Auto Calibration Comparison?

[PENG]

^This has it all right here! The only two systems that scored well by listeners were Harman products.

http://seanolive.blogspot.com/2009/11/subjective-and-objective-evaluation-of.html

I thought I read somewhere that one of the two that scored well was Room Perfect. The worst (actually made things worse) appeared to be Audyssey, but indication was that it was an earlier version, one that was before XT or XT at best.

 

[Halon451]

I also liked how mcacc treated my room. But sorry halon. Now you have to try Dirac live. From what I've seen, nothing is even close.

I've certainly read a lot of good things on Dirac Live. I certainly wouldn't mind giving it a run on my system.

 

[lovinthehd]

Trinnov and Dirac I'd love to audition, probably won't be any time soon, tho. I liked Advanced MCACC well enough, would like to give their Pro version a spin. I prefer what Audyssey XT and XT32 did over Advanced MCACC altho the latter did have some nice tweaking features. Haven't tried YPAO or ARC. Off to read the Harman blog....

 

[ATLAudio]

@TheWarrior It would appear that three performed well, but Olive deliberately did not reveal which ones were which.

"The room correction products are coded from R1 through R6 in descending order of preference. The identities of the products associated with the results are not relevant for the purpose of this article."

@AcuDefTechGuy Basicaly, the conclusion wasn't a comparison of room correction applications to find the best one, but to show that they aren't all just as good (or bad); as some would say.

"There are significant differences in the subjective and objective performance of current commercial room correction products as illustrated in these listening test results. When done properly, room correction can lead to significant improvements in the overall quality of sound reproduction. However, not all room correction products are equal, and two of the tested products produced results that were no better, or much worse, than the unequalized loudspeaker."

If one attempts to use this a comparison of actual products offered for RC it won't provide much benefit. Anthem Statement D1 has been supplanted by ARC, Lyngdorf DPA1 is more of a boutique product associated with their integrated unit, and to @PENG point the Audyssey chosen was MultEQ, and not XT32. Most forum members here are interested in XT32 comparisons. The two Harman prototypes are a complete mystery, but their AVRs aren't on most people's radar. Maybe the prototypes found their way into Mark Levinson gear, but then that would also be more of a boutique offering.

 

[PENG]

I think Audyssey Pro may be a better version for Halon if likes to see the stuff behind the curtain. Unfortunately they are meant for certified installers, though I read about individual users were able to buy the license too, for like $500. For that kind of money, may as well try Dirac's free demo and if it really works that well, then buy it.

 

[ATLAudio]

I think Audyssey Pro may be a better version for Halon if likes to see the stuff behind the curtain. Unfortunately they are meant for certified installers, though I read about individual users were able to buy the license too, for like $500. For that kind of money, may as well try Dirac's free demo and if it really works that well, then buy it.

The best approach to internal room correction imo is whatever RC flavor came installed in your AVR along with a MiniDSP + REW. That said these RCs won't only make a really bad, or good situation (room condition / speaker placement etc) that much better.

 

[yepimonfire]

Fwiw I've never had good results with audyssey. Even DCAC on my cheap sony receiver does a better job.

Sent from my SM-G360T1 using Tapatalk

 

[Halon451]

I think Audyssey is one of those things where many people have great success with it while some have nothing but troubles. I certainly wouldn't mind tinkering around with the Pro version but honestly if I were to go that route I'd likely just get Dirac Live.

 

[Halon451]

It didn't work so well for me in particular either, despite the XT32 and SubEQ. YPAO appears to do zilch for my sub, though it does show some EQ correction well above my crossover point which is meaningless. It may offer some assistance from the black box within RSC based on the distance setting but I have no idea what. Seems RSC is more concerned with HF reflections and doubt it matters much at the frequencies my sub produces.

 

[TheWarrior]

@TheWarrior It would appear that three performed well, but Olive deliberately did not reveal which ones were which.

Well yeah, this is America. Even research scientists have to fear lawsuits when they post data that could damage a companies reputation.

 

[PENG]

I think Audyssey is one of those things where many people have great success with it while some have nothing but troubles. I certainly wouldn't mind tinkering around with the Pro version but honestly if I were to go that route I'd likely just get Dirac Live.

Vs Dirac Live, that what I said too, but Dirac Live will still cost much more overall. The thing about Audyssey XT32 and YPAO is that people cannot see (as you said before) what they do to "fix" your room created distortions. Remember your preferred sound quality/characteristics in your room does not equal to accuracy and neutrality. REQ's, at least the one that I know of including Audyssey, claim to make the necessary adjustments to make the sound reproduced in your room sound more like, obviously used only in relative term, how it is supposed to sound like in the original venue. Reality is, even if a perfect REQ does fix all the issues created by your room, you may still prefer how it sounds like without the fix.

I am one of those who are lucky enough to benefit from the "fix" and my REW graphs do show good results based on the final frequency response from my main listening position because I happen to prefer the sound after the "fix".

Here's an interesting but obviously unscientific/subjective poll related to your first sentence.

http://www.avsforum.com/forum/92-community-news-polls/1483347-does-auto-room-correction-do-more-good-harm.html

 

[ATLAudio]

Well yeah, this is America. Even research scientists have to fear lawsuits when they post data that could damage a companies reputation.

Olive stated that his reasons for nondisclosure of the particular RC applications was due to relevancy, not for fear of litigation. Based off his hypothesis and conclusions being that all RC are not the same then I'd agree that disclosure of each application shouldn't be needed.

I would also say that for an experiment to be compelling in comparing RC it would need to test in more rooms, and with more up to date RC applications.

 

[PENG]

Olive stated that his reasons for nondisclosure of the particular RC applications was due to relevancy, not for fear of litigation. Based off his hypothesis and conclusions being that all RC are not the same then I'd agree that disclosure of each application shouldn't be needed.

I would also say that for an experiment to be compelling in comparing RC it would need to test in more rooms, and with more up to date RC applications.

That tests showed mainly different subjective preference by the participants, not so much, though to some extent accuracy and/or neutrality relative to a reference performance that minimized the room effect/distortions. So you can't really conclude very well that one is better than the other in an objective sense.

 

[TheWarrior]

Wow. A double blind test in a custom built room and we go straight back to subjective opinions. See if you can detect Olive's sarcasm in the comment section of that blog!

Olive's Slideshow
Toole's 'Measurement and Calibration of Sound Reproducing Systems'
Harman Whitepapers

 

[ATLAudio]

Wow. A double blind test in a custom built room and we go straight back to subjective opinions. See if you can detect Olive's sarcasm in the comment section of that blog!

Olive's Slideshow
Toole's 'Measurement and Calibration of Sound Reproducing Systems'
Harman Whitepapers

I'm not exactly sure what you're getting at here. The title was called "The Subjective and Objective Evaluation of Room Correction Products." Subjective and objective opinion is exactly what's evaluated, and is confirmed to exist when groups of different RC applications are tested.

 

[yepimonfire]

I think Audyssey is one of those things where many people have great success with it while some have nothing but troubles. I certainly wouldn't mind tinkering around with the Pro version but honestly if I were to go that route I'd likely just get Dirac Live.

Other than taming room modes at low frequencies, I'm not sold on digital room correction. I have taken multiple measurements throughout the room and the frequency response is so inconsistent there's no point in trying to correct it via eq. Room modes in the low end are more evenly distributed, higher frequency problems are better solved with room treatment.

Sent from my SM-G360T1 using Tapatalk

 

[PENG]

I'm not exactly sure what you're getting at here. The title was called "The Subjective and Objective Evaluation of Room Correction Products." Subjective and objective opinion is exactly what's evaluated, and is confirmed to exist when groups of different RC applications are tested.

Well said, to add to that, double blind test only help reduce or eliminate subjective bias that in this case, is the preconceived notion or belief that room correction systems work; and that the subjects (participants) believe one particular RC improves while the others degrade the in room response. It does not mean the outcome will be objective in terms telling us which RC is most effective. That's where the objective part comes in, as the objective part was based on measurements, not by the human participants preference.

The experiment did try to use the objective measurements to explain the subjective preference, surely there seemed to be correlations between the two, but there seemed to be not enough evidence to say RC6 made things worse objectively speaking (measurements) only because the subjective part clearly showed it made things worse. In the objective part though, despite the lower response between 20-40 Hz (that's inexplicable), RC6 actually may have flatter response overall from 20 to 300 Hz. If that is Audyssey (don't know for sure), that dip would not be a hard fix for me, with the help of REW, after that, I would turn on Audyssey bypass for the L/R and call it a day. This reminds me of this, if instead of comparing RCs, we do the same experiment with some tube amps that are known to sound so-called "warm" and some high end SS amps. Then if most participants prefer one of the tube amp citing that it is most neutral and uncolored, are we going to conclude that the tube amp works better objectively speaking just because the test was done double blinded? I don't think so.

I also believe all 5 RCs probably have improved since that experiment, so I hope Dr. Olive will repeat the same experiment using the latest versions in the near future.

 

[everettT]

Fwiw I've never had good results with audyssey. Even DCAC on my cheap sony receiver does a better job.

Sent from my SM-G360T1 using Tapatalk

You should probably clarify which version of audyessey your using. IMO the results can be dramaticly different between the flavors.

 

[rnatalli]

Having heard and used them all, ARC performs pretty consistently and is easy to use. I've also had good luck XT32 and Dirac.

 

[ATLAudio]

If that is Audyssey (don't know for sure), that dip would not be a hard fix for me, with the help of REW, after that, I would turn on Audyssey bypass for the L/R and call it a day.

I also believe all 5 RCs probably have improved since that experiment, so I hope Dr. Olive will repeat the same experiment using the latest versions in the near future.

Good point, this is why I often suggest to get the AVR/Pre/Integ that you otherwise prefer without regards to the onboard RC, and use REW/MiniDSP with your subs for a final step.

If anyone does an experiment regarding RC I'd not only ask for more recent RC offerings, but also testing in more rooms, not just a custom built studio/cinema grade theatre room. I could be wrong, but I believe some some RC applications improve poor rooms better than others, and some improve good rooms better than others.

Anyways, at the end of the day, Olive did a good job demonstrating that these RC are not all the same. Using a blind or even double blind approach are tools to account for and eliminate bias. It doesn't allow cart blanche interpretation of the experiment outside the scope of it's well stated purpose, nor does it make the experiment above any level of criticism.