Audyssey MultEQ-X New Mic, Features and Livestream Discussion!

[gene]

Join us for a livestream event this Wednesday at 9pm Eastern to be the first to learn about a new companion accessory to Audyssey’s recently announced MultEQ-X room-correction software. We will be joined by Audyssey’s Jeff Clark, who will offer a deep-dive into the MultEQ-X solution, with an in-depth tutorial of the company’s new app-based room-correction solution. We will also host a short Q&A for fellow Audyssey users at the end of the livestream so get your questions ready and you will be on the path to getting the most from your room correction.

Audyssey just unveiled individually calibrated microphones for use with their new PC based MultEQ-X software. This is a must have for serious calibrators to get the best performance for your room correction system.

Read: Audyssey MultEQ-X Calibrated Mic

 

[TLS Guy]

Join us for a livestream event this Wednesday at 9pm Eastern to be the first to learn about a new companion accessory to Audyssey’s recently announced MultEQ-X room-correction software. We will be joined by Audyssey’s Jeff Clark, who will offer a deep-dive into the MultEQ-X solution, with an in-depth tutorial of the company’s new app-based room-correction solution. We will also host a short Q&A for fellow Audyssey users at the end of the livestream so get your questions ready and you will be on the path to getting the most from your room correction.

View attachment 54615

Audyssey just unveiled individually calibrated microphones for use with their new PC based MultEQ-X software. This is a must have for serious calibrators to get the best performance for your room correction system.

Read: Audyssey MultEQ-X Calibrated Mic

So they are running out of receivers and pre/pros to sell. Gotta keep the cash flow going. I have it! Sell high priced junk plastic microphones and tell people they will reach audio nirvana. What a con. Don't fall for it.

 

[gene]

So they are running out of receivers and pre/pros to sell. Gotta keep the cash flow going. I have it! Sell high priced junk plastic microphones and tell people they will reach audio nirvana. What a con. Don't fall for it.

I dunno, they are opening up their software so you can set your own target curves and do full manual EQ for each channel. Seems like a win to me.

 

[Rosco19]

I had really hoped that Audyssey would open up their MultiEQ-X software to allow the use of third party microphones.

 

[TLS Guy]

So they are running out of receivers and pre/pros to sell. Gotta keep the cash flow going. I have it! Sell high priced junk plastic microphones and tell people they will reach audio nirvana. What a con. Don't fall for it.

I have not known Audyssey show any benefit to any of my three systems. It uniformly degrades performance and not just marginally. Dynamic and volume are particularly
obnoxious. In addition Audyssey significantly degrades S/N.

I have absolutely no interest what ever in target curves. This system sounds like encouragement to invest had cash to downgrade your systems.

 

[Pogre]

I have not known Audyssey show any benefit to any of my three systems. It uniformly degrades performance and not just marginally. Dynamic and volume are particularly
obnoxious. In addition Audyssey significantly degrades S/N.

I have absolutely no interest what ever in target curves. This system sounds like encouragement to invest had cash to downgrade your systems.

Before Audyssey.

After running Audyssey.

Can you honestly say that it made things worse or had no positive effect at all??

 

[Wabbit]

I want to say it's about time, but considering the cost of REW, this is pretty expensive. I feel it needs to bring a lot more to the table for the $200 software ask. If it's worth it, a broader user base from pricing it below $100 would yield a significantly better ROI in my opinion. Further, already having a calibrated mic for REW, I don't want to spend more on another. If I did, it's coming out of the future AVR budget.

 

[Rosco19]

I want to say it's about time, but considering the cost of REW, this is pretty expensive. I feel it needs to bring a lot more to the table for the $200 software ask. If it's worth it, a broader user base from pricing it below $100 would yield a significantly better ROI in my opinion. Further, already having a calibrated mic for REW, I don't want to spend more on another. If I did, it's coming out of the future AVR budget.

Agreed. $280 (software plus calibrated mic) is pricey. Add to that the restrictive licensing agreement (non-transferable). Audyssey really needs to find a solution to that.
I want to get excited about this, but I’m already getting good results with xt32 and the MultiEq app.

 

[Pogre]

Agreed. $280 (software plus calibrated mic) is pricey. Add to that the restrictive licensing agreement (non-transferable). Audyssey really needs to find a solution to that.
I want to get excited about this, but I’m already getting good results with xt32 and the MultiEq app.

I do have to say I agree with this. I'm already getting good results and have quite a bit of control over my fr right now with XT32 and the app. $200+ does not make it very attractive to me.

 

[GalZohar]

I dunno, they are opening up their software so you can set your own target curves and do full manual EQ for each channel. Seems like a win to me.

I don't think I would call this "full manual EQ". The "manual EQ" is really just a pretty interface for modifying the target curve, which you can already do with the 20$ phone app (although I'd agree the interface is crap). The things you can do with Multeq-X and can't do with the 20$ phone app are very specific that it doesn't feel right to pay 200$ for them.

And I agree that buying another calibrated mic to replace the not-so-calibrated mic that comes with the receiver is messed up when we already need to buy a calibrated mics to make other tweaks. Also there is absolutely no information about how much better is the calibration of this mic compared to the one that comes with the AVR, so there is no real way to know what kind of improvement will be obtained. So I think calling this a "must have" isn't the right thing to do until the benefits are measured.


The only thing that can go in their defense is that receivers with Audyssey are much cheaper than the competition with Arc/Dirac, and at least according to reviews on ASR they actually perform better...

 

[TLS Guy]

Before Audyssey.

View attachment 54619

After running Audyssey.

View attachment 54620

Can you honestly say that it made things worse or had no positive effect at all??

The question I have to ask, is does it make any difference, or make it worse? So you have five significant room nulls below 200 Hz. All are pretty low Q, and in that frequency range probably not audible. However to cancel them, you are adding a lot of boost, and really stressing drivers, and amps. There is a widespread school of thought that you should NOT aggressively treat nulls like that, only shave peaks.

I guess if that is truly accurate, why do you have so many nulls? I really don't have nulls like that in any of my three rooms.

However it is in the sensitive mid band that I have issues with Audyssey, and also on the high end. From that nasty cheap plastic mic, powered from the same wires as the signal, totally contrary to accepted practice, it concocts curves that I know to be pure fiction. Then applies correction to produce a nice curve that does not sound anything like reality. In addition it corrects for the falling HF response of the reflected secondary signals. That probably contributes to the significant degradation of the S/N ratio. With Audyssey engaged I hear hiss in all my systems at the listening position, whereas without it, the systems are silent at the listening position.

There is a lot of fanciful and bogus concepts involving this program. At the end of the day, it sounds bad.

 

[Pogre]

The question I have to ask, is does it make any difference, or make it worse? So you have five significant room nulls below 200 Hz. All are pretty low Q, and in that frequency range probably not audible. However to cancel them, you are adding a lot of boost, and really stressing drivers, and amps. There is a widespread school of thought that you should NOT aggressively treat nulls like that, only shave peaks.

I guess if that is truly accurate, why do you have so many nulls? I really don't have nulls like that in any of my three rooms.

However it is in the sensitive mid band that I have issues with Audyssey, and also on the high end. From that nasty cheap plastic mic, powered from the same wires as the signal, totally contrary to accepted practice, it concocts curves that I know to be pure fiction. Then applies correction to produce a nice curve that does not sound anything like reality. In addition it corrects for the falling HF response of the reflected secondary signals. That probably contributes to the significant degradation of the S/N ratio. With Audyssey engaged I hear hiss in all my systems at the listening position, whereas without it, the systems are silent at the listening position.

There is a lot of fanciful and bogus concepts involving this program. At the end of the day, it sounds bad.

Why do I have nulls..? Well I would say my room sucks. I have no control over that outside of trying different placement, which I did, and it just so happens that right up front by my speakers is about as good as it gets.

I have a huge space, well over 5000³' and openings to other areas. It doesn't help that my main seating is more or less in the middle of the room. I can't do anything about that either, unless I move mlp all the way out into my dining room. If you have some advice I'm more than open to it tho. This is what my room layout looks like...

Also, it's not just boosting nulls. It's cutting peaks moreso as well as making phase adjustments, and when the peaks are cut down those nulls don't look nearly as bad.

 

[TLS Guy]

Why do I have nulls..? Well I would say my room sucks. I have no control over that outside of trying different placement, which I did, and it just so happens that right up front by my speakers is about as good as it gets.

I have a huge space, well over 5000³' and openings to other areas. It doesn't help that my main seating is more or less in the middle of the room. I can't do anything about that either, unless I move mlp all the way out into my dining room. If you have some advice I'm more than open to it tho. This is what my room layout looks like...

View attachment 54628

Also, it's not just boosting nulls. It's cutting peaks moreso as well as making phase adjustments, and when the peaks are cut down those nulls don't look nearly as bad.

I agree, that room is a bit of a horror show. You really do not have a better placement for those speakers. It just goes to confirm that few homes are audio friendly.

 

[Pogre]

I agree, that room is a bit of a horror show. You really do not have a better placement for those speakers. It just goes to confirm that few homes are audio friendly.

You know, I wasn't nearly as into this hobby when we bought our house and didn't even have hifi on my radar. If I were to do it over I would definitely take room size and dimensions into consideration.

I have off and on considered maybe putting a door in the entry to my den. Eliminating that big chamber off to the side would definitely change things.

 

[gene]

I don't think I would call this "full manual EQ". The "manual EQ" is really just a pretty interface for modifying the target curve, which you can already do with the 20$ phone app (although I'd agree the interface is crap). The things you can do with Multeq-X and can't do with the 20$ phone app are very specific that it doesn't feel right to pay 200$ for them.

And I agree that buying another calibrated mic to replace the not-so-calibrated mic that comes with the receiver is messed up when we already need to buy a calibrated mics to make other tweaks. Also there is absolutely no information about how much better is the calibration of this mic compared to the one that comes with the AVR, so there is no real way to know what kind of improvement will be obtained. So I think calling this a "must have" isn't the right thing to do until the benefits are measured.


The only thing that can go in their defense is that receivers with Audyssey are much cheaper than the competition with Arc/Dirac, and at least according to reviews on ASR they actually perform better...

The fact that you can design filters manually now is a big deal to me. The phone App was very difficult to use. I will soon be testing MultEQ-X on my Perlisten speaker system to see if it "improves" the sound of this system. What I most need help with is below 300Hz and confident this software can help.

 

[GalZohar]

B

The fact that you can design filters manually now is a big deal to me. The phone App was very difficult to use. I will soon be testing MultEQ-X on my Perlisten speaker system to see if it "improves" the sound of this system. What I most need help with is below 300Hz and confident this software can help.

But unless you try the full manual eq approach, seems like this is mostly just an easier to use interface to existing functionality.
The control over measurements is nice for someone who calibrates all day, but for the rest probably not worth the 200$ and you just run the straight forward calibration. Especially for limited frequency correction which is less sensitive to small variations in mic position.
Nicer interface for target curve is great (and other calibration software include this basic feature out of the box), but for 200$ I'd rather just be editing the curve with a text editor for creating the final curve(s) accurately.

The only thing I think I can't really work around is the more "correct" bass management, which is a shame to need to pay 200$ instead of it being the default behavior or at least a simple setting in the 20$ app. Of corse, it is unclear what will be the actual improvement for a specific system, and it is difficult to justify paying 200$ just to test this out in a system that already has little speaker-subwoofer cancellation below the crossover after tweaking the subwoofer distance. If you use LFE+Mains then you don't really use this feature anyway. I will definitely want to see the improvement others are getting out of this tweak before considering paying anything for it.

 

[Corrected]

Audyssey is only making very weak claims about the value of using the unit-calibrated microphone vs. the uncalibrated microphone. When he talked about how the microphone was very high quality, he mentioned that the microphone is manufactured with low tolerances; i.e. there is very little variation between units. This all makes me think that the added value of buying a calibrated microphone is presently very low for somebody who already owns one bundled with an AVR.

I personally am not going to buy a calibrated microphone for my X3500h. I am planning to upgrade to a future AVR (X3800h generation) and then I'll consider it. Even then, I'll want to see independent confirmation the calibration makes a significant difference over an uncalibrated microphone.

I am starting to think this offering is likely to be laying the framework for future shrinkflation.

Including a microphone in the box, without a way to get the calibration profile, is incredibly wasteful. It doesn't make sense for future AVRs to include a microphone in the box that doesn't have calibration profile available for purchase.

My prediction: Future AVRs will come without a microphone, and users will be expected to use a phone's microphone instead. Enthusiasts will need to buy the calibrated microphone. AVRs will add a way to input the calibrated microphone's serial number so that the AVR can download the profile for that microphone. The ability to plug in a microphone to do room correction will be removed from the lowest-end models (app only). Mid-range and high-end models will support microphones but you'll have to input the serial number of a purchased microphone first. If we're lucky, AVRs will continue to allow the use of old microphones that were bundled with older AVRs, but I suspect that will not be the case going forward.

I'll summarize the microphone aspects of the video in FAQ format:

Q: Is the hardware the same as the hardware that ships with AVRs?
A: Yes. It is "made from a standard ACM1hb microphone supplied to Denon/Marantz."

Q: If I were to use one of these new microphones, without registering the serial number, would it have better, the same, or worse performance, compared to using the (unregistered) microphone that came with my x3700h?
A: Without the unit-specific calibration applied, it is not going to be any more accurate than the microphone included with the AVR (because it's using the default calibration built into the AVR).

Q: How much better performance can we expect to get for buying and registering the microphone, compared to using the uncalibrated microphone that came with our AVR?
A: "If you didn't use the calibration curve you would still get a very good calibration" and using the calibration curve will "just take it that extra extra last little bit." Basically, this is still an unanswered question.

Q: Can I get the calibration data and use it with other software such as REW?
A: It "is ONLY for MultEQ-X...at this time. [...] [T]hat's really just so that our MultiEQ-X users get first shot at the supply of microphones." If they see demand for the microphones for use with other software "I think we'll look for a way to open that up and make it available to people." When answering this, he noted that he thinks the microphone is very high quality for the price and he expects people would find a lot of uses for it.

Q: What is the advantage of plugging the microphone directly into the AVR (vs a computer)?
A: The input and output share a clock so they can be very precise with the timing. Their proprietary "chirp" test tone (a logarithmically swept sine) is optimized for this. It repeats over and over again to cancel background noise, which helps especially at low frequencies. It allows them to differentiate background noise from the speaker's cut-off/roll-off more accurately.

Q: Does my AVR have a calibration curve based on measurements of the supplied microphone, or does it just use a standard calibration curve?
A: Not answered. Reading between the lines, the AVR has a default calibration that isn't tuned to the specific microphone included.

 

[TLS Guy]

The fact that you can design filters manually now is a big deal to me. The phone App was very difficult to use. I will soon be testing MultEQ-X on my Perlisten speaker system to see if it "improves" the sound of this system. What I most need help with is below 300Hz and confident this software can help.

So, there is trouble below the transition frequency. In a high powered speaker like that with a lot of power below 600 Hz, there will be room dependent problems.

Eq, very likely will help this.

However, I think Perlisten made a huge error of judgement not to make this speaker active, at least partially. When you design and build a potent speaker like that, it is going to be very room/position sensitive. If it were active, then the output below transition could have been made easily variable. That is why my front three have continuously variable baffle step compensation. My rears allow considerable trimming of BSC, and the surrounds have two choices of where the transition starts. These are the smallest of the seven main speakers, not including the ceiling speakers.

The active control settings of the front three speakers and the rear backs, are very different between my old room in Benedict and the one here in Eagan. The design made transferring the speakers between the two locations a simple endeavor under instrument control.

The other issue is the Perlistens are still a resonant design. In a speaker with prodigious power in the last two octaves having non resonant aperiodic bass alignment is a huge advantage. Unfortunately since the death of John Wright of TDL, less people have had the opportunity to experience it than heretofore.

I started design work on my front three early 2000s, after George Augspurger published his TL model. Modelling software created by George can be downloaded from my website and is available to all. Quite a few DIYers have now downloaded it. It really is a pity no one has used this model to offer commercial offerings.

I think in a state of the art speaker, the deign should now be fully active. I did not make my high pass crossover to the tweeters active, because at that time I could not justify power amps to drive tweeters. However, if I were designing it now, with what is available I would have done an entirely active design.

The other issue I have with Perlisten's design is having crossovers right in the most sensitive part of the speech discrimination band. Don't get me wrong, the crossovers are very good, but not perfect, as there is no perfect solution. You can see the imperfections in the data you published. Unfortunately experience has taught me that the ear is just devilishly sensitive to phase and level aberrations in this region. I have a personal rule of no crossovers from 800 Hz to 2.5 KHz, and if possible, not between 500 Hz and 4 KHz. Unfortunately that really restricts your selection of eligible drivers.

 

[lovinthehd]

So, there is trouble below the transition frequency. In a high powered speaker like that with a lot of power below 600 Hz, there will be room dependent problems.

Eq, very likely will help this.

However, I think Perlisten made a huge error of judgement not to make this speaker active, at least partially. When you design and build a potent speaker like that, it is going to be very room/position sensitive. If it were active, then the output below transition could have been made easily variable. That is why my front three have continuously variable baffle step compensation. My rears allow considerable trimming of BSC, and the surrounds have two choices of where the transition starts. These are the smallest of the seven main speakers, not including the ceiling speakers.

The active control settings of the front three speakers and the rear backs, are very different between my old room in Benedict and the one here in Eagan. The design made transferring the speakers between the two locations a simple endeavor under instrument control.

The other issue is the Perlistens are still a resonant design. In a speaker with prodigious power in the last two octaves having non resonant aperiodic bass alignment is a huge advantage. Unfortunately since the death of John Wright of TDL, less people have had the opportunity to experience it than heretofore.

I started design work on my front three early 2000s, after George Augspurger published his TL model. Modelling software created by George can be downloaded from my website and is available to all. Quite a few DIYers have now downloaded it. It really is a pity no one has used this model to offer commercial offerings.

I think in a state of the art speaker, the deign should now be fully active. I did not make my high pass crossover to the tweeters active, because at that time I could not justify power amps to drive tweeters. However, if I were designing it now, with what is available I would have done an entirely active design.

The other issue I have with Perlisten's design is having crossovers right in the most sensitive part of the speech discrimination band. Don't get me wrong, the crossovers are very good, but not perfect, as there is no perfect solution. You can see the imperfections in the data you published. Unfortunately experience has taught me that the ear is just devilishly sensitive to phase and level aberrations in this region. I have a personal rule of no crossovers from 800 Hz to 2.5 KHz, and if possible, not between 500 Hz and 4 KHz. Unfortunately that really restricts your selection of eligible drivers.

Then again many of us think you shortchange correction just based on your taste in content. Naming your locations by city name is so weirdly english. You may have some design chops within your own restricted rooms, but outside of that hard to swallow in many instances. If you had been a wildly successful speaker designer perhaps, but as a cranky doctor with poor patient manners, hard to believe. I still remember someone who followed your lead and thought the speakers were only worth selling rather than keeping. Your musical tastes are also somewhat strange. YMMV. You are definitely knowledgeable in some areas, but in general taste perhaps quite limited.

 

[TLS Guy]

Then again many of us think you shortchange correction just based on your taste in content. Naming your locations by city name is so weirdly english. You may have some design chops within your own restricted rooms, but outside of that hard to swallow in many instances. If you had been a wildly successful speaker designer perhaps, but as a cranky doctor with poor patient manners, hard to believe. I still remember someone who followed your lead and thought the speakers were only worth selling rather than keeping. Your musical tastes are also somewhat strange. YMMV. You are definitely knowledgeable in some areas, but in general taste perhaps quite limited.

You sound like a bit of a curmudgeon yourself. It takes one to know one!