Yamaha AVENTAGE 2021 AV Receivers Bulk Up on Power and 8K Features

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Honestly, it still sounds great. The next upgrade on the list is speakers anyway, LOL!

That’s another subject for sure, but it still involves the new speakers’ in-room response (FR).

Sure, you can run ARC again and it will probably sound good again.

But the same question remains - in the back of your mind, does it bother you not knowing how your speakers actually truly measure in your room?

What if you paid more money for your new speakers and they actually have a worse in-room FR?

Which begs the question - is the EQ just as important as the speakers? Can we take any good speaker and use EQ to get +/-1.5dB or +/-2dB? If so, why pay $10-20K for Room Correction or $20K for speakers (other than for dynamics, aesthetics, pride)?

For example, say you bought some $20K speakers that had a great outdoor/anechoic FR of +/-2dB. When you put these $20K speakers in your room and ran ARC, the speakers still sound “good” subjectively. But what if the in-room FR was actually truly +/-6dB?

Even though they sound good subjectively, you could still be missing some finer instrument notes that you should be hearing from $20K speakers.

If you could confirm for sure what the in-room FR is, you could do something about it with other room correction software or manual PEQ to get your $20K speakers to be +/-1.5dB.

Or do you just assume and accept that ARC is already doing something good enough because it sounds good enough?

For many years I would just tell myself that ignorance is bliss - if the speakers sounded “good”, they must be good enough- who cares if they actually measure accurately or not.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

…after running the calibration, there’s no way to know what the actual results are….I seem to remember ARC does show actual measured results….

@PENG can tell us if ARC gives you the actual FR graph and whether the generated graphs are accurate or just predicted FR graphs like with Audyssey.

Even if ARC shows their graphs, how can anyone know for sure it’s accurate unless they confirm it using independent 3rd party measurements?

Just because ARC claims that the FR is +/-3dB doesn’t mean it is actually truly +/-3dB.

This is one big point of REW. To verify or confirm the results of the room correction. The 2nd point is so that we can FIX the FR if we want.

 

[NMG]

ARC does produce graphs pre and post room correction. When you first run it, it shows you the pre adjusted measurements. You can then make a bunch of adjustments to influence things before running RC. It’s nice in that sense and very easy to try different things and get immediate feedback on how it sounds. From experience, you can definitely hear differences.

Now, are the graphs truly accurate? No idea! I know for sure that there are tangible differences in how it sounds and bass response in particular in my room, is significantly better (deeper bass, less boomy, more defined) after getting the Anthem and running RC than with the Rotel I had before with no such capabilities. Back then I was just trying to dial the sub in manually as it too was lacking built in RC. Going to the Anthem improved things allot. Going to a different sub even more so, especially for movies.

Is there more on the table as far SQ improvements? Almost certainly. Do I want to go down that rabbit hole to find them? Not sure to be honest. There’s a point where I think it would just get obsessive or too costly and take away from the enjoyment of just watching a movie or listening to music. I’ve no real complaints at this point to be honest. It’s mostly just wants and/or “needs” if something breaks and has to be replaced.

 

[dolynick]

Without going into comparisons with other systems, ARC is a useful tool for achieving certain goals. I do wish it supported more increments in it's internal adjustments (for better flattening of up and down adjacent ranges) or allowed for a least a couple user input PEQ adjustments on top of the rest. Like most room EQ, it does far better with peak reductions than dealing with dips, so sometimes you need to keep that in mind when planning your approach. Still, I have been able to reasonably tune things to my desired state using it and I have taken and posted multiple ARC and REW measurement screens going over the various steps of the process and their results.

Is there more on the table as far SQ improvements? Almost certainly. Do I want to go down that rabbit hole to find them? Not sure to be honest. There’s a point where I think it would just get obsessive or too costly and take away from the enjoyment of just watching a movie or listening to music. I’ve no real complaints at this point to be honest. It’s mostly just wants and/or “needs” if something breaks and has to be replaced.

Unless you're trying to take a purist approach to the signal (IE, keep it analog and unchanged post initial D/A conversion from external DAC or whatever), you're most likely better off with ARC in place than not. It's possible to get it wrong but the defaults in Genesis are pretty sensible for the beginner who wants something mostly automated.

My brother has a Yamaha A2A in his modest home theatre but can't be bothered to run YPAO, so I haven't had any experience with it's results so far. I do like that Yamaha offers user customizable PEQ controls though. Great for those who really want to tinker.

 

[everettT]

[QUOTE="dolynick, post: 1694236, member: 102161
Unless you're trying to take a purist approach to the signal (IE, keep it analog and unchanged post initial D/A conversion from external DAC or whatever), you're most likely better off with ARC in place than not. It's possible to get it wrong but the defaults in Genesis are pretty sensible for the beginner who wants something mostly automated.
[/QUOTE]
That's the manufacturer's goal and they prefer that the consumer stick with that. The problem is they, the manufacturers, want to tweak the upper frequencies and try to limit external tweaks to to the lower frequencies. I understand why, but they should leave the option open.

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

[QUOTE="dolynick, post: 1694236, member: 102161
Unless you're trying to take a purist approach to the signal (IE, keep it analog and unchanged post initial D/A conversion from external DAC or whatever), you're most likely better off with ARC in place than not. It's possible to get it wrong but the defaults in Genesis are pretty sensible for the beginner who wants something mostly automated.

That's the manufacturer's goal and they prefer that the consumer stick with that. The problem is they, the manufacturers, want to tweak the upper frequencies and try to limit external tweaks to to the lower frequencies. I understand why, but they should leave the option open.[/QUOTE]

Agreed!
Remember these?

No self respecting audio nerd could have a system without one. Now everything is stuck in nanny mode.

 

[PENG]

@PENG can tell us if ARC gives you the actual FR graph and whether the generated graphs are accurate or just predicted FR graphs like with Audyssey.

Even if ARC shows their graphs, how can anyone know for sure it’s accurate unless they confirm it using independent 3rd party measurements?

Just because ARC claims that the FR is +/-3dB doesn’t mean it is actually truly +/-3dB.

This is one big point of REW. To verify or confirm the results of the room correction. The 2nd point is so that we can FIX the FR if we want.

ARC G does has a good feature called quick measure. I have no idea how accurate it is, it only show one channel at a time during the calibration process but post calibration it still only shows what Audy, DL show, that is, a bunch of predicted frequency response curves and no one really know if those curves represent averaged responses for the measured positions, of any other combination.

I think they all have the potential to show the actual measured post calibration curves if they wanted to do it but it would likely mean added costs to them without additional profits and they might not even want to do it because then informed users would realize their otherwise beloved ARC G, Audy or DL isn't as good as they thought.

 

[PENG]

ARC does produce graphs pre and post room correction. When you first run it, it shows you the pre adjusted measurements. You can then make a bunch of adjustments to influence things before running RC. It’s nice in that sense and very easy to try different things and get immediate feedback on how it sounds. From experience, you can definitely hear differences.

Now, are the graphs truly accurate? No idea! I know for sure that there are tangible differences in how it sounds and bass response in particular in my room, is significantly better (deeper bass, less boomy, more defined) after getting the Anthem and running RC than with the Rotel I had before with no such capabilities. Back then I was just trying to dial the sub in manually as it too was lacking built in RC. Going to the Anthem improved things allot. Going to a different sub even more so, especially for movies.

Is there more on the table as far SQ improvements? Almost certainly. Do I want to go down that rabbit hole to find them? Not sure to be honest. There’s a point where I think it would just get obsessive or too costly and take away from the enjoyment of just watching a movie or listening to music. I’ve no real complaints at this point to be honest. It’s mostly just wants and/or “needs” if something breaks and has to be replaced.

That's all subjective so good for you, but reality is that ARC G is just not effective, vs Audyssey, Dirac Live and probably even YPAO (with the use of the 7 band PEQ). If you frequent the AVSF, Audioholics, and ASR, you won't find too much posted their REW graphs, of the few that you can find/see, you won't see any of them as good as those from posters who used Audyssey and Dirac Live. Gene and Theo mentioned they would fo something as follow up, ie. review ARC G with REW graphs but it still has not happened, I think they might have told us something......

As I mentioned before, ARC G's HMI is excellent, colorful and easy to use, but it is just not capable to deliver better results, and any adjustability provided overall, is restricted to the point an experience user of REQ/C might think they are being treated like little kids who could be trusted.

Just give you one example and you will know what I am getting at, let's say in the deep bass range, you have nasty bump of 9 dB, not too narrow and not too wide at 60 Hz, that someone like @AcuDefTechGuy would know a single PEQ of -9 dB, Q= 8 would fix it, yet with ARC G, your only option is to play with room gain and deepbass settings, and you are restricted to picking what they called the center frequency, and the dB gain in + or -.

Anyone who know how to use PEQ understands that you need to know the Q value, simply picking the frequency point and the +/- dB gain to EQ would be hit and miss, it might fix something and create another, likely worse than just using the GEQ (or even tone control) that @William Lemmerhirt just posted above.

To be clear, I like Anthem's AV a lot, and obviously you do too, but I am frustrated that for whatever reasons, many if not most Anthem AVR/AVP users/owners seem to be so trusting/brand loyal to a fault that they just don't/won't push for improvements. I have contacted Anthem support a few time, telling them my issues with ARC G, and were very quick to response but couldn't really offer help other than making sure I knew what I was doing in terms of doing the calibration correctly. At one point, they even admitted there were in fact issues with the software/firmware that would not EQ/RC the deepbass range right, it was supposed to have been corrected in version 80 (by memory only), so I re-did a few more calibration, and found the results were better, to the point it was almost acceptable, but still left wanting. All these can be seen in the graphs I posted.
So again, people, including me, can see anything about how good, or bad, or mediocre about ARC G's current performance, but without supporting, measured performance, it's all anecdotal at best.

We can't see the same about Audyssey and DL, the other two seemingly most popular RC/EQ systems, as there are pretty of REW or similar graphs that are there for anyone who want to see the objective evidence.

I would love to see more Anthem AVR/AVP users to let Anthem know they want improvements, and let them know their perceived deficiencies by sending them their REW graphs. To me, if enough people do that, they will come up with something better when they launch the next upgrade. If they do, it will cost money for sure, but there is also the alternative, to use the paid option, that Masimo has done successfully when they offered the DL upgrade path.