Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Just got the spl meter. Need help.

Sorry

It just trips my trigger when someone knowledgeable and respected dismisses a technology without some much as an explanation.

I think the biggest issue with auto setups is you have to look at it from a consumer perspective and from a speaker manufacturers perspective because they are the ones that have to deal with the customer service issues and audyessy which can have lot of user error involved adds a whole new wrinkle to troubleshooting problems so the best thing to do as a speaker company is to not recommend it/disable it. I would agree with that type of rationalization if true.

Mark, a bit more on the point that Randy touched on. Your terminology "but" to a flat response suggests that you may think that the "flat" setting involves little or no Audyssey processing modifications. It actually involves the same processing as the "Audyssey" setting, with the Audyssey setting also adding a slight treble roll-off. The slight roll-off is said to give a little more natural-sounding balance in typical listener positions and is recommended first. Of course, both should be tried with the various program sources used.

My only experience with Audyssey is the demo I had over at Steve's house. He turned it on and off a few times during music and movie playback, and we both agreed turning it off was a big improvement. His room is very well treated. Perhaps in a sucky room it would make a better impression. But from that demo I decided that Audyssey simply can't touch a proper setup and good room treatments. But then again, I guess that's not what it was intended for.

You are assuming Steve had it setup correctly...

Every time I’ve tried Audyssey in 3 different rooms, following the instructions in the “Official Audyssey Thread” at AVS, (same speakers and equipment) it sounded terrible. In 2 of the 3 rooms it did make a small but noticeable improvement in the surround effects. They sounded more enveloping and holographic if that makes since. However, in all 3 rooms it set the EQ (based on copying the flat curve over to the manual EQ) at the 63, 125 and 250 Hz ranges to about -9dB +-3dB. The result was that voices especially male voices sound hollow, nasal and tinny. I did several blind tests and everyone could identify when the Audyssey EQ was on or off and all universally felt off sounded best, no contest.

At the suggestion of Randy I even reset my Denon to factory defaults but to no avail. So I’m left with only 2 choices either that Audyssey does more harm to the sound of my system than it does good or my receiver and/or mic are defective. If I buy another receiver with a built in auto-EQ (highly likely) I will certainly try it out, but for now I’m not sold on it.

Dean, you probably didn't mean it this way, but I assume that when you copied the flat curve to the manual EQ(which actually can't be done)that you didn't listen that way, i.e., using the manual EQ setting rather than Audyssey.

My comments on Audyssey’s performance are based on having the EQ set to and tested with the following EQ settings after running the “Auto Setup/EQ“ on the Denon…“Audyssey,” “Flat,” and “Manual” (manual when using the values copied over from the “Flat” curve).

As for copying the “flat” curve there is a menu option that asks if you wish to copy the “Flat” curve to the Manual EQ function which appears to sample the “Flat” curve at the 63, 125, 250, 500Hz...etc. bands and set the EQ for each speaker accordingly. The menu also gives you the option not to copy over the “Flat” curve which then displays the “Manual” EQ with all bands starting at 0dB. Either way you can then adjust each speaker’s settings manually at the available bands.

From my reading it seems that the “Flat” curve and the “Audyssey” curve are essentially the same except that the “Audyssey” curve rolls off the high end some and the “Flat” curve does not, meaning the settings for the lower bands are the same for both curves. Listening to the “Audyssey” curve, “Flat” curve and copied “Manual” settings all yielded the same hollow tinny sounding male voices.

So no the curve itself is not copied but the values at those frequencies bands sure appear to be, thus giving an approximation of the curve it‘s calculating and applying at the low end.

I did experiment with the manual EQ after copying the “Flat” curve over by taking the copied values from the “Flat” curve and tweaking them. Mostly I just bumped the 63, 125, 250 bands back up toward 0. The result was that the higher toward 0 I boosted these bands the less hollow and tinny the male voices sounded.

Yeah Dean; I was just checking to be sure that you hadn't been just listening to the "copied" curve on the manual setting and thinking that it was the actual Audyssey curve. As Dr. Kyriakakis(Chris)made clear to a questioner on AVS(who had a mad urge to tweak the untweakable), the manual EQ isn't part of Audyssey and it's just a "crude" representation at a few specific frequency points(which you understand). There may be hundreds of frequency and time adjustments which wouldn't be reflected on the manual EQ.

Thanks for trying to help John, and I can see where my earlier comments could lead to confusion about what I was doing. As I’ve mentioned there has been a noticeable improvement in the 360 degree sound stage especially discrete surround effects when running Audyssey. The opening scene of “Appleseed” has lots of glass shattering and concrete fragmenting all around you which when Audyssey is on is taken to another level.

However, the enhanced surround effects is not enough to suffer through the buttering of the tone of voices. I mean this is no subtle thing that needs an A/B test to compare. For example in “Master and Commander” Russell Crowe sounds like he’s talking through two tin cans connected by a string.

My gut instinct is that the receiver/mic is defective in some way. It was purchased B-stock. I will certainly give it a try again with new equipment but I’m so sick of running the Auto/EQ on this receiver I’m not touching it again.