Audyssey XT results.

[yepimonfire]

Looks like the flat setting is more appropriate for my room due to the fact my speakers have fairly constant directivity (therefore the off axis reflections aren’t rolled off like would be with dome tweeters) and my room is moderately treated. The high end is still just a tiny bit down compared to the direct measurements, but it’s likely not that noticeable. The subwoofer results are excellent. Nothing can be done about that narrow 80hz notch, it’s simply due to my listening position.”, and in reality, isn’t audible with real content. Crossovers seemed to be set appropriately. It set my front three to 40hz, I’m not sure if it actually measured a 40hz rollof, or if the receivers lack of a 50hz step between 40 and 60hz defaulted it to 40hz. I’ve usually measured a 47hz f3 for the l/r and a 50hz f3 for the center. Might set the to large and see what the measurements read with Audyssey enabled.

Suggestions, comments, or complaints welcomed.

Listening tests in progress...


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[yepimonfire]

Music test:

Been listening to some AC/DC for an hour or so.

I did have to change the distance settings a bit, I must not have perfectly centered the mic, I know for a fact my speakers are all exactly centered, within fractions of an inch. It originally measured the right side being about .2 ft farther, I have I the benefit of the doubt initially, but definitely heard an image shift sitting in the money seat. I changed the distance settings up and down one notch respectively to match. Also did some modification to the level settings by ear, lowered the left right, Surround, and height 1-1.5dB each. They always sound slightly louder despite not measuring louder for some odd reason. Sounds pretty balanced now.

Listening first in stereo, then switching to 5.1.2 via DSU, the first thing that really stuck out to me is an exact timbre match across all 7 speakers. My speakers aren’t really mismatched terrible per day, but my heights are from the Klipsch Reference II series, and surrounds from the “cheap” reference series (r-15m). While all speakers do have a similar Klipsch voicing, the front three are near studio monitor flat, extremely neutral and revealing, while the rb-10s up top are a bit brighter sounding, and the R-15ms just sound “different” since they use an injection molded graphite woofer and aluminum diaphragm vs cerametallic woofers and a titanium tweeter. I’d also say 99% of the time, an mtm center paired with a TM bookshelf or floor speaker, is never going to sound 100% identical to the l/r. With Audyssey flat, all speakers blend seamlessly and perfect. I quite like it .

The timbre is slightly different from the direct setting, however, I almost prefer the Audyssey flats timbre to the uncorrected. There’s almost a better “focus” and the soundstage is noticeably more coherent. The benefits of Time domain correction are clearly apparent.

Bass sound perfect.

Overall, I think I will keep Audyssey flat on for now. I might actually utilize the reference setting on some movies since films that haven’t been remixed for bluray using a “near field “ mixing technique are too bright due to the xcurve calibration for a large sub stage or cinema. Overall I’m highly satisfied.

I do wish the app didn’t have so many issues. The most annoying issue with it is that it always rolls my sub off at 30hz. Modification of the target curve doesn’t fix it either. It seems the act correctly recognizes the 23hz f3 of my sub.

Also remeasured the fronts, and I was correct, they roll off at 47hz and 55hz respectively, and so I have set the xover to 60hz




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[KEW]

I do wish the app didn’t have so many issues. The most annoying issue with it is that it always rolls my sub off at 30hz. Modification of the target curve doesn’t fix it either. It seems the act correctly recognizes the 23hz f3 of my sub.

Also remeasured the fronts, and I was correct, they roll off at 47hz and 55hz respectively, and so I have set the xover to 60hz

So, did all of the above measurements incorporate the app?

FYI @Pogre , (in case he might not check this thread)

"By the book", you should not use AVR to crossover a speaker at 60Hz that naturally rolls off at 55Hz, because the AVR should do a very good job of managing the XO, so the mains hand the signal to the subs while maintaining a smooth FR. If you add in the natural roll-off of the speaker in the frequency range of this hand-off, it will result in a dip in the 50-45Hz range.

In the graph below that would result in a steeper roll-off of the mains while they are still contributing to the overall FR:

If you look at SVS's Merlin tool, you would see that they suggest the XO using an AVR be set roughly 20Hz above where the mains roll-off.

All of that said, if 60Hz roll-off sounds best to you, that is what matters most!

 

[yepimonfire]

So, did all of the above measurements incorporate the app?

FYI @Pogre , (in case he might not check this thread)

By the book, you should not crossover a speaker that naturally rolls off at 55Hz at 60Hz because the AVR should do a very good job of managing the XO, so the mains hand the signal to the subs while maintaining a smooth FR. If you add in the natural roll-off of the speaker in the frequency range of this hand-off, it will result in a dip in the 50-45Hz range.

In the graph below that would result in a steeper roll-off of the mains while they are still contributing to the overall FR:

If you look at SVS's Merlin tool, you would see that they suggest the XO using an AVR be set roughly 20Hz above where the mains roll-off.

All of that said, if 60Hz roll-off sounds best to you, that is what matters most!

A 60hz xover has always sounded great to me, as it measured flatter, my fronts have very good midbass reproduction, even at stupidly high spl, and sound better than the sub, even with Audyssey enabled. I’m not worried about distortion or stressing my mains at such a low xover either. My front left and right are capable of 100dB @50hz in my mlp 11’ away with 3.6% THD. My center is capable of 104dB @50hz with 2.8% THD. at 80hz, THD is 1.6%.

My subwoofer is incapable of exceeding 105dB at any frequency between 30hz and 50hz without exceeding xmax and whacking the pole piece, at a volume of -10dB on the avr, that means my front l/r have 5dB of headroom in the bass, and my center has 9dB. I did read pogres thread, I’ve had much better results with the avr vs the app sadly. Originally, I wanted to use the app to disable correction above 300hz, but this experience has shown me that wideband correction actually sounds better to me, and IIRC the midrange compensation is disable on the flat setting, that was another issue I was worried about, since it assumes a 2khz xover, and my fronts are crossed over at 1.5khz, surrounds at 1.8khz, and there is no directivity mismatch, seeing they are a constant directivity design.


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[PENG]

It's a long post so I have take the time to read the whole thing carefully. For now, I do want to say this first, if it is not too late, you may want to bite the bullet and exchange it for the X3300W. That's because just a quick glance on your graphs I got the feeling that the X3300W can do more good for you, something who seem to enjoy playing around with gadgets and plot graphs etc. It won't get rid of that huge dip at 80 Hz but it may get it a little closer, especially if you can get the Editor to work (Pogre couldn't, still waiting for fix from Marantz).

If you are definitely sticking with this entry level unit, please spend $20 to try out the Editor App. If it doesn't work, you can complain to Denon and may get a refund, if it works then you will have fun fine tuning things. I believe @Pogre was offered a refund (from Marantz?), or something like that.. It may just work on the Denon, you never know unless you try.

 

[yepimonfire]

It's a long post so I have take the time to read the whole thing carefully. For now, I do want to say this first, if it is not too late, you may want to bite the bullet and exchange it for the X3300W. That's because just a quick glance on your graphs I got the feeling that the X3300W can do more good for you, something who seem to enjoy playing around with gadgets and plot graphs etc. It won't get rid of that huge dip at 80 Hz but it may get it a little closer, especially if you can get the Editor to work (Pogre couldn't, still waiting for fix from Marantz).

If you are definitely sticking with this entry level unit, please spend $20 to try out the Editor App. If it doesn't work, you can complain to Denon and may get a refund, if it works then you will have fun fine tuning things. I believe @Pogre was offered a refund (from Marantz?), or something like that.. It may just work on the Denon, you never know unless you try.

My experience with the app has been rather lousy.

In the future I’d like to upgrade, but I just spent $350 on Klipsch rp-160ms, so I’m done for now. Power wise, I have plenty with the x1300w. No clipping with ACD @110dB combined.

If I’m going to upgrade, I’d rather get something to do 11ch of atmos processing, and that increases cost, so for now, I’m gonna stick with the x1300w.


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[KEW]

I do wish the app didn’t have so many issues. The most annoying issue with it is that it always rolls my sub off at 30hz. Modification of the target curve doesn’t fix it either. It seems the act correctly recognizes the 23hz f3 of my sub.

When you say "app", are you referring to Audyssey XT or are you talking about the Editor App?
I think I misunderstood!

 

[Pogre]

It's a long post so I have take the time to read the whole thing carefully. For now, I do want to say this first, if it is not too late, you may want to bite the bullet and exchange it for the X3300W. That's because just a quick glance on your graphs I got the feeling that the X3300W can do more good for you, something who seem to enjoy playing around with gadgets and plot graphs etc. It won't get rid of that huge dip at 80 Hz but it may get it a little closer, especially if you can get the Editor to work (Pogre couldn't, still waiting for fix from Marantz).

If you are definitely sticking with this entry level unit, please spend $20 to try out the Editor App. If it doesn't work, you can complain to Denon and may get a refund, if it works then you will have fun fine tuning things. I believe @Pogre was offered a refund (from Marantz?), or something like that.. It may just work on the Denon, you never know unless you try.

I never got it to work correctly, but they did refund my card when I determined it wasn't going to work for me. I was pretty disappointed as well.

I think a step up to XT32 might yield some better results. Or you could just get a miniDSP.

 

[yepimonfire]

When you say "app", are you referring to Audyssey XT or are you talking about the Editor App?
I think I misunderstood!

The multeq editor app. I don’t think xt32 will get rid of the 80hz dip, as it’s related to the seating position. Below the transition frequency, no matter where you sit you are going to experience a null at 1/4 and 3/4 wavelengths of the frequency in question. It just so happens that 10.5’ is exactly 3/4 wavelengths of 80hz. If I moved the listening position forward to 8.5’, I would just shift the null to 100hz, if I moved back to 15.5’, I’d get a null at 65hz. Only way to completely avoid this problem (outside of massive amounts of bass trapping) is to sit so close to the wall that you push the 1/4 wavelength distance above the transition frequency, but then you get to deal with nasties such as massive peaks at the two 1st room modes and major mid/high frequency comb filtering and imaging distortion from loud rear wall reflections.

Normally sitting at 10.5’ in a 20’ room would cause a massive null at the 1st room mode along the length of the room (28hz), however, my room opens to two split level stair cases, and 28hz is a much larger wave that easily diffracts around those openings completely preventing that. My roommate living in the bedroom downstairs has often commented that it’s like living inside the barrel of a bass cannon during movies, since there is an overwhelming amount of sub 30hz sound that reaches downstairs, and not much else

My assumption is that 80hz, being much shorter, still has a strong enough reflection from the rest of the rear wall that isn’t open to cause an issue.

On the subject of low frequency diffraction, interestingly enough, at one point in time my left Surround was about 6” from the open kitchen doorway. When measured, the left Surround always had a steep drop off below 80hz, while the right Surround, which was placed near a continuous room boundary, reached all the way down to 50, where it should have. My guess is the opening was close enough to the port and speaker to allow an almost complete diffraction of sub 80hz wavelengths into the kitchen.


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[PENG]

I don’t think xt32 will get rid of the 80hz dip,

It is obvious that nothing can eliminate such a huge dip.

 

[yepimonfire]

Regarding a bit of testing on using reference vs flat for movies, I’ve noticed the HF rolloff begins at 4khz, eventually reaching -6dB at 20khz, as well as that lousy midrange compensation.

Denon has a “cinema eq” setting, similar to thx re-eq. I decided to enable it and take some measurements. It appears to start at about 1khz, being 1.5dB down at 2khz, falling an additional 1.5dB per octave. This is much more appropriate, following the Dolby “modified” xcurve used in small rooms, which is exactly the same curve an engineer would eq a “near-field” dub stage for (used when remixing theatrical releases for Blu-ray). Thx re eq is about 3dB/octave, which is way too steep for a small room.

One question, I moved my surrounds maybe about 6” or less because one was slightly further back than the other, is it necessary to rerun Audyssey if the level/distances are double check and correct?


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