Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Question about Audyssey

I'm of the opinion that while room treatments are definately the best way to get the best possible sound (I've been in SRoode's HT, so I can appreciate what a well treated room can sound like) out of your system, it's definately also the most extreme. My guess is that a good 85 - 90% of house holds with any kind of HT at all in their homes don't know the slightest thing about room treatements. I for one had never even heard the term before I became a member of this board. On the other hand, I'll bet at least 75% of the population that have looked into buying a reciever in the $500 dollar and over range have at least heard about Audyssey.

Audyssey in some form is included in most of those $500 dollar plus recievers, correctly treating a room could cost thousands of dollars... IF the miss's were even to ok things like bass traps in the corners of the room, and huge pannels on the walls and ceilings instead of pictures of the family or other decorative paintings. I don't imagine spending money on such things is a very easy sell to most wives/girlfriends. I mean first you hit them with the notion that you're going to take down all of their decorations... and now you're going to try to convince them to spend HOW MUCH money on these ungodly looking things?

"Honey, didn't the salesman say there was something included inside of that retriever thingy that does all of that stuff for us"???

I say all of that even though I don't use Audyssey, and would love to be able to take down all the pictures and put up treatments similar to what SRoode did. But my point is that realistically this just isn't what is going on in HT's around the world. I mean look at me, I was able to convince my better half that spending $4400 dollars on speakers alone was not insane... but I'll never be able to convince her to take down all of the pictures and hang treatments up, even if I do finally get my way and put some bass traps in the corners... it just ain't happening fella's!

Therefore any speaker company that say's, "turn the Audyssey off and treat your room" is speaking to a very, very small percentage of his clients. And alienating the rest. I can't blame them for saying it, because in my opinion it's definately true! I just feel it's a mistake to expect everyone to be able to do this. I would be a little bit like Frederick Henderson coming on the TV and saying, "you know America, if I were you I wouldn't even consider buying a GM vehicle unless it was a fully loaded Corvette... anything less than a decked out Corvette falls short of the best performance GMC has to offer".

Hey that would be an accurate statement, but the number of GMC customers who are willing to take all of the trade-off's a Corvette comes with (low fuel mileage, only two seats, high insurance, terrible in the snow and ice, very high sticker price, etc...) aren't all that many. So while there's nothing wrong with praising how wonderful your Corvette line is, it would be wise to let your customers know that a Malibu is ok too.

Audyssey also adds another element of user error that is hard to diagnose along with other user setup problems like placement, room, connections, calibration, receiver settings etc that can be tough to determine over the phone. From a customer service standpoint you have to isolate variables. It wouldn't surprise me if they get a ton of calls about auto correction programs causing problems/user error. It only makes sense that the manufacturer would not recommend auddyssey or tell you to turn it off.

But isn't that why they call it Audyssey Room Correction? Its primary purpose is to compensate for room shortcomings, not poor speakers.

Philosophically I understand why Alan wouldn't want anything to mess with and/or change the sound of a nice neutral, linear speaker, but a bad room (acoustically) is essentially doing just that. Audyssey simply trys to correct whatever effect the room is having on the sound.

A properly treated room is always preferred, but many are unable or unwilling to go that route, so Audyssey offers them an alternative. The results will vary from person to person, so just consider it another tool. Use it if it helps with the overall sound, otherwise turn it off. You get it included with the receiver either way, so it doesn't cost anything to try it out.

Do you recall any specific movie material where the Audyssey on/off differences were most noticable? Or is it most noticable in 2-channel music?

Not IMO. It’s an auto-EQ system which is designed to automaticaly equalized for frequency and AFAIK some timing anomalies regardless if they are speaker or room induced. So IMO calling it “room correction” is a marketing ploy so as not to further alienate speaker and other equipment manufactures, and probably also to make it sound more “friendly” to the layperson. Room correction is only a part of what systems like Audyssey do.

I’m guessing, since I don’t know what Alan thinks, that not using EQ is more than just philosophical. As Dr House mentioned it adds another step in processing into the chain of sound output. Auto-setup routines (the receiver not Audyssey) can miss identify speaker sizes and make less than optimal crossover choices. Even Audyssey recommends ignoring the processors auto-setup and resetting all speakers to small w/80Hz crossover. Audyssey also recommends using only direct radiating speaker an not using speakers like the QS8s.

My biggest problem with auto-EQ systems is trying to compensate for multiple seating. My seating is spread across 8 feet with 2 seats about < 3 feet from the wall and one about 6.5 feet. Show me the EQ filter that can flatten out all frequencies for each seat. Or the timing adjustments that can correct for the distance to all 3 seats from all 11 speakers + subwoofers. Maybe something is better than nothing or not in a case like this and as you say people should try it and find out if they like it.

I wonder if anyone has experimented with multiple speaker brands set up in the same room with auto-EQ applied. Theoretically they systems should sound more similar with the EQ applied than not? It would be interesting to test that.

AFAIK no one is saying never to use auto-EQ. Rather that with any tool to understand the benefits and costs involved in using it rather than automatically assume it’s a necessity. I just advocate that people should listen to their systems and tweak things a bit before using auto-EQ so they can get a better appreciation for what it can and can’t do.

I've noticed a great improvement for all material, as I did before I added my acoustic room treatments. jm2cents

About a year ago a coworker of mine paid about $350 for a complete 5.1 Onkyo HTIB from Coscto and it even included some basic version of Audyssey. I'm just saying you don't even need to spend $500 on a receiver to get this kind of feature anymore.

-Dave

Sorry, I meant specifically for just the room treatments (not Audyssey) was there any material that demonstrated the differences (before vs after the treatments). I guess your answer would probably still be the same ie. all material...