Audyssey, Dirac etc., use DSPs, they are digital filters. The manually adjustable parametric equalizers are also digital filters.
Actually the correct way to think about Q is damping, and that is what it is all about. When thinking about resonance you have to consider how long it is sustained.
Now low Q means damping is high and high Q means is it low.
Take a pendulum swinging on a very high grade low friction bearing. It will swing for a long time. This is high Q.
Now put the pendulum in an oil bath. It will stop swinging quickly. That is low Q.
A snappy sports car with a tight suspension has a low Q suspension. An old family saloon with shot shock adsorbers has a high Q suspension
Now if you grasp this you can understand why I highly dislike high Q speakers, and gravitate to low Q ones, and go to enormous trouble and effort to design them.
Equalizers use R/C resonant circuits in the main. This is my beef with them, as they have to be used very sparingly if at all as they use resonant circuits to carry out their frequency shaping. So they are real quality spoilers, especially when used aggressively.
I'm pretty sure this also applies to programs like Audyssey. Engaging it really spoils the quality of my rig big time. Billy Woodman if ATC has long harped at the fools gold of equalization unless done with extreme subtlety. That is why you can't turn a bad speakers into a good one with equalization.
I'm pretty sure this also applies to programs like Audyssey. Engaging it really spoils the quality of my rig big time. Billy Woodman if ATC has long harped at the fools gold of equalization unless done with extreme subtlety. That is why you can't turn a bad speakers into a good one with equalization.
Audyssey, Dirac etc., use DSPs, they are digital... The manually adjustable parametric equalizers are also digital filters so your remarks about the R/C resonant circuits don't really apply.
Below is an explanation by the Audyssey lab, that's about 8 years ago.
You keep making blanket style negative comments about Audyssey and Room EQ software in general, apparently based on your own experience with your equipment/room using the older version (XT). There are much more capable version Audyssey XT32, Dirac Live, Anthem ARC, Trinnov, RoomPerfect and others that a lot of people found effective and in some cases, have facts on their side.
https://audyssey.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/212347763-MultEQ-vs-other-equalization-methods-
- There are two fundamental differences from every other method available in AV receivers today. The first is that MultEQ is not based on parametric equalization. Parametric equalization relies on a few bands that are centered at certain frequencies. These bands do not provide sufficient resolution to address many room acoustical problems. Also, parametric bands tend to interact so that changes at one frequency have undesirable results at nearby frequencies. Moreover, parametric equalization methods use a particular type of digital filter called Infinite Impulse Response (IIR) that only attempts to correct the magnitude response in the frequency domain. These filters can cause unwanted effects, such as ringing or smearing, in the time domain particularly as the bands get narrower. MultEQ uses Finite Impulse Response (FIR) filters for equalization that use several hundred coefficients to achieve much higher resolution in the frequency domain than parametric bands. Furthermore, by their nature, FIR filters simultaneously provide correction in the frequency and time domains. FIR filters had been considered to require too many computational resources. But Audyssey solved this problem by using a special frequency scale that allocates more power to the lower frequencies where it is needed the most.
The second major difference is that MultEQ combines multiple measurements to create equalization filters that better represent the acoustical problems in the room. Most other methods only perform a single point measurement and this can result in making other locations in the room sound worse than before equalization. There are some methods that use spatial averaging to combine multiple room measurements. Although this is a step above single-point correction, it does not provide optimum correction when discussing spatial averaging. For example, it is common to find a peak at a certain frequency in one location and a dip at the same frequency at another nearby location. The averaging methods will add the peak and the dip and this will result in an apparent flat response at that frequency, thus causing the equalization filter to take no action. MultEQ uses a clustering method to combine measurements so that acoustical problems are better represented, thus allowing the equalization filter to perform the appropriate correction at each location.
