Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Audyssey Versus MCACC

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

So the beef is that you can't keep parts of Audyssey settings when you turn *off* audyssey? Can you imagine all the people who would blame Audyssey after turning *off* audyssey and using it as a baseline for basic EQ?

To me, it's all what your used to. If you've convinced yourself that MCACC/Audyssey is just trickery, than no amount of room correction (done right) will convince you. If you are a fan boy of either camp, people complaining of "audyssey/mcacc sucks..." is immediately assaulted with "you did it wrong, you idiot..read the FAQ"

Room correction, I'm sure, is not for the faint of heart. And even modern day AVRs lack powerful enough DACs/ASICs to do a proper job. One reason why pro versions use PC's to do the calibration. I have Marantz 8001 with Vienna Acoustics Baby Beethoven, Pioneer VSX-84TXSi with Def Tech, and Deonon 3808 with Epic/80/EP500. I like them all, but I prefer the Denon/Axiom Combo the best. Pio has the MCACC, Marantz has Audyssey MultEQ and, and 3808 has Audyssey MultEQ XT. To me, the "XT" makes a big difference.

If I'm reading it right, I believe he's saying anytime he wants to manually tweak the eq, he loses all his room correction settings. He's not turning it off...it's being forced off. That's his complaint.

In addition, audyssey does not allow him to save more than 1 EQ setting.

Heck, I didn't even know this, if it's true. But my opinion, if it is true, it's totally ridiculous that you can't keep room correction filters AND tweak the Eq. That just doesn't make sense, why would audyssey even give you an option to go into manual mode to begin with, if you lose all your freakin room correction settings, what's the point? Hell, you might as well buy an external 9 band equalizer if that's the case...

Respectfully,

Dana

You don't need to save more than 1 eq setting as each room has an ideal outcome, which Audyssey finds if setup is done correctly, there is no need to tweak the settings unless your ears are more sensative than the Audyssey mic, algorithms, and FIR filters, I doubt it.

And yes, you can make changes to crossover settings, levels, just in the right direction, you don't lose Audyssey settings.

Could this be a work around?

Write down all of the Audyssey settings, then when you do a manual setting, start with the Audyssey settings you had written down. Or does Audyssey not tell you what the settings are?

I am a fan of MCACC, but only because I have a Pioneer Elite receiver. Does it work and work well? Absolutely. Is it better that Audyssey, I have no idea. Keep in mind that the algorithm in any of these programs are set to try to get certain, predetermined responses and tweak until they get as close as possible. Maybe that isn't what you, personally, like to hear, so you tweak and adjust it yourself. Nothing wrong with that... After all, it is your setup, right?! One thing that I have learned, though, is that there is no substitute for actually fixing the acoustical problem with a room. I've been to SirQuack's place. It sounds light years above my theater mainly, in my opinion, due to bass traps, first reflection panels, and a good ol' SPL meter.

Randy, for real? I think as you already know, there is no consumer level room correction program, whether Audyssey, MCACC or Trinnov that is perfect, thus the basic need for tweaking things to ones personnel preference.

There are hundreds, if not thousands of posts where both Audyssey and MCACC totally missed the mark for room correction. Manually tweaking the final settings is almost certainly needed, especially if one is using REW or any other frequency measurement software to obtain a flat frequency room response.

Let alone the basic need for different eq settings for Movies and for Music. I still can't believe you loose all room correction & time algorithms just because one would want to do a simple eq tweak...unreal.

Respectfully,

Dana

Dana, it's correct that the Audyssey room equalization settings aren't subject to be being manually "tweaked"(this doesn't refer to changing crossover frequencies or speaker distances). Dr. Kyriakakis of Audyssey has been asked questions relating to this several times and has made clear that the provision in some receivers for making manual equalization settings is not part of Audyssey. They provide for just a few frequencies that Audyssey has adjusted to be "copied" into a manual equalizer where they could be changed. Dr. Kyriakakis has termed this a "crude approximation" of what Audyssey has done, involving many more adjustments in the frequency and time realms, and believes that this opportunity shouldn't be included by the receiver manufacturer. So yes, the choice is either the Audyssey results or the manual equalizer which can't be used to "tweak"(misadjust)the Audyssey equalization results.

This makes sense to me, although it apparently frustrates some who have a belief(naive in my view)that they can do better if they could modify the results with a relatively crude manual equalizer.

So John,

Then you can't even manually adjust time delays? or manually correct peaks and dips? or standing waves?

I mean look what audyssey did to this guys subwoofer...from 21hz and down it made a 10db spike! It's no wonder his sub is distorting out of control...same at the 56 and 60hz mark.

Which version of Audyssey was that? I know the initial offerings were giving exaggerated bass or virtually killing it. The more recent XT and Pro versions appear to be much better. There is always the question about how the user took his initial setup for Audyssey as well, as an incorect set up will cause errors as well.