Upgrade to Dirac Live or another Room Correction solution for this problem?

[homeaudionoob]

Room Correction Experts,

I'm running into some limitations with Audyssey ($20 app) on my X3800h with Dynamic EQ and Dynamic Volume overriding my own target curves and forcing boosts, dips and roll-offs that just sound poor in my space (dead, muffled). I did some research on this and apparently the only way I can retain my much preferred own EQ filter settings (incl. curtains) is by keeping Audyssey set to Reference and DEQ and DV turned off, otherwise 1 of the 2 available built in target curves is forced on the entire frequency range.

I've seen other people posts about this problem on Reddit and have already tried all the recommended steps (turn off midrange compensation, don't use DV and DEQ) but the short story is: in my space with the MLP 18" away from my front stage (not changeable) and for our consumption, I NEED signal compression + my own EQ settings or deal with considerable tweaking of speaker levels, center crossover frequencies etc. with every piece of TV fed content to at least get barely acceptable results.

TL,DR: do either the Dirac Live upgrade for this amp or perhaps another RC solution in the signal chain...

a) offer well working tweakable signal compression across (and maybe within) individual channels AND
b) do so without forcing standardized EQ filters with boosts, dips and roll-offs that can sound dead / dull / muffled?

Speakers:
(F/R = Klipsch RP-280F, C = RP504C II, SR = PR-150M, SW = SVS SB12 NSD)

TIA for any experience based recommendations!

 

[lovinthehd]

Dynamic Volume and Dynamic EQ are Audyssey features, which wouldn't be available if you use Dirac afaik. You sit 18" from the front speakers?

 

[isolar8001]

Room Correction Experts,

I'm running into some limitations with Audyssey ($20 app) on my X3800h with Dynamic EQ and Dynamic Volume overriding my own target curves and forcing boosts, dips and roll-offs that just sound poor in my space (dead, muffled). I did some research on this and apparently the only way I can retain my much preferred own EQ filter settings (incl. curtains) is by keeping Audyssey set to Reference and DEQ and DV turned off, otherwise 1 of the 2 available built in target curves is forced on the entire frequency range.

I've seen other people posts about this problem on Reddit and have already tried all the recommended steps (turn off midrange compensation, don't use DV and DEQ) but the short story is: in my space with the MLP 18" away from my front stage (not changeable) and for our consumption, I NEED signal compression + my own EQ settings or deal with considerable tweaking of speaker levels, center crossover frequencies etc. with every piece of TV fed content to at least get barely acceptable results.

TL,DR: do either the Dirac Live upgrade for this amp or perhaps another RC solution in the signal chain...

a) offer well working tweakable signal compression across (and maybe within) individual channels AND
b) do so without forcing standardized EQ filters with boosts, dips and roll-offs that can sound dead / dull / muffled?

Speakers:
(F/R = Klipsch RP-280F, C = RP504C II, SR = PR-150M, SW = SVS SB12 NSD)

TIA for any experience based recommendations!

You must have some serious room issues for a bunch of shrill Klipsch's to sound muffled....and like lovin' said, I hope you meant 18 feet. (which is pretty extreme)
Might want to post a pic of this listening area.

Dirac is not some miracle program....if you got that bad of a result with Audyssey, you got issues.

 

[homeaudionoob]

Yeah, it's definitely not ideal but the shared room doesn't allow me to move seating closer to the front stage and TV, unfortunately. I just upgraded to a bigger screen for the same reason.

That said, I just solved the underlying problem (poor sound quality (dead, muffled) and poor consistency across different content) in a different way with with 1 simple change: I tested switching the TV audio out connection from Toslink, to HDMI and once I finally got a handshake, voila: night and day difference, especially with Netflix. Settings are back to within a db of volume for each channel and the output is so much clearer and pretty consistent across different content and providers.

I can only assume Toslink might no longer be sufficient to process the available audio streams with sufficient fidelity, perhaps due to bandwidth limits?

I'll skip the backstory on why I was using Toslink in the first place but for those who are still looking to override the forced Audyssey target curves and get around other unwanted limitations in the Audyssey app, I found this awesome looking free web based solution that taps into REW to clean up room corrections and get rid of various other unwanted settings that are forced otherwise. Check out this video A1 Evo

 

[lovinthehd]

I'm not sure if there's an Audyssey One thread already or not, but the author OCA is a member here. Wonder why for a 5.1 setup there would be a difference between optical and HDMI ARC audio particularly, tho.

 

[isolar8001]

Yeah, it's definitely not ideal but the shared room doesn't allow me to move seating closer to the front stage and TV, unfortunately. I just upgraded to a bigger screen for the same reason.

That said, I just solved the underlying problem (poor sound quality (dead, muffled) and poor consistency across different content) in a different way with with 1 simple change: I tested switching the TV audio out connection from Toslink, to HDMI and once I finally got a handshake, voila: night and day difference, especially with Netflix. Settings are back to within a db of volume for each channel and the output is so much clearer and pretty consistent across different content and providers.

I can only assume Toslink might no longer be sufficient to process the available audio streams with sufficient fidelity, perhaps due to bandwidth limits?

I'll skip the backstory on why I was using Toslink in the first place but for those who are still looking to override the forced Audyssey target curves and get around other unwanted limitations in the Audyssey app, I found this awesome looking free web based solution that taps into REW to clean up room corrections and get rid of various other unwanted settings that are forced otherwise. Check out this video A1 Evo


View attachment 68804

HDMI will get you lossless HD audio formats, but there shouldn't be a drastic difference is sound quality using optical.
Optical can handle the audio formats put out by streaming video providers, all of which are lossy. (except Dolby Plus/Atmos, which wont sound any better than 5.1 DD, it just carries the Atmos channels)

It can also handle Redbook audio from music streaming services (which is all you need)...so something else is responsible for your results.

 

[homeaudionoob]

My understanding is that DD+ is less compressed than DD. The difference with HDMI has been really noticeable on the Center Channel with 2 separate movies on Max I've been using as a reference point, one being Bad Education. Originally, I had to EQ up to 5db out of the sub 1K frequency bad and boost the general dialogue band by about 1db + turn the Center up to 8db to make especially male dialogue reasonably audible. There was horrible cabinet resonance in the lower band, with Netflix (movies only) sounding worse yet (boxy, muffled, dead).

Initially I thought this my center channel speaker (rp504c ii) but was able to rule that out by hooking up a working surround in it's place, same issue.

At least part of this is likely in DEQ and especially DV itself with the signal compression & house curves exacerbating the problem, but the moment I switched to HDMI (and possibly DD+ signal), not just speech clarity but also much of the ambiance noise came back to R & L channels and made especially outdoor scenes sound much more natural (less dead) and as i was able to dial back the center channel boost, further improved of course.

Some of this is no doubt in the source mixing too. Most of the 5.1 content my kids watch even on Netflix is crystal clear while movies sound far over-boosted on bass and like the general dialogue frequency band and high frequency clarity was EQ'd out. Since some Netflix stuff still sounds like it'll need tweaking I'll give A1 Evo a shot to try to get to 1 Speaker preset that works well for us across most streaming content + disc.

Appreciate that someone took this on as a project and the support here!

 

[isolar8001]

Some of this is no doubt in the source mixing too.

This is the real issue.
A lot of streaming movies have atrocious mixes.....the most glaring fault being a muffled sounding center.
I don't stream, but I have many files from streamers that cant be had any other way and notice this all the time.
Having a preset for this would be helpful.