Alright people, lets get some opinions on the below post over at avs. What's your take? Maybe Johnk can jump in here, and is this a fact? I sure don't know...I would love to hear what everyone thinks... \:\)

Here's the post...

"That's a BIG reason why I much prefer MCACC over Audyssey based receivers.

Why Pioneer and MCACC over Audyssey equipped receivers like Onkyo and Denon? Here's why:

On the Audyssey equipped system, you can run an Audyssey EQ setup to provide room & speaker calibration using Audyssey filters which provide much higher resolution than a simple EQ. Of course, there are plenty of complaints on the Audyssey thread and elsewhere from people stating that Audyssey isn't getting things right... too much bass, or too little, or too much high-end roll-off, etc. Well, fortunately, to make adjustments for that, you can switch to manual, and tweak your settings with 5 or 7 bands of EQ, sometimes 9 bands as with a 1909, so you can imagine I was pretty excited about the possibilities. I like to tune the EQ when listening to different content/sources, so this would be the best combination of auto room correction combined with my manual EQ tweaks. Heaven right? Unfortunately, NO!! The devil is in the details, and you can verify what I'm about to say from the Denon 1909 manual among others (even in the Audyssey & Denon 1909 threads, and the Audyssey FAQ.) If I was to do what I just told you, and tweak the EQ setting to my tastes or depending on the content, I would LOSE all Audyssey filters, calibrations, and correction, along with losing Audyssey Dynamic EQ and Audyssey Dynamic Volume capabilities when using a manually tweaked EQ. All you are left with is a basic graphic EQ which provides no room correction and will not address issues in the time domain. Why is that you ask? Because you must switch from Audyssey mode to Manual mode to make ANY EQ adjustment. Suddenly, hundreds of time domain Audyssey correction filters lost! And as if that wasn't bad enough, you cannot configure more than one custom EQ preset, so if you want to change it, you have to go into setup, and change it manually for each and every channel/speaker. Again, you will lose all Audyssey capabilities and will not have Audyssey Dynamic EQ and Audyssey Dynamic Volume capabilities by making any changes to the EQ. OK, so you decide you will leave Audyssey EQ set rather than making your preferred EQ tweak, because you want the Audyssey room & speaker calibration, Dynamic EQ, and Dynamic Volume capabilities, and you decide you will just use bass/treble controls to adjust the tone to your preference. Another big problem here. Not only does this limit your tweaking to a couple broad frequency ranges, but if you are using Audyssey Dynamic EQ, you can NOT adjust the tone controls either! You will run into the same limitations on other receivers with Audyssey outside of high end stuff using the expensive Audyssey Pro kit and license, which still doesn't make it quick and easy to tweak your EQ curves. Audyssey doesn't want you to be able to tweak the EQ/tone to the content, your hearing, or your tastes.

Compare that to the Pioneer 1018, or the VSX-01TXH. The Pioneer lets you run MCACC on your room environment as a starting point, and then make tweaks to the MCACC settings using 9 bands of EQ, and save this to a an MCACC preset. Not just 1, but 6 MCACC/EQ presets that you can preconfigure! And you can switch between the 6 presets quickly during playback as desired. Unlike Audyssey equipped systems, you still retain your full MCACC calibration & room correction in the time domain. You do not lose functionality of the DRC (Dynamic Range Compression), mightnight, dialogue enhancement, Auto Level Control, THX Loudness Plus, or what have you. Of course, you still have phase control, standing wave control, bass management, etc as well. And from what I understand, the tone controls are still available, although manually tweaking the EQ is much more precise anyway. So if you like to control or tweak your sound, even if just a little bit, in addition to the automatic room & speaker calibration, environmental acoustic correction in the time domain, and without losing other functionality on your receiver, you are much better off with Pioneer and MCACC. Pioneer VSX-1018 and all of the current Elite models are the only ones that handle this the way the tweakers prefer and lets you have the "final" word on how it sounds after all the auto room EQ & calibration has run. Now, finally a match made in heaven.

Now I can just kick back and relax to some great calibrated & tweaked audio just to my liking"

{end post}

Dana

M80's, QS8's, M22's, CHT SHO-10, Dual CHT SS-18.1's, Onkyo NR3008, Mitsubishi WD-73740