audyssey on my current pre/pro, but found it to work reasonably well in other units I've had.  The Onkyo version I have now has been criticized but actually works fairly well in an untreated room.  I have spent a good deal of time/money treating my room now and according to the measurements with my RTA, I get flatter response in most frequencies with it turned off as opposed to turned on, so I have disabled it.

 

The most critical frequencies for equalization are below 200Hz and the Anti-Mode 8033 I have does an amazing job there and is well worth the fairly reasonable cost.

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22 minutes ago, Ian said:

I don't have Audyssey on my current pre/pro, but found it to work reasonably well in other units I've had.  The Onkyo version I have now has been criticized but actually works fairly well in an untreated room.  I have spent a good deal of time/money treating my room now and according to the measurements with my RTA, I get flatter response in most frequencies with it turned off as opposed to turned on, so I have disabled it.

 

The most critical frequencies for equalization are below 200Hz and the Anti-Mode 8033 I have does an amazing job there and is well worth the fairly reasonable cost.

Exactly my feeling as well,  I have a highly treated room and have experienced the same.

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5 hours ago, Ian said:

I don't have Audyssey on my current pre/pro, but found it to work reasonably well in other units I've had.  The Onkyo version I have now has been criticized but actually works fairly well in an untreated room.  I have spent a good deal of time/money treating my room now and according to the measurements with my RTA, I get flatter response in most frequencies with it turned off as opposed to turned on, so I have disabled it.

 

The most critical frequencies for equalization are below 200Hz and the Anti-Mode 8033 I have does an amazing job there and is well worth the fairly reasonable cost.

 

couple thoughts. why do you want flat? sound in nature is not flat, not at all. it's very dynamic actually. even some of the best sounding speakers i have heard don't measure anywhere near flat. resonance and how sound is actually heard by the human ear also don't show up on an RTA. in fact i can think of one speaker specifically that sounds absolutely terrible and measures really well. the zaph A/V kits. measurements are great. actual sound is terrible. that's not to say all flat speakers are bad. morel often measures fairly flat and they are a lovely speaker more times than not. same with TAD who makes speakers worth more than many cars. i guess my point with some of this is the RTA is useful if your ears aren't tuned enough to pinpoint frequencies but they RTA doesn't really tell you much about actual sound as the ear and body process it

 

i've actually found under 200hz is the easiest place to live with a system if you get it wrong. it's also the easiest place to get right coincidentally. it's 1khz and up, specifically 1-3.5khz that's the trouble area. if the cones don't resonate to your liking there is no saving that. no eq is going to fix that. if the transducer, amplifier or source get that wrong an eq simply makes a bad sound quieter. under 200hz if it's wrong you may get some boomy bass, you may get some 2nd order harmonics in the room. it;s not fun but it's not nearly as annoying as 1-3khz being wrong

 

one of the best speakers i have ever heard by miles are the B&W 802s and here's how they measure , article link for the set https://www.soundandvision.com/content/bampw-802-diamond-speaker-system1112bwdia.meas.jpg

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27 minutes ago, racebum said:

why do you want flat? sound in nature is not flat, not at all. it's very dynamic actually. even some of the best sounding speakers i have heard don't measure anywhere near flat.

 

The situation where loudspeakers aren't dialed in flat from the manufacturer is mostly due to mastering EQ in your recordings that boosts highs and attenuates lows below ~200 Hz, which you can easily see in the cumulative frequency response curves for each music track.  Once you undo that in your recordings, then I find that flat response is overwhelmingly preferred.  When you have non-flat loudspeaker performance you're actually trying to compensate for that "loudness war" practice that's been going on since the beginning of audio recording technology (i.e., before the 1950s).  But note that the variability on mastering EQ used on music tracks is very great - and can be extremely variable even on tracks within the same album... :o

 

If you have loudspeakers that fail to control their polars down to a very low frequency and fail to remove acoustically reflective objects in your room between you and your loudspeakers, then you'll be using EQ to decrease those midrange and midbass regions that have a lot of early reflections to deal with. 

 

Remove those early reflections and you'll find yourself pushing the frequency response back closer to flat.

 

JMTC.

 

Chris

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2 hours ago, Chris A said:

 

The situation where loudspeakers aren't dialed in flat from the manufacturer is mostly due to mastering EQ in your recordings that boosts highs and attenuates lows below ~200 Hz, which you can easily see in the cumulative frequency response curves for each music track.  Once you undo that in your recordings, then I find that flat response is overwhelmingly preferred.  When you have non-flat loudspeaker performance you're actually trying to compensate for that "loudness war" practice that's been going on since the beginning of audio recording technology (i.e., before the 1950s).  But note that the variability on mastering EQ used on music tracks is very great - and can be extremely variable even on tracks within the same album... :o

 

If you have loudspeakers that fail to control their polars down to a very low frequency and fail to remove acoustically reflective objects in your room between you and your loudspeakers, then you'll be using EQ to decrease those midrange and midbass regions that have a lot of early reflections to deal with. 

 

Remove those early reflections and you'll find yourself pushing the frequency response back closer to flat.

 

JMTC.

 

Chris

undoing recordings isn't very realistic though when the majority of music is in mp3 format and the artist often EQs for a specific sound. hip hop for example. it's really designed to be boosted around 35- 40hz in a lot of cases. edm works well with a dropped midrange and kevlar, poly or paper cone more times than not as you don't want a detailed midrange and you want to to have a bit of a deeper darker resonance quality. you can easily get two speakers that measure the same and sound completely different. when i first started in loudspeaker design and creating some of my own music i thought flat was really neat. it was the golden goal so to speak. then i realized flat really doesn't describe how you feel sound at all. if you listen to various instruments or various voices they often look like a stock chart. lots of peaks and dips. now in an ideal world a speaker would produces 15 to 25khz flat and in a pleasing way, amplifiers would have 6db of headroom and the recording would be what gives you your dynamics and reproduces that lifelike sound. if this is possible to create it would be unholy expensive so compromises have to be made. have you ever noticed two people who may well have very trained ears may look at a good speaker...like my b&w 802 example. one guy loves it, the other is luke warm? it's almost always 1 of 2 things. the small difference in subjective taste, OR, and this is the one i often believe it is, it's what they are listening to, i can most certainly attest that the speakers i enjoy the most change depending on what i'm listening to and the size of room i'm in. how you setup for HT, or rock music, EDM, hip hop, each of these works better with a different sound and each is a compromise simply because the god system would require buckets of money to attempt to recreate. you also would be faced with the question of what material you like the inherent sound of. you can take a 5" driver made of paper, poly, kevlar or aluminum, they can all test identical....they all sound different to the ear. this particular point is often one of the most overlooked between musician and system designer. the designer says. look at how my system measures ! the musician says but it's not the sound i want ! in our particular example my point fell more in line with this common scenario. you tweak the eq, do speaker placement properly, try and balance the room. run your rta, it looks nice..but you're not fond of the sound. why? lots of reasons but you almost always have some frequency that sounds off from resonance or the cone or the recording, could be many things. use the eq. adjust values in the passive crossovers to create peaks and dips. i have more than once cut a 2way system early when i had trouble with cone break up. you can do a lot to improve what your ears perceive..and...it isn't flat :)

 

your second statement about room reflections i agree with simply because you can't even tell what sound you have if the room is playing along with the tune. you may have a speaker that plays 500hz really nicely but that tone either reflects off your floor at a different frequency or makes something else resonate which completely changes the sound you perceive. this is actually a big problem in high end car audio with tweeters. you may see one that plays to 20khz fairly flat then goes wonky to 30kz. people say you can't hear over 20khz and most of us would be lucky to hear that 19khz. thing is a 25khz sound can make something resonate at say 12khz and now that sound wave is very much in our hearing spectrum. 

 

i agree with your overall thought process in what you said, i just am not sure the first part really applies to everyone or every sound simply because it's nearly impossible to actually recreate unless you A. have a lot of money and B. only listen to very limited sources. 

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22 minutes ago, racebum said:

undoing recordings isn't very realistic though when the majority of music is in mp3 format and the artist often EQs for a specific sound. hip hop for example. it's really designed to be boosted around 35- 40hz in a lot of cases. edm works well with a dropped midrange and kevlar, poly or paper cone more times than not as you don't want a detailed midrange and you want to to have a bit of a deeper darker resonance quality. you can easily get two speakers that measure the same and sound completely different. when i first started in loudspeaker design and creating some of my own music i thought flat was really neat. it was the golden goal so to speak. then i realized flat really doesn't describe how you feel sound at all.

Perhaps there is a reason why we may not agree on this point.  What you are describing here is not what I'd call hi-fi, and anyone's opinion is valid if "fidelity" loses meaning.

 

 

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1 hour ago, Chris A said:

Perhaps there is a reason why we may not agree on this point.  What you are describing here is not what I'd call hi-fi, and anyone's opinion is valid if "fidelity" loses meaning.

 

 

 

oh no. you're actually correct on this one. it isn't "true" hi-fi unless you have the whole ball of wax. recording to room. that just isn't a very realistic endeavor for practically everyone unless you truly are chasing the holy grail like andrew jones did at TAD. it means very limited recordings played on very expensive items. i 100% agree this is your best chance at trying to reproduce what's actually heard naturally or from a live instrument. it's just an area  a lot of us don't have the budget to try and pursue so the compromises come in 

 

i have to tell you though. if i was an extreme purist. someone who wanted flat AND the proper tone and sound of being flat, my dynamics via recording, a transparent amplifier..you know what i would do

 

i would buy headphones ! i have now just eliminated half the problems of a speaker system and i'm going to spend a lot less. 

 

if you have the budget to try and pursue perfection i do commend you. i'm envious actually. it's a fun hobby and you can find what you're looking for. it can be a never ending journey for many 

 

when i look at the image below i see a setup that's going for the sound i believe you may be after. yet another way to see this picture is $100,000 dollars. again..envy if you're able to pull this off :)

 

 

6c9a832e011b8bad9ea3ecab55e9b707.jpg

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