I'm very interested in trying Dirac and ARC. I've heard great things about both.
I've only used Audyssey and now just skip it and do everything manually.
I may not be giving Audyssey a fair shake, but I find I need to adjust things after I run it. I'm also optimizing for MLP and not all the seats, so before dissing I should test more: listening in the other seats and compare Audyssey to my manual setup. Unfortunately, this takes time and motivation to actually do it.
If and when prepros with over 16 channel come down in price I'd like to upgrade to Dirac (or perhaps ARC).
Your comments are interesting to note as a 1db bump in loudness is supposed to be barely audible (at the threshold most people can detect). I guess it makes sense that subtle changes in frequency response can reflect in shifts in the tonal character of sound as the make up of tone is a ratio of harmonics. So this ratio must be easier to perceive than changes to the overall loudness ... I probably read about that somewhere but didn't absorb it ... might be interesting to lookup/check out.
