It is true that I do not think much of the stock Audyssey mike that comes with HT AVRs and prepros. But, the top of the line ones are usually "Installer Ready", meaning they can accept the Audyssey Pro kit. The kit comes with a decent, individually calibrated mike and preamp, as well as the Pro software and other goodies - case, mike stand and boom, cables, adapters, etc. The kit costs about $550, as I recall, plus another $150 for the license to use Pro with one AVR/prepro.
Redefine your budget room EQ 'flat' target curve to Harman's pro curve
- Thread starter CherylJosie
- Start date
It is true that I do not think much of the stock Audyssey mike that comes with HT AVRs and prepros. But, the top of the line ones are usually "Installer Ready", meaning they can accept the Audyssey Pro kit. The kit comes with a decent, individually calibrated mike and preamp, as well as the Pro software and other goodies - case, mike stand and boom, cables, adapters, etc. The kit costs about $550, as I recall, plus another $150 for the license to use Pro with one AVR/prepro.
I have the Pro Kit but the calibration file that it comes with is proprietary. I tried some hacks to read it but failed. So even though it is a high quality Mic, for the purposes of what Cheryl is trying to do, it is still not an option for her. As you said, a measurement mic is the way to go.
Instead of getting the Audyssey Pro kit ($699 total with the key licence), I would get Dirac Live from the MiniDSP DDRC-88A EQ box ($999).
Because, after having read quite extensively between those two products, and seeing the graphs from the regular Audyssey Platinum version (MultEQ XT32) that comes included inside some Marantz/Denon AV receivers and pre/pros, MultEQ XT32 does as good a job as the Pro kit, so no need to get the Pro kit, unless you want to take more mic measurements (up to 32) than just eight. And I doubt that it'll make a sound improvement worth $700, so better save the money here.
And Dirac Live in the form of the MiniDSP DDRC-88A (8-channel EQ) is a much better sound improvement plus all the adjustments that you are free to make, save couple target curves, and I just read that much more is to come in term of added features and flexibility, most likely through a firmware update.
I consider myself on the same sailing ship as Cheryl and as many other audio explorers on the quest for improved performance with our movies and music listening experience.
And frugally many AV receivers and pre/pros too from several manufacturers (Anthem, Yamaha, Pioneer, Marantz, Denon, NAD, Rotel, Arcam, etc.), in combination with the MiniDSP DDRC-88A Dirac Live component, are the winning combination in the year 2015 regarding best sound in our rooms.
And we are talking between roughly two and three grands here.
Cheryl has already an AV receiver, the only thing to add is Dirac Live, and it's free for 14 days, I believe, so she can experiment. ...And then decide.
Mainly people of Cheryl's caliber are willing to measure using a program, a laptop and a calibrated mic in their own room. ...It takes some 'accustomization' (bit of a learning curve) and a little explored time (trials and errors and permutations and successes).
But nothing to stop people like Cheryl, myself, and most WBF members.
Hi-end audio is extremely affordable in the year 2015; I am 100% certain. ...And I'm not the only one.
My most precious prestige in life is performance, all across the board, from all my five senses. ...Good food we can cook ourselves for very affordable (taste).
Flowers they grow everywhere and their perfume is magic (smell).
Good sound is affordable as I just hint it above (hearing).
Good views are coming up (UHD/4K) on our screens, later on this year, on Blu-ray (vision).
And we can slide our fingers and hands across the gentle curves of our new sport cars, or of our wives (touch).
:b ...Honestly, Dirac Live is affordable, and Wayne also mentioned a good Parametric EQ from Yamaha (I forgot the model #) that you can get for roughly $200 (was retailing for ten times that price).
Audyssey is not being supported anymore (they don't improve their platform) and as today only Denon/Marantz still offers it in their pre/pros and AVRs.
And Cheryl has Audyssey MultEQ XT32 in her own receiver, and she paid probably less than a grand for her Onkyo AV receiver.
Yes, an AV receiver with preouts in combination with Dirac live we all can get for less than two grands.
In redefining a conscientious budget today for very best sound with our movies and stereo/multichannel music, the price is roughly $2,000 ...a little bit more or a little bit less, it all depends...of deals for that AVR (or pre/pro).
As for the best house target curve; Wayne said it before...it's the one that suits our room best in tandem with our set of ears. ...Me, I call it the "Bob" target curve. :b For others, it could be the "CherylJosie" home target curve. ...The "Amir" house curve. ...
Because, after having read quite extensively between those two products, and seeing the graphs from the regular Audyssey Platinum version (MultEQ XT32) that comes included inside some Marantz/Denon AV receivers and pre/pros, MultEQ XT32 does as good a job as the Pro kit, so no need to get the Pro kit, unless you want to take more mic measurements (up to 32) than just eight. And I doubt that it'll make a sound improvement worth $700, so better save the money here.
And Dirac Live in the form of the MiniDSP DDRC-88A (8-channel EQ) is a much better sound improvement plus all the adjustments that you are free to make, save couple target curves, and I just read that much more is to come in term of added features and flexibility, most likely through a firmware update.
I consider myself on the same sailing ship as Cheryl and as many other audio explorers on the quest for improved performance with our movies and music listening experience.
And frugally many AV receivers and pre/pros too from several manufacturers (Anthem, Yamaha, Pioneer, Marantz, Denon, NAD, Rotel, Arcam, etc.), in combination with the MiniDSP DDRC-88A Dirac Live component, are the winning combination in the year 2015 regarding best sound in our rooms.
And we are talking between roughly two and three grands here.
Cheryl has already an AV receiver, the only thing to add is Dirac Live, and it's free for 14 days, I believe, so she can experiment. ...And then decide.
Mainly people of Cheryl's caliber are willing to measure using a program, a laptop and a calibrated mic in their own room. ...It takes some 'accustomization' (bit of a learning curve) and a little explored time (trials and errors and permutations and successes).
But nothing to stop people like Cheryl, myself, and most WBF members.
Hi-end audio is extremely affordable in the year 2015; I am 100% certain. ...And I'm not the only one.
My most precious prestige in life is performance, all across the board, from all my five senses. ...Good food we can cook ourselves for very affordable (taste).
Flowers they grow everywhere and their perfume is magic (smell).
Good sound is affordable as I just hint it above (hearing).
Good views are coming up (UHD/4K) on our screens, later on this year, on Blu-ray (vision).
And we can slide our fingers and hands across the gentle curves of our new sport cars, or of our wives (touch).
:b ...Honestly, Dirac Live is affordable, and Wayne also mentioned a good Parametric EQ from Yamaha (I forgot the model #) that you can get for roughly $200 (was retailing for ten times that price).
Audyssey is not being supported anymore (they don't improve their platform) and as today only Denon/Marantz still offers it in their pre/pros and AVRs.
And Cheryl has Audyssey MultEQ XT32 in her own receiver, and she paid probably less than a grand for her Onkyo AV receiver.
Yes, an AV receiver with preouts in combination with Dirac live we all can get for less than two grands.
In redefining a conscientious budget today for very best sound with our movies and stereo/multichannel music, the price is roughly $2,000 ...a little bit more or a little bit less, it all depends...of deals for that AVR (or pre/pro).
As for the best house target curve; Wayne said it before...it's the one that suits our room best in tandem with our set of ears. ...Me, I call it the "Bob" target curve. :b For others, it could be the "CherylJosie" home target curve. ...The "Amir" house curve. ...
I do not advocate for the Audyssey Pro kit at this juncture. It would not work for Cheryl anyway because her Onkyo AVR does not support it. Only a handful of AVR/prepros do from Denon, Marantz and NAD. I do not think Audyssey is dead yet. They did do an update not too long ago for Atmos, for example. But, I agree their core product is no longer up to date.
I also disagree about XT/32 natively being just as good as a Pro kit calibration for XT/32. Pro let me straightforwardly eliminate the BBC dip, for one thing, vitally important in my view. Also, the Pro calibration mike is much more accurate. I got a consistently better sounding result with Pro than with stock XT/32. Target curve modifications within 3dB were also straightforward in Pro.
The miniDSP DDRC-88A was mentioned in Cheryl's opening posts. I personally do not like it because it introduces an extra a-d/d-a. That is why I advocate an HDMI solution with EQ in the PC - digital straight through with no extra domain conversions. Also, a deal breaker for me is that its internal processing is at 48k, like Audyssey. My PC version of Dirac Live runs at 192k, and it is cheaper than the 88A if you already have the AVR. But, the 88A seems otherwise to have the same user interface and features as the PC version.
MiniDSP does have bass management. PC Dirac does not. But, JRiver handles that nicely for me.
True, I am limited to playing just hard drive rips and silver discs from the PC optical drive. The 88A lets you keep your external disc player running into your AVR. My Oppo player is now useless for playback as there is no useful way to route output from it into the PC in digital. That is OK, it is now in the bedroom system. The only real problem there is with SACD, which cannot be read by any PC optical drive. I have a solution to that called a PS3. There is no other downside I have seen or heard to the PC optical drive. My circle of audiophile friends are also quite unanimous in hearing a small but noticeable improvement in playing rips from hard drive vs. silver discs, any format, any resolution. They all now do the same for that reason and for convenience in album/track selection. jRemote on my iPad is also beautifully cool and convenient in selecting and controlling playback.
I am all for tinkering with the target curve if you wish, and Dirac makes that extremely easy to do and to audition the results. Thus far, I have been quite happy with the standard Dirac target curve, though.
I also disagree about XT/32 natively being just as good as a Pro kit calibration for XT/32. Pro let me straightforwardly eliminate the BBC dip, for one thing, vitally important in my view. Also, the Pro calibration mike is much more accurate. I got a consistently better sounding result with Pro than with stock XT/32. Target curve modifications within 3dB were also straightforward in Pro.
The miniDSP DDRC-88A was mentioned in Cheryl's opening posts. I personally do not like it because it introduces an extra a-d/d-a. That is why I advocate an HDMI solution with EQ in the PC - digital straight through with no extra domain conversions. Also, a deal breaker for me is that its internal processing is at 48k, like Audyssey. My PC version of Dirac Live runs at 192k, and it is cheaper than the 88A if you already have the AVR. But, the 88A seems otherwise to have the same user interface and features as the PC version.
MiniDSP does have bass management. PC Dirac does not. But, JRiver handles that nicely for me.
True, I am limited to playing just hard drive rips and silver discs from the PC optical drive. The 88A lets you keep your external disc player running into your AVR. My Oppo player is now useless for playback as there is no useful way to route output from it into the PC in digital. That is OK, it is now in the bedroom system. The only real problem there is with SACD, which cannot be read by any PC optical drive. I have a solution to that called a PS3. There is no other downside I have seen or heard to the PC optical drive. My circle of audiophile friends are also quite unanimous in hearing a small but noticeable improvement in playing rips from hard drive vs. silver discs, any format, any resolution. They all now do the same for that reason and for convenience in album/track selection. jRemote on my iPad is also beautifully cool and convenient in selecting and controlling playback.
I am all for tinkering with the target curve if you wish, and Dirac makes that extremely easy to do and to audition the results. Thus far, I have been quite happy with the standard Dirac target curve, though.
Well it seems it was not as clever an idea as it first appeared.
First, the equipment.
Audyssey microphone
that plugs into
DIY plug-in-power adapter
- 4.5V battery connects to
- 4.7K resistor that connects to
- microphone input phone jack and 5uF/25V aluminum DC blocking capacitor that connects to
- output phone jack
that plugs into
Zoom R24 mixer 1/4" phone jack
- Channel 1 set for low-Z microphone
- input attenuator at 3 o'clock
- tone etc. flat/disabled
- channel volume set to 0dB
- master volume set to 0dB
- output attenuator set to max
that plugs into
Behringer FBQ6200
- subwoofer disabled
- low/hi cut disabled
- input attenuator set to 0dB
that plugs into
DIY in-line attenuator
- 4.7K series resistor
- 100 ohm parallel resistor
that plugs into
Onkyo microphone input.
Measured the Onkyo input: 5V/1mA plug-in power.
4.5V battery with 4.7K resistor seemed appropriate.
It was a lucky guess on the attenuator. 5K:100 ohm seems to work OK.
That is where my luck ran out.
First thing I noticed is that the Behringer failed to start up properly. After a few tries the front panel controls started working.
Channel 1 is fubar. When bypassed it is fine, but when in circuit the bass drops off a cliff.
I am wondering if this unit has the dread capacitor plague.
Channel 2 seems to work OK but...
Crossovers (quick setup):
Code:
channel normal cal EQ bypassed EQ flat EQ Harman EQ B&K EQ Me
subw l. check 76 70 70 65 70 70
front 40 40 40 120 100 40
center 60 70 70 150 150 100
surround 150 150 150 150 150 150
front wide 150 150 150 150 150 150
front high 40 40 40 120 100 40
surround back 40 40 40 150 150 150Speaker Distance (quick setup)
Code:
channel normal cal EQ bypassed EQ flat EQ Harman EQ B&K EQ Me
front left 7.5 9.0 9.0 9.0 9.0 9.0
front wide left 8.0 9.5 9.5 9.5 9.5 9.5
front high left 8.5 10.0 10.0 10.5 10.0 10.0
center 7.0 8.5 8.5 8.5 8.5 8.5
front high right 8.5 10.0 10.0 10.0 10.5 10.0
front right 7.5 9.0 9.0 9.0 9.0 9.0
surround right 5.0 6.5 6.5 6.5 6.5 6.5
surround back right 4.5 5.5 5.5 5.5 5.5 5.5
surround back left 4.0 5.5 5.5 5.5 5.5 5.5
surround left 5.0 6.5 6.5 6.5 6.5 6.5
subwoofer 8.5 10.0 10.0 10.0 9.5 10.0Level Calibration (quick setup)
Code:
channel normal cal EQ bypassed EQ flat EQ Harman EQ B&K EQ Me
front left -7.0 -2.5 -3.0 -5.0 -9.5 -5.5
front wide left -6.0 -2.0 -2.0 -4.0 -7.5 -4.5
front high left -1.0 +2.5 +3.0 +1.0 -3.0 +0.0
center -7.5 -3.5 -3.5 -5.0 -8.0 -6.0
front high right -2.0 +2.5 +2.0 +0.0 -4.0 -1.0
front wide right -6.0 -2.0 -2.0 -4.5 -7.0 -4.5
front right -8.0 -3.5 -3.5 -5.5 -10.0 -6.5
surround right -8.0 -3.5 -3.5 -6.0 -9.5 -6.5
surround back right -11.5 -7.0 -7.0 -9.5 -12.0 -10.0
surround back left -8.5 -4.5 -4.5 -6.5 -11.0 -7.5
surround left -8.0 -3.5 -3.5 -5.5 -11.0 -6.5
subwoofer -1.5 +4.0 +3.5 +8.5 +12.0 +4.0So here is what I observed:
It seems that the distance setting is OK. The EQ chain did not disturb it much.
It also seems that the level setting is OK, as long as I make sure I cut the gain about the same as the maximum EQ boost. I have issues in here because with huge efficient towers and a very small room so the SPL is high and I run out of attenuation on cal. I backed down the gain through the microphone path to compensate so I could observe what else is going on.
The Harman curve induced too much spread in the cal. Subwoofer was +12 and surround back left was -12. I suppose that boosting the gain controls on the subwoofers could fix that, sort of.
EDIT: In actuality is is the B&K curve that induced too much spread in the cal, not the Harman curve. This is sort of counterintuitive since there is more spread across the Harman target. Could mean that the convergence becomes unstable and settles into strange syndromes when the mic EQ is not flat, or it could mean that the affect of the target curve on the crossovers (derived off the -3dB points that will change with the mic EQ) adds a secondary effect that increases the complexity of anomalies. I guess the second supposition is actually a subset of the first... :END OF EDIT
The crossovers get hosed. It seems that the tilt I applied to the EQ on the microphone definitely messed things up in the receiver on the Onkyo side of things when setting the crossovers. It is detecting a very high -3dB bass extension point, and that makes sense because I am boosting the treble on the mic. This is what I feared would happen.
This does not explain what I hear though.
I tried modifying the EQ curve from B&K to see if I could minimize the treble boost and still get some benefit from a better target. No joy.
My modified curve has unity gain from 20Hz to 315Hz. From that point up it gains ~2.0dB per decade. Even this tiny amount of treble boost was enough to hose the crossovers and mess up the sound too. Using the unmodified crossover points did nothing to help the honky midrange and other weirdness that resulted.
The three most compromised speakers in the system are the center and the right rear surround and the left surround. The center is a WTW 2-way horizontal on a TV stand. The right rear surround tower has a side-firing woofer fires under an end table that is wedged into a corner. The left surround tower is standing out in the open between rooms.
These are the speakers whose crossovers got hosed the worst by adding EQ to the feedback path. It appears that any issue with the speakers or placement is going to wreak havoc with the cal if the spectral balance of the microphone is skewed. IMO this is the main reason that people have problems with auto cal. Look to your microphone and make sure it is sensibly placed without any absorbent or reflective junk nearby that could cause filtering of the spectrum at the microphone.
No joy tonight. It looks like bending the microphone response is not going to help Audyssey. The target needs adjusting.
So I move on the the next project. I have to improve the hanging of the absorbing comforter on the wall and get my sound card working properly so that I can run REW. Need to see if the absorbers I hung in here are doing anything bad to the sound.
Like so many others I corresponded with lately, my room treatments have tamed the room issues and they also seem to have messed up Audyssey some. It seemed to work better in a live room. Not sure why that is (I expected the opposite), but I suspect the truth is that without room treatments even the wrong auto EQ curve is better than nothing in some cases.
So it looks like I will be applying various tone tweaks at night with the available receiver controls and disabling Audyssey room EQ in the daytime for louder listening.
Going back and forth between Dynamic EQ with surround levels cut to no Dynamic EQ with surround levels untouched is a royal pain.
Going back and forth between Audyssey Room EQ with the tone controls and input attenuator readjusted vs. no room EQ with no tone/attenuator tweaks is also a royal pain.
Changing the subwoofer level every time Audysey is enabled or disabled is slightly less painful because at least it can be done from the audio adjustment menu and it resets itself at power on. It is still a royal pain though and it does not sound right either.
The truth is that there is no way to fix a target curve that is wrong. I have explored all the options. Now that I have gone through it I see what all the fuss is about.
Time for REW. How is that introduction to REW thread coming, Amir? As soon as my sound card is working I am going to need it.
If only I had a couple more grand to spend on the system I could add a Dirac. I need either an 8 channel processor up front or I need 12 channels on the back end plus more power amps. Maybe the front end solution is better, but I would dearly love to be able to add sound modes etc. to it when the standards change. Atmos, anyone?
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Yes, helpful, thanks.
The weak bass of Audyssey really helps me out here at night. 30+ year old apartment walls and floor are not the best barrier to sound. DV and DEQ are also a must when there are people sleeping all around. Without them making out the dialog is hopeless in movies. Otherwise, I agree, better off without them when listening at comfortable levels.
I have no way of disabling the BBC dip on my receiver except to use the flat curve. So usually I use the flat curve with +4dB bass boost and -4dB treble cut. Sort of works.
I sometimes use the reference curve too for movies. Seems to help with the dialog. Boosting the input attenuator level a little (+5dB/+12dB) with DEQ engaged seems to help some. The treble gets a little bright but the bass comes back to life. Works at higher volumes as well as lower.
My hearing brickwalls at 12KHz. If I could still hear 20KHz I would probably think the flat EQ is horrible, but honestly I have difficulty perceiving the brightness of it. The difference between the reference curve and the flat curve is modest with my ears.
I agree they mess up the sound but when trying to make out dialog sometimes there is no other option in an apartment. I do not use DV for music but I do use DEQ for music at low volume.
Other technical aspects?
How does Dirac play with Atmos? The more channels, the more amps and analog processors, but that is not ideal. DSP EQ up front is preferable to DSP EQ in the analog path. What about object-oriented sound? How does that work out with a preprocessor and a receiver/amp? Do Dirac packages allow upgrading for new sound modes and bitstreams? Could get expensive if a new processor or license is required every time...
Not familiar with JRiver or Exasound. I rip everything to an HTPC running Ubuntu and NFS. Playback per machine is via network. I use my bluray player for streaming now since my PCs cannot handle it either in software or hardware aspects. I have an I7 laptop that I can run Windoze on but it is the slowest I7 ever made and the machine overheats unless I put it on a strong cooler pad. In Windoze my neighbor and I can watch his Xfinity over here, but only in the living room because the wireless is too weak to go much farther than 2 doors down.
I am debating whether to go with faster Internet or get Xfinity or a dish. I am on the north side and even my OTA antenna is compromised despite being pointed directly at the Sutro Tower in SF. So far I have been plowing all the money into the system and saving the programming for later once those expenditures are over.
Thanks for the great advice. I am going to look into your suggestions.
I was only doing this tweak for the technical challenge of it. I wanted to see if I could rehabilitate a target curve and save some cash. Obviously it did not work out so I guess I start looking into other options.
Honestly, I was not expecting it to work too well. I wonder if I had a better EQ maybe it would have worked a little better, but my gut feeling is that no matter what EQ I put in the microphone path, the cal routine will get confused by it.
Before I get into more expenditures I want to try out REW and see how this system measures now that it is finally installed.
Thx for the suggestions. Good stuff. Time to do some more reading.
The system is (really need to work on a signature and profile I guess now that I am deep into the technical aspects of this):
Room: listening space is 14' wide by 12' deep by 8' high.
Open on the left to kitchen and hall and bath and bedroom approximately triples the size (doors are always open).
Sliding glass door on the right that is usually open (gets hot on the 3rd floor in California).
Kivik leather loveseat/chaise with the listening position approximately 1/3 of the way forward from the rear wall.
100" diagonal AT screen hanging in front of the LCD and BenQ HT1075 on the ceiling. The immersion is fantastic but I need a better screen (moire). Planning a tensioned retractable AT DIY some time once I am done with the rest of the install. Need a way to attach screen material to a roller without putting any crease-inducing clamps... or maybe just a junk screen to cannibalize.
I have 3 layers of 1" poly fiber comforters hanging next to the front wall with 2 strings of 5 pillows in shams pinned together and hanging diagonally across the 'corners' (one is just a built-in bookcase on the left so it is not really a corner). I also have a string of 3 shams sewn together and hung diagonally across the right rear corner, with two old compressed pillows stuffed into each one to make it thicker.
Onkyo TX-NR929
Sapphire ST3 surrounds (1" polycell plastic dome tweeter, 5.25" aluminum mid MTM, 2x9" a,uminum side-firing woofers)
Sapphire ST2 fronts (same as the ST3 except one plastic 10" side firing woofer)
Sapphire SC center (same MTM as horizontal WTW)
Sapphire SB bookshelf heights (5.25" aluminum woofer, 1" tweeter)
Sapphire SB bookshelf wides hanging in basketball nets at head height (same speaker as the heights)
Crown Com-Tech 210 to power the wides (receiver only has 9 amplifiers)
SVS PB10-ISD/NSD (one of each) and no there is no EQ on them except what the receiver provides
UMIK-1 is in the plan, as soon as I get my soundcard working.
Non-sequitor now. It did not work too well. Not sure if the Behringer had anything to do with it but from the symptoms it seems like probably not the main culprit. Tweaking the mic response seems like a bad thing to do to an auto cal algorithm.
I think that without any additional expenditures the only thing I have left to play with is the DIY room treatments and REW with a UMIK-1. I kept the investment in treatments really small (old used bedding plus $300 for black shams/pillows/comforter up front in addition to the cost of shelving brackets that also hold up the screen and bookshelf speakers) so I am pretty much looking at a dead end for awhile. Cash is tight now.
Gotta post some pictures. Will do a review in a new thread later, once the appearance is fixed up a little.
I must say, having a dead black home theater for a living room is unusual. Eventually I hope to move back into a single family home and do it right.
I put ~$6000 into the system including furniture and another system in the bedroom. I bargain hunt on Ebay and Craigslist. Not sure how else I would do this with all my cash tied up in property. Some day my kids will get riiiiiiich and help me out of this hole... yah right!
This system is purely a lark so I have something to play with. Just trying to see how far I can get with it on as little cash as possible. Seems to be working fine so far but there is way more to learn than I bargained for.
Apparently, poorly. Precedence effect helps out (head-related transfer function). Non-directional sound (lower wavelength) is indistinguishable from power response to humans.
I am still new at this, Amir. Someone else needs to do the explaining. Far as I know we hear both the on-axis and the ambient but we can recognize and distinguish the two from each other above the Schroeder transition apparently according to that video back in this thread... though I am sure that our perception of the two merges when listening to sine waves since there is no precedence with a continuous tone. Obviously it is complicated.
Not sure if my idea to smooth the power response rather than set it to a target is a good idea or not but that video seems to indicate it might be.
Necessity is the mother of invention. no $$$.
I need ot look into that. I was not aware that Dirac runs on a PC. If so that might be the key to saving myself some $$$.
Anything that minimizes cost is king here. If I can put in a single custom curve that is all I need. I can tune it how I need to. Better if I can put in a curve per speaker so I can test out my idea, but that is way off on a tangent.
Yes it appears that any tweak on the mic side is a problem. I was concerned about the delay of DSP also. Probably not going to work if analog will not do it.
Cheryl -
Some followup:
As I said, I think your best bet is to install Dirac Live on your PC, meaning that your PC also becomes your player. Your existing player can still function through your AVR, but not easily via Dirac in the PC without extra a-d/d-a conversions, sound card quality issues, etc. Yes, you will have to use Windoze. I do not think there is a working Linux version of Dirac yet. The bad news is that the Mch version is over $700. You still need a USB mike, like the UMIK-1. I bought my UMIK-1 from Cross-Spectrum Labs for about $100 because they appeared to do a better individual calibration, including the critical 90 degree calibration for room correction with the mike pointed at the ceiling.
I do recommend JRiver as your player/library software also under Windows. It is quite feature laden. That is good in some ways, but it makes it somewhat difficult to learn at first. After two years with it, I do have the basics under good control, but there are still tons of features I am not familiar with or think I need. It should easily accept your existing rips into its library. And, it has the crucial bass management crossovers that Dirac lacks. Dirac does have automatic speaker distance correction, so those same functions in JRiver are unnecessary.
I have a library of about 3,000 hi rez mostly Mch disc rips in JRiver - SACD .dsf files, BD-A, BD-V and downloads. I could have thousands more, like my CDs, but I no longer listen to those or much else in stereo. My media files are on 52 TBs of Synology NAS. That is the price one must pay for dealing with very large hi rez Mch music and video files. Ripped CDs are a relative piece of cake, storage wise.
JRiver handles all formats I am aware of (except Atmos/Auro) and it controls playback of rips and also discs on the PC optical drives. It can upsample CD's to 88k, 176k, etc. It can convert DSD rips to hi rez PCM for Dirac, and it sounds very good in doing so. The optional JRemote interface for iPad or Android tablets is terrific. Third party AnyDVD HD or similar software is necessary to play BD silver discs directly due to DRM, although MKV rips should also work.
JRiver also has a WDM input driver so that other sources on the PC - Netfix Streaming, YouTube, etc. - can play via JRiver as their default Windows "sound card". However, I have not gotten that to work with Dirac on the output side of JRiver due to conflicts with Windows.
JRiver license = $50, a bargain if there ever was one.
Admittedly, this is all a major shift in playback architecture away from a simple plug and play hardware player. But, something like this is necessary to be able to use Dirac in the PC. At least you will have the comfort of knowing you are using exactly the same EQ tool as the $20K Datasat prepro, Rolls Royce and Bentley cars. You will also have EQ working at up to 192k in the PC version.
Forget about the Exasound E28 DAC I mentioned. It sounds fabulous and I would not part with it, but the Mch version is $4k with balanced output. For me, that was the final step in totally eliminating my prepro, but it is a budget buster for you.
You would be outputting everything via HDMI into your AVR set to Direct Mode bypassing Audyssey, bass management and speaker distance correction there. Your AVR would then just function as a DAC, volume control and amps from the HDMI input.
Your AVR can also still accept player and TV cable/sat inputs, tuner, etc. but would then be using Audyssey, bass management, etc. in the AVR.
My TV goes through JRiver and Dirac via an HD Homerun Prime cable card tuner via Ethernet, but I do not think you will want to go there. But, it is not that expensive, and I no longer pay for a cable box.
So, I have a full HT/Music PC system. It is not perfect in features, ease of use, etc., but the sound is pretty awesome, the main reason for doing it. Yours would be a hybrid with the AVR still there in the system.
Save your pennies and spring for the 30-day trial of Dirac and JRiver when you can. I firmly believe you will be delighted with how it sounds. There are some technical challenges in getting all this working properly, but it is quite clear that you are capable of that and you might even enjoy conquering those challenges.
Incidentally, PC Dirac does not handle Atmos/Auro at this point. I am far from wanting or needing those yet as they lack significance for music currently. The Datasat prepro I mentioned does handle them via more than 8 channels of Dirac, with the decoding being done upstream of Dirac, which merely EQs the resulting signal for each speaker channel.
Some followup:
As I said, I think your best bet is to install Dirac Live on your PC, meaning that your PC also becomes your player. Your existing player can still function through your AVR, but not easily via Dirac in the PC without extra a-d/d-a conversions, sound card quality issues, etc. Yes, you will have to use Windoze. I do not think there is a working Linux version of Dirac yet. The bad news is that the Mch version is over $700. You still need a USB mike, like the UMIK-1. I bought my UMIK-1 from Cross-Spectrum Labs for about $100 because they appeared to do a better individual calibration, including the critical 90 degree calibration for room correction with the mike pointed at the ceiling.
I do recommend JRiver as your player/library software also under Windows. It is quite feature laden. That is good in some ways, but it makes it somewhat difficult to learn at first. After two years with it, I do have the basics under good control, but there are still tons of features I am not familiar with or think I need. It should easily accept your existing rips into its library. And, it has the crucial bass management crossovers that Dirac lacks. Dirac does have automatic speaker distance correction, so those same functions in JRiver are unnecessary.
I have a library of about 3,000 hi rez mostly Mch disc rips in JRiver - SACD .dsf files, BD-A, BD-V and downloads. I could have thousands more, like my CDs, but I no longer listen to those or much else in stereo. My media files are on 52 TBs of Synology NAS. That is the price one must pay for dealing with very large hi rez Mch music and video files. Ripped CDs are a relative piece of cake, storage wise.
JRiver handles all formats I am aware of (except Atmos/Auro) and it controls playback of rips and also discs on the PC optical drives. It can upsample CD's to 88k, 176k, etc. It can convert DSD rips to hi rez PCM for Dirac, and it sounds very good in doing so. The optional JRemote interface for iPad or Android tablets is terrific. Third party AnyDVD HD or similar software is necessary to play BD silver discs directly due to DRM, although MKV rips should also work.
JRiver also has a WDM input driver so that other sources on the PC - Netfix Streaming, YouTube, etc. - can play via JRiver as their default Windows "sound card". However, I have not gotten that to work with Dirac on the output side of JRiver due to conflicts with Windows.
JRiver license = $50, a bargain if there ever was one.
Admittedly, this is all a major shift in playback architecture away from a simple plug and play hardware player. But, something like this is necessary to be able to use Dirac in the PC. At least you will have the comfort of knowing you are using exactly the same EQ tool as the $20K Datasat prepro, Rolls Royce and Bentley cars. You will also have EQ working at up to 192k in the PC version.
Forget about the Exasound E28 DAC I mentioned. It sounds fabulous and I would not part with it, but the Mch version is $4k with balanced output. For me, that was the final step in totally eliminating my prepro, but it is a budget buster for you.
You would be outputting everything via HDMI into your AVR set to Direct Mode bypassing Audyssey, bass management and speaker distance correction there. Your AVR would then just function as a DAC, volume control and amps from the HDMI input.
Your AVR can also still accept player and TV cable/sat inputs, tuner, etc. but would then be using Audyssey, bass management, etc. in the AVR.
My TV goes through JRiver and Dirac via an HD Homerun Prime cable card tuner via Ethernet, but I do not think you will want to go there. But, it is not that expensive, and I no longer pay for a cable box.
So, I have a full HT/Music PC system. It is not perfect in features, ease of use, etc., but the sound is pretty awesome, the main reason for doing it. Yours would be a hybrid with the AVR still there in the system.
Save your pennies and spring for the 30-day trial of Dirac and JRiver when you can. I firmly believe you will be delighted with how it sounds. There are some technical challenges in getting all this working properly, but it is quite clear that you are capable of that and you might even enjoy conquering those challenges.
Incidentally, PC Dirac does not handle Atmos/Auro at this point. I am far from wanting or needing those yet as they lack significance for music currently. The Datasat prepro I mentioned does handle them via more than 8 channels of Dirac, with the decoding being done upstream of Dirac, which merely EQs the resulting signal for each speaker channel.
I was trying to explain in the form of asking the question
.Yes, above transition frequencies the brain does attempt to tune out the impact of the room more and more. But it doesn't mean what you hear is the direct sound. For one thing, the transition frequencies are a broad range, and not a single point. This is why you get pretty large swings for a while. Above transition frequencies, we hear the impact of reflections. Side-wall reflections for example widen the apparent position of the speakers. They push the sound closer to the side walls. Floor reflections change the timbre from 500 Hz on up. This is why you need a carpet in your room with thick fibers and backing. If your speaker has highly colored off-axis response relative to direct, that also mixes in.
I am having a hard time helping you as I feel that you have embraced complexity like no one I have seen
. As an engineer, I am confident you know the danger in that. A system with less moving parts has a far better chance of being designed right. Once you ignore that and string 10 resistors in series to get the value of one, then you open yourself up to a lot more effort and possibilities of error.Not only that, I and I think other members have too little patience to read and understand complex scenarios in the interest of answering/commenting in a forum post. We spend seconds reading something and if nothing comes to mind, or we can't grasp the idea, we move on.
So going way high in level, here is the right sequence for getting good sound in a room.:
1. Get speakers that have close off-axis response to on-axis. You have to start here. This is the thing that produces sound. Living with what you have and then try to fix it above transition frequencies is going to lead you astray. Importantly, this is the assumption behind fair amount of Dr. Toole's teachings.
2. Optimize the bass. For most people, this is the only equalization or correction you need to do because #1 takes care of a lot of sins above transition.
3. Make sure your room is not overly live. If you have learned to use REW, you want to measure Topt and target for 0.2 to .6 reverberation time. For home theater use, you can opt for closer to the minimum, for music closer to the maximum. If your room is too live, vocals suffer, and you are hearing huge contributions from off-axis response of the speakers which if you have violated #1, means bad sound.
3. Get rid of floor bounce with a carpet.
4. If your room is too live, the place to put absorbers/diffusers is front wall, back wall and ceiling. Roughly 25% of the room should be covered with absorptive material.
Once you have done all of this, then you can play with the target response. And that is best done using a simple solution of modifying it in the source like has been suggested with PC based Dirac, or in the path of the sub for poor man's, woman's, solution if you have to live with the AVR EQ. Alternatively if your AVR has simple EQ dials, move them one or two notches up and down. This is what I have done with my Pioneer AVR.
This is path through the forest.
? Audyssey XT32 Versus Dirac Live | Stereo Listening Comparison
* TEST (Dirac Validation): [POST]275750[/POST]
* TEST (Dirac Validation): [POST]275750[/POST]
That is a good fine but pretty bizarre and faulty listening test. For now, it is good to have this objective measurement showing what each system did:
The graph is red is Dirac. Notice the smooth, sloping down response which every bit of research says is what an EQ should do.
The two Audyssey curves, flat and reference, are both chewed up messes with substantially reduced subwoofer level. The authors proceed to fix the low frequency by manually adjusting the bass level as we have been suggesting here. THey then proceed to test for "imaging" and some such thing and declare the two systems sounding the same. I have a very hard time accepting that outcome. The test should have been done blind as the authors seem to have long experience with Audyssey. That bias needed to be erased for any kind of proper evaluation. And then, paying attention to frequency response because that is what an Auto EQ fixes. Imagine and such are a byproduct of the system, not the goal of the EQ (other than setting levels/delays the same which both systems do).
They have one lots of work but with faulty evaluation protocol I am afraid.
Good news is they clearly show why Audyssey doesn't perform well in the way 99% of the users utilize it per above measurements. And their own subjective assessment prior to manual intervention that bass response was not correct.
Oh one more thing . WHy is it that people don't know how to create graphs? Why have the scale be from 35 to 95 dbspl when the three graphs fall in 65 to 76 db??? You can easily mislead yourself into thinking all is well in acoustic analysis by use of incorrect scales.
. WHy is it that people don't know how to create graphs? Why have the scale be from 35 to 95 dbspl when the three graphs fall in 65 to 76 db??? You can easily mislead yourself into thinking all is well in acoustic analysis by use of incorrect scales.
That is a good fine but pretty bizarre and faulty listening test. For now, it is good to have this objective measurement showing what each system did:
The graph is red is Dirac. Notice the smooth, sloping down response which every bit of research says is what an EQ should do.
The two Audyssey curves, flat and reference, are both chewed up messes with substantially reduced subwoofer level. The authors proceed to fix the low frequency by manually adjusting the bass level as we have been suggesting here. THey then proceed to test for "imaging" and some such thing and declare the two systems sounding the same. I have a very hard time accepting that outcome. The test should have been done blind as the authors seem to have long experience with Audyssey. That bias needed to be erased for any kind of proper evaluation. And then, paying attention to frequency response because that is what an Auto EQ fixes. Imagine and such are a byproduct of the system, not the goal of the EQ (other than setting levels/delays the same which both systems do).
They have one lots of work but with faulty evaluation protocol I am afraid.
Good news is they clearly show why Audyssey doesn't perform well in the way 99% of the users utilize it per above measurements. And their own subjective assessment prior to manual intervention that bass response was not correct.
I generally agree with you about the tests, as well as the evaluation protocol. However, it is also important to note that the authors did not follow either manufacturer's instructions as to mike placement for the calibrations. They insisted that measurements only at the sweet spot were "better", and that is what they proceeded to do. The question of mike positioning for calibration is another variable for which little objective evidence exists that is public, or evidence objectively correlated to listener preferences.
I have no need to defend Audyssey because I have moved on to Dirac, which I think is a better tool in many ways. But, I will say, I never got results like these measurements myself with Audyssey. Unfortunately, I cannot prove it because I deleted that stuff. I never had a problem with shelved down deep bass using Audyssey in a number of rooms, as these measurements allege. Hypothesis: since I generally only used the individually calibrated Audyssey Pro mike, and these measurements did not, might differences in mike response for whatever reason explain these apparent differences?
The notion that Audyssey does "not perform well 99% of the time" is mistaken in my experience. For me, it never failed to give a decided and preferable sonic improvement over no EQ in a number of rooms, as I said. I think if you check back to numerous Kal Rubinson reviews in Stereophile, he would agree. I happen to think Kal is a reliable audio journalist, one of the few. I concede that Audyssey is not the latest and most sophisticated room EQ tool, however, based on my own subjective listening, even with Audyssey Pro calibrations. Kal would likely agree with me on that, as well.
I am surprised by that shelf just the same. I wish they had shown the uncorrected graph so we knew what it started with.
Sorry I was not clear. By 99% I meant the 1% who use the Pro kit and can create their own target curve. Otherwise, they will get what is handed to them (99% of the time) which in opinion, has always damaged the mid-range with that BBC curve, and anemic bass. I have tested it on many AVRs in a number of rooms and while occasionally I like it at first, when I listen some more I have to defeat it. But that is my experience. I am not saying at all that 99% of people are like me and just say otherwise
. We come from different places. I come from having experienced many other systems that work better to Audyssey, including manual optimization. Vast majority of people experience Audyssey as their first Auto EQ. By setting levels and delays right alone, there can be significant improvement which is what it does better than manual systems. It also gets rid of some low frequency resonances and that is good too. So it is not that it does nothing good. It is that it is not a complete, performant package so to me it always sounds like a step down.
Currently using Linux players. I also have an outdated MythTV database on my other server that is just sitting there unused until I get the hardware finalized. I have to save the MySQL database to an archive and import it into the upgraded version of MythTV. One of the drawbacks of such tools is the database system limits the flexibility.
At this time I would be more likely to invest in a new screen than a new EQ. The moire really spoils it. Will keep it in mind.
Went through a similar learning curve on Linux. Hoping to transcode all the old MythTV recordings from Mpeg 2 to MP4. Should have bought a tuner that had MP4 hardware encoding function built in. Do you know of one that also has a good tuner? The reception on my Hauppage 2250 WinTV card reflects the early tuner chipset..
I am currently running ~24TB in RAID 6 or ~16TB total usable. I also have another system that has my prior sever drives with ~7.5TB available for a RAID5 ~5TB total usable, so I am looking at maybe 20TB eventually. I do like the multichannel music much better than stereo but I do play my old library and occasionally transcribe some vinyl or tape including even VHS sometimes. Much of the older material I have is not available on streaming media and the cost would be prohibitive to replace it with modern recordings. Some of it is out of print.
Why upsample? Is it required to use the room EQ? Seems an unnecessary and wasteful step unless it happens on-the-fly during playback on hardware that can handle the load.
OUCH similar issues in Linux. At least Windows supports hardware well. Linux hardware support is spotty.
That is a slick way to get the best of both worlds without introducing extra A/D/A. Too bad the streaming apps are broken though.
I bought an HD Homerun stand-alone Ethernet thingy from a guy on Craigslist, plugged it in, and it sat there taking up a port on my splitter for a couple of years while I rebuilt my server and installed a home theater. I do not even know if the thing works. It burned power for a year before I finally unplugged it from the wall until I can get back to it.
Yes but was it simply a license upgrade or did they make a new product to implement Atmos?
Hey thanks for the tips and congrats on your system. Once I am done with REW and room treatments I will start looking into the server again. It was painful enough to get GPT and hardware video decoding working under Ubuntu that I just sort of dropped it in exhaustion when I could finally install the new server drives and play my video properly. I was not even using HDMI or multichannel until two years ago. This is all brand-spankin' new stuff to me.
A graph with a 60 dB span is what they recommend at the Shack, for the sake of uniformity when posting them (and that is a REW graph). Scale it at only 10-15 dB and it looks really scary!Oh one more thing
Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt
Ah. Saw the same thing on AVS. While I see the reason for it, depending on the topic at hand, scales need to be adjusted. Not 10 to 15 db but something more than 90% of the graph being blank. The ups and downs above transition can be and should be controlled using filtering so that it better matches our hearing frequency resolution.
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