Denon/Marantz vs Yamaha vs Anthem Thread

[Ken32]

I don’t trust myself.

Remember, some audio experts believe that we should not EQ anything above 200Hz.

However, I think if you can get your system to sound better with EQ above 200Hz (manual or auto), then that’s great. The end game is to HEAR better sound whether we can SEE the REW graphs or not.

Audyssey seems to think different it boosted my system way high in upper frequencies. I’ve ran it 3 times with the same results. I’m definitely not a fan of that software.

I’ve got the Onkyo yesterday. It’s setup and I’m going to run the accueq today to see if it does any better.

So far, aside from not running room correction the unit has been great. No issues at all and runs cooler than the Marantz. I’ve got s display i can see now

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

runs cooler than the Marantz.

Onkyo operates cooler than Marantz? I think that's a insult to D/M.

Let us know how AccuEQ sounds. Haven't heard anything good about it.

 

[Ken32]

Onkyo operates cooler than Marantz? I think that's a insult to D/M.

Let us know how AccuEQ sounds. Haven't heard anything good about it.

There’s a forum/thread somewhere that a bunch of people prefer it over Audyssey. I Don’t recall which site. I’d have to look. Anyway, I’ll take the measurements when i get home from my daughters doctor appointment.

 

[Ken32]

Yes, Yamaha does allow you to save your PEQ settings, at least up to 2 different settings. I can't remember if they allow you to save more than 2 settings.

The model Onkyo I have allows 3 different saves. Not sure how they work just yet, just know I’ve seen them in audio settings.

 

[Ken32]

@AcuDefTechGuy

I’ve ran the setup for accueq and i can report it performed much better than Audyssey.

My speakers have that clean and clear sparkle I’ve been looking for. I’ve not begun to tweak anything yet. Not sure if i will. My speaker sound so dang good at this point.

One thing right off the bat, it set my speakers as they sit. It didn’t make me add 7.1.2 like it did with the Denon. I don’t have all them extra speakers.

Another thing I liked about accueq is if i just wanted to do 2 channel listening it only makes you set 3 center positions. Audyssey made me do all 8 positions even with 2 speakers setup at the time.

I’m going to do some further tweaking to see different outcomes. So far it’s great and I’ve got no complaints. Hopefully this unit lasts me 11 years like my previous one which, by the way, still works.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

@AcuDefTechGuy

I’ve ran the setup for accueq and i can report it performed much better than Audyssey.

My speakers have that clean and clear sparkle I’ve been looking for. I’ve not begun to tweak anything yet. Not sure if i will. My speaker sound so dang good at this point.

One thing right off the bat, it set my speakers as they sit. It didn’t make me add 7.1.2 like it did with the Denon. I don’t have all them extra speakers.

Another thing I liked about accueq is if i just wanted to do 2 channel listening it only makes you set 3 center positions. Audyssey made me do all 8 positions even with 2 speakers setup at the time.

I’m going to do some further tweaking to see different outcomes. So far it’s great and I’ve got no complaints. Hopefully this unit lasts me 11 years like my previous one which, by the way, still works.

I wonder what the EQ setting is with AccuEQ.

 

[Ken32]

I wonder what the EQ setting is with AccuEQ.

I wonder what the EQ setting is with AccuEQ.

I'm getting ready to dig in and find out.

Another thing i really like is that I've been running it for the last 2.5 hours for music at moderate-loud levels and it's cool to the touch. I cannot find a warm spot on this unit! Looking at the fan and heat sink setup in it, no wonder. This thing is a brute. Definitely well crafted.

 

[Ken32]

@AcuDefTechGuy

It set my towers to Full Band. It left my bass alone and took away a bit of mid-range and boosted my treble about 10% out of 100. Just a hair and much much less than what Audyssey attempted.

It put my distance at 10.2 feet per speaker which measuring by tape is spot on.

it adjusted my left speaker -3.5db and my right one -4.5db. When I turned my SPL meter on and listened to the level calibration it showed 64DB on both speakers perfectly. Neither side moved up or down and remained steady.

I'm thinking about redoing my AEQ tomorrow and seeing if it makes any major or minor adjustments, if any at all.

However; even though it managed my speakers and room better, I still prefer MANUAL EQ over anything else.
I'm dialing it in to taste and having great results thus far.

It did a much better job at calibrating than Audyssey ever thought about. Guess it just must be my room? I don't know.

 

[sakete]

So with Yamaha, is YPAO volume essentially the same as Audyssey Dynamic EQ? From the description it appears that way.

And say I were to do an initial YPAO calibration, and then manually tweak the results with the PEQ (to for example only have tweaks below 200hz and the rest is unaffected) , will all that still dynamically change with YPAO volume enabled?

Also, in the Yamaha CX-A5100 review by Gene, there is this paragraph:

In one of our previous segments, we did an in-depth overview of various room correction systems and noted that many well-known systems just don't have enough power to handle some high-resolution audio format and will down-sample all high-resolution files to 48kHz. Contrary to most competitor Room EQ systems, YPAO works up to 192 kHz even in their lowest end Aventage AV receiver. Only some of the expensive, higher end systems (like Anthem’s ARC in their high end units) are able to process lossless audio files at higher sampling rates files. But even then, processing would still be limited to 96 kHz. However, it should be noted, that Anthem ARC does very effective room calibration at bass frequencies which is something YPAO hasn't been able to do to date from our prior testing.

Is what I highlighted in bold true? So if I were to get an A1070, or A2070, I would be able to play back hi-res music and still make use of YPAO room correction and YPAO volume?

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

So with Yamaha, is YPAO volume essentially the same as Audyssey Dynamic EQ? From the description it appears that way.

And say I were to do an initial YPAO calibration, and then manually tweak the results with the PEQ (to for example only have tweaks below 200hz and the rest is unaffected) , will all that still dynamically change with YPAO volume enabled?

I think YPAO VOLUME is similar to Audyssey VOLUME, not Dynamic EQ.

This means VOLUME only affects the Volume, not the Frequency Response CURVE.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

I'm getting ready to dig in and find out.

Another thing i really like is that I've been running it for the last 2.5 hours for music at moderate-loud levels and it's cool to the touch. I cannot find a warm spot on this unit! Looking at the fan and heat sink setup in it, no wonder. This thing is a brute. Definitely well crafted.

Wow. Cool to touch is very different that what most people have experience with Onkyo. So perhaps they LISTENED and made GOOD changes.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

It left my bass alone and took away a bit of mid-range and boosted my treble about 10% out of 100. Just a hair and much much less than what Audyssey attempted.

Which Frequencies did they change?

What kind of EQ does it have?

The same GRAPHIC EQ in the Marantz?

Or something even more BASIC (like tones) than the Graphic EQ in the Marantz?

 

[PENG]

Onkyo operates cooler than Marantz? I think that's a insult to D/M.

Let us know how AccuEQ sounds. Haven't heard anything good about it.

Let me remind people, that for class AB amps, "cooler" has a lot of do with the bias, not only heat sinks and enclosure design. Sometimes it's a matter of choosing between better efficiency/cooler vs lower distortions/warmer. I don't have an opinion on which is better, but I prefer lower distortions because I can provide external cooling to help the heat issue, but can't do anything about distortions.

As to which auto EQ is better, Onkyo, D&M, Anthem, NAD, all I can say and repeat is that it is highly dependent on the user, i.e. how he/she does it, and more so his/her personal taste/preference that is mostly a subjective thing. Subjective impression of "better" or "worse" means little to me, that's just me.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Let me remind people, that for class AB amps, "cooler" has a lot of do with the bias, not only heat sinks and enclosure design. Sometimes it's a matter of choosing between better efficiency/cooler vs lower distortions/warmer. I don't have an opinion on which is better, but I prefer lower distortions because I can provide external cooling to help the heat issue, but can't do anything about distortions.

As to which auto EQ is better, Onkyo, D&M, Anthem, NAD, all I can say and repeat is that it is highly dependent on the user, i.e. how he/she does it, and more so his/her personal taste/preference that is mostly a subjective thing. Subjective impression of "better" or "worse" means little to me, that's just me.

Can they measure this distortion that's related to the lower temperature bias?

For all these Auto Room EQ, we've seen good FR graphs from Audyssey, ARC, Dirac. Probably Trinnov. Definitely the very high-end Harmon.

YPAO + PEQ is also capable of producing excellent FR graphs. Gene would NOT tolerate anything less than state of the art performance, as we all know.

But do we know of any good graphs for AccuEQ or other Auto Room EQ?

 

[PENG]

@AcuDefTechGuy

It set my towers to Full Band. It left my bass alone and took away a bit of mid-range and boosted my treble about 10% out of 100. Just a hair and much much less than what Audyssey attempted.

It put my distance at 10.2 feet per speaker which measuring by tape is spot on.

it adjusted my left speaker -3.5db and my right one -4.5db. When I turned my SPL meter on and listened to the level calibration it showed 64DB on both speakers perfectly. Neither side moved up or down and remained steady.

I'm thinking about redoing my AEQ tomorrow and seeing if it makes any major or minor adjustments, if any at all.

However; even though it managed my speakers and room better, I still prefer MANUAL EQ over anything else.
I'm dialing it in to taste and having great results thus far.

It did a much better job at calibrating than Audyssey ever thought about. Guess it just must be my room? I don't know.

Seems like you have some misconceptions about such EQ systems, examples: less position is not "better" factually speaking, but is to you obviously, full band is more likely not as good as "small" if you have subwoofer(s), but again, I understand it is to you, spl meter is not necessarily more "accurate" than the auto setup results, and whether you prefer one system over the other, or manual adjustments is highly subjective therefore "better" is, also only factual to the individual user if determined by ears.

 

[PENG]

Can they measure this distortion that's related to the lower temperature bias?

For all these Auto Room EQ, we've seen good FR graphs from Audyssey, ARC, Dirac. Probably Trinnov. Definitely the very high-end Harmon.

YPAO + PEQ is also capable of producing excellent FR graphs. Gene would NOT tolerate anything less than state of the art performance, as we all know.

But do we know of any good graphs for AccuEQ or other Auto Room EQ?

Absolutely measurable by someone like Gene, but the effects of crossover distortions may not be revealed fully if measured at higher output level. Ideally you want to see the THD+N curve extends to well below 0.1 Watt. At my listening spl, my amps spend a lot of time in the 0.01 to 0.05 Watt range.

I have no concerns about Yamaha and Onkyo's mid range AVRs that are based on class AB amps. Some of the newer Onkyo/Pioneer AVRs are class D right? If so, they should run cool so what I say about distortions and bias don't apply.

 

[sakete]

I think YPAO VOLUME is similar to Audyssey VOLUME, not Dynamic EQ.

This means VOLUME only affects the Volume, not the Frequency Response CURVE.

In the manual I see this:

Isn't that the same as Audyssey Dynamic EQ?

 

[sakete]

So in Gene's review of the CX-A5100, he states the following:

In one of our previous segments, we did an in-depth overview of various room correction systems and noted that many well-known systems just don't have enough power to handle some high-resolution audio format and will down-sample all high-resolution files to 48kHz. Contrary to most competitor Room EQ systems, YPAO works up to 192 kHz even in their lowest end Aventage AV receiver. Only some of the expensive, higher end systems (like Anthem’s ARC in their high end units) are able to process lossless audio files at higher sampling rates files. But even then, processing would still be limited to 96 kHz. However, it should be noted, that Anthem ARC does very effective room calibration at bass frequencies which is something YPAO hasn't been able to do to date from our prior testing.

Can anyone else confirm if that's true? Will playing back high sample rate files up to 192khz with YPAO enabled not downsample the file to 48khz on the whole Aventage line?

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

In the manual I see this:

View attachment 30207

Isn't that the same as Audyssey Dynamic EQ?

Oh, you have a good point there.

Yeah, that sounds just like Dynamic EQ, which boosts mainly the low frequency and little of the high frequency.

So when you apply YPAO Volume, it should boost the bass (probably 30Hz-90Hz) and also the treble (probably above 15kHz).

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

in Gene's review of the CX-A5100, he states the following:
Contrary to most competitor Room EQ systems, YPAO works up to 192 kHz even in their lowest end Aventage AV receiver.

Can anyone else confirm if that's true?

You're concerned that the 192kHz-YPAO might only apply to the CX-A5100 and not the lower end Yamaha models?