Last week I bought a beautiful Pioneer Elite vsx-47tx. Close out price at Tweeter was $1400.00 (with a little haggling I must say). I was all beside myself with joy until I got it home and had a problem with the auto equalization.

For some reason the auto eq sucked the life out of my center channel by attenuating the lower mid range frequencies and boosting at 16Khz. Here is an example of a typical setting result (in that particular range) on the center channel:

125Hz....-7db
250Hz....-5db
500Hz....-3db
16Khz....+8db


As a result, voices sounded thin, tinny and nasaly. Much like you would expect from the speaker in a TV. All other speakers frequency settings came out at or near 0.0db.

I talked to a Pioneer customer service person who informed me that they had other "calls" about this problem but could not give me any details or insights as to what to do about it (he didn't seem to know much about the products anyway). The good folks a Tweeter didn't know why either, but they all agreed that its not a good thing. Tweeter offered to exchange it for me, and as much as I loved the receiver, I declined because I think that I would now rather have a receiver with an eq that can be manually tweaked, such as the new Yamaha 2400.

Sadly, I returned it for a refund and have now turned my attention towards Yamaha(with user adjustable eq) and Denon.

Anyone have any thoughts regarding this problem with the eq?

BTW, the room is not what I would consider "lively" and different speaker placements were tried. Tried auto setup with speakers set to large and small. Speaker sounded great with eq defeated so I don't think its a problem with the speaker (KEF Q95c).

Mike, Masa may have some helpful suggestions when he gets back on the board but I'd suggest that you take a look at the AVS board receiver section. There're a couple threads started by gps and psujohnny in which new Yamaha owners list the equalization results their 1400 or 2400 gave. Some vary pretty widely, although I'm a bit surprised at your 16Khz result. The Pioneer does in fact have a provision for manual adjustment, but if this is to be permanent it would appear to at least partially nullify the advantage of MCACC. I wonder if you were very careful to have the microphone positioned exactly where your head would be.

JohnK, thanks for the reply! I'm still scratching my head about this.

I did see those threads that you refered to and I'll keep checking back to them.

If the vsx-47tx has a provision for manual eq adjustment, neither I nor the folks at Tweeter could find it and the owners manual does not refer to it. However, the Yamaha 2400 does have manual eq adjustment capibility.

And you are correct that manual adjustment would if fact nullify the advantage of MCACC. Thats why I returned it. I really hated to though. If I could figure out what went wrong I'd probably go back and get another one. The elites are so damn hansome!

I was verrrry careful with the position of the microphone and the house was dead quiet. I even moved some of the furniture and took some of the plushy stuff out.

I plan to pick up the Yamaha 2400 tomorrow and give it an audition.

Cheers

Mike,

Darn, you have already returned the receiver??? You could have done some additional experiments before returning it... For example, have you tried different mic positions? Changing the mic position only by a few feet can result in a vastly different results, depending on the room.

That said, I have to say that the 47TX, being the oldest of the 4xTX series, has two drawbacks: (1) No post-hoc manual adjusts of MCACC parameters; (2) The measurement mic is on the remote itself, which might make the mic rather picky on how you direct it etc.

Anyway, I agree that the EQ parameter you listed is rather extreme. Something must be going wrong here. My parameters are mostly within +/- 2dB for all 5 channels, with a few 4-5dB points here and there -- still very significant adjustments, but they never reach 7dB or 8dB. By the way, what was your center speaker, Mike?

Wish you a good luck with the Yamaha 2400. Please tell us how good/bad it is!

I actually did move the mic a few feet from the "sweet spot" but it didn't help. I also tried it with the remote facing forward and backward (I know it sounds silly).

Center speaker is a KEF Q95c.

I'll report back on the Yamaha.

Sounds like you've done all the due homework, Mike. Good luck on the Yamaha!

So how did you like the Yamaha 2400? I am trying to decide if there is $250.00 difference between it and the 2300.
(Ultimate Electronics has the 2300 on sale for $699 + %10 off).
I REALLY love my AVR55, but am wary of the AVR525 due to overheating, warranty issues, and the fan. The manager of the local hi-fi store keeps trying to point me in the direction of Denon.

Hi superstar!
I like the 2400 very much and I think the YPAO feature alone will justify the $250 price difference. The 1400 may be an even better value depending on your needs.

For a more in depth impression, check out this thread and look for my post under the name mcampo:

http://www.hometheaterspot.com/htsthreads/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=UBB61&Number=470817&page=&view=&sb=5&o=&vc=1

Should you need more info on the Yamaha's please feel free to PM me via this board.

My personal exp. with the HK AVR-525: It has never over-heated, the fan has never turned on, and the warranty is for 2 years, although I have never had to use it. I would have bought the Denon AVR-3803, but I could not justify the $300US price diference...Just my .02
The Denon 3803

Mike,

I enjoyed reading your review on the 2400 at the SPOT -- glad to hear that it is working great for you. My $0.02 on your "criticism" that the 1400/2400 should have a greater number of EQ channels, though: I believe that, with the parametric nature of Yamaha's EQ (meaning, each band can shift the center frequency and bandwidth as needed), 7 channels are PLENTY for most room corrections. A majority of listening rooms shows fewer than 7 peaks/dips in the frequency response that are broad enough (hence audible enough) to justify a correction by EQ in the first place.

Anyway, I read that you actually use the "presence channel" of the Yamaha, which I agree is a very interesting feature. Perhaps, you snatched the M22s back from your son's room to fill in there???

Mike I also enjoyed reading your review and I'm glad to hear of the improvements that you're experiencing. Another quibble that I'll comment on is that the low, middle, high priority feature isn't the one that allows increasing or decreasing output in those areas to taste. Although the manual doesn't fully explain(naturally not), it apparently means giving priority to flattening the response in those areas, not raising or lowering it. Presumably it would do this by using an extra one or two of the available 7 equalizations in that area and making less equalization elsewhere. Might be interesting to experiment with, although you wonder how to determine what frequencies need "priority". There's also of course a different provision for manually adjusting response in various frequency bands

Masa, on your comment, I'd rather doubt that YPAO is parametric to that extent. 7 adjustments are possible, apparently limited to a set of 25 center frequencies. Presumably if the center frequencies were fully parametric, no number such as 25 would be specified. The reports which users have posted list only the specific 25 frequencies as being equalized(although the bandwidth of the equalization may vary, as the Yamaha literature implies).

Hey, if Masa says that 7 cahnnels are "PLENTY", thats good enough for me! I think I need a tutorial on how to operate this thing(lol) because the manual dang sure doesn't explain much about all of these cool features. The manual throws all this stuff at ya but gives very little info on the-what, when, where, why or how to. It's as though, the folks that wrote the manual assumes that everyone is a "techie" (a club to which I'm not a member) and will inherently know what to do. Consequently, I'm doing a lot of experimenting. But it's all good.

As to the "presence channels", I'm really digging it. I always thought that it was a Yamaha gimick until I heard it for myself. I'm actually using KEFs all the way around. I have a pair of KEF RDM-2s that I snatched from my bedroom, to use as surrounds so I now have 7 KEFs hooked up to the Yamaha.

Sadly(he says, as he wipes away a tear), one of my M22s got knocked over and one of the drivers got smashed. I've contacted the good folks at Axiom and I'll be getting a new driver soon. I was shocked to learn that the replacement driver is only $25.00 - gosh, I love Axiom!

John, thanks for clearing that up for me. I'm still clueless when it come to some of the little intricaies concerning equalization.

And yes, the manual is a big sore subject with me. ARE YOU LISTENING YAMAHA!!!(lol)

That's funny. You should have told them your stupid roommate poked out the driver.. They might have replaced it for free.

I tried to use the old "the dog ate my driver" excuse, but they didn't buy it. I didn't think of the "stupid roommate" excuse - dang it!.

How do you guys put those faces into your posts?

when you hit the reply button, their should be a link above where you type that says UBBCode in your posts. Click on that and it'll explain all.

Hi mwc,

Just a few comments. Although I have not used the Pioneers with their auto-EQ facility, I'd caution folks not to rely too heavily on these features. The mikes do not "hear" in stereo and ignore all kinds of factors that audibly influence the sound you hear from specific speakers in your room.

I had a Yamaha some years ago with fairly versatile parametric EQ for the center channel. I found it useful to partly correct for some gross colorations of a lousy center speaker I was using at the time, but EQ, no matter how sophisticated, is not an electronic patch for colorations caused by frequency response aberrations intrinsic to a particular speaker.

By the way, I've had no trouble at all with an H/K AVR525 overheating. I've never heard the fan kick on, and it drives 4-ohm loads (M80s) with no trouble despite the stern "Use 8-ohm speakers" label on the back. The Denons are okay with 4-ohm loads as well.

I agree with Alan that a room/speaker EQ (whether it is automatic or manual, receiver-integrated or standalone) will NEVER be an alternative or quick workaround for careful optimizations of speaker placement and room acoustics. The EQ works best on top of the due homework by manual labor.

That said, I still wholeheartedly recommend the MCACC/YPAO type of system for anybody who is in the market of a new AV receiver. With the high-performance DSP chips constantly becoming cheaper and cheaper (and companies like BO$E also producing a similar auto-EQ system), I believe that this is the future trend. In my case, the MCACC audibly improved the timbre matching among my Hales, VP150, and QS8s (incidentally, even without the EQ, the VP150 timbre-matched with the Hales so well that the mismatch is in fact more pronounced between the VP150 and QS8's). Moreover, as Mike too indicated, the MCACC made the overall multichannel imaging/soundstaging more convincing.


By the way, it is truly reassuring and refreshing to hear that the former editor-in-chief of the Sound & Vision mag is personally using the "lowly" H/K 525, I mean, instead of those high-$$$ separates! So, Alan, would you care to disclose some of your personal AV gears that you actually own?

Alan,

I'm not sure that I'm getting your point.

Your post has my head whirlpooling with all sorts of paranoid, manic questions:

If folks should not "rely too heavily" on these features, then should they rely on them slightly or even not at all? Is parametric auto-EQ only good for a partial fix on a lousy sounding speaker? Is it just another marketing gimick to sell new products? Is this a classic example of the Emperor's new clothes? Is it all of the above or just some of the above? Have I spent money unwisely? OH! what to do-what to do, he says, as he wrings his hands raw.

Alan, I do jest with you here. But seriously, could you elaborate a little more on your comments concerning MACAA/YPAO. It is my understanding that they are designed to be useful in helping to "optimize" the room.

I do feel that MACAA/YPAO has been a great help in three areas:
1. Soundstaging
2. Imaging
3. That "you are listening within a big box" perception that I had with my old system.

Thanks Scott. I think I'm feelin' the "cheese" now !

Hi mwc,

Don't wring your hands raw. I defer to Sushi's experience with the EQ, and I agree that since the chips are becoming very cheap, they could do quite a lot for room correction, although I'd be curious if, when you shift your seat to a different location, you'd have to re-do the correction for that seat, because everything changes.

Some of the most knowledgable designers around, including Kevin Voecks at Snell (now he's at Revel), and Ian Colquhoun (Axiom), Ian Paisley of Energy/Mirage and some other Canadian engineers experimented years ago with digital room correction at the NRC. The results were impressive, but it was too costly to implement at the time, and, in Canada, the project was abandoned because it was felt the speakers wouldn't be competitive at the prices they would have to sell at.

Consider as well, that I've never used the Pioneer so it may perform very well.

It seems to me that whether you have EQ or not, by shifting out of the "sweet spot" much is going to change anyway just by being off axis.

Even if one were to have the room treated professionally with something like "Echo Busters" and "Bass Traps", wouldn't it all be tailored to the sweet spot and much would change in this scenario as well? I guess we can't have our cake and eat it to.

But the great thing is that, in my castle, I don't have to worry about changing listening positions because the sweet spot is MINE baby, all mine!.

I've enjoyed using both the Pioneer MACAA and the Yamaha YPAO and have found that they both made a dramatic and useful difference but it's not perfect. Remember, this is just my 2 cents worth, and it's only what I've experienced in my room, in my sweet spot. Take it with a grain and listen for yourself if you are thinking about buying these products.