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The Audyssey Pro Installer Kit Thread (FAQ in post #1)

385K views 6K replies 258 participants last post by  Mike_WI 
#1 · (Edited)
For the Audyssey Pro FAQ click:
 http://www.avsforum.com/forum/90-re...kit-thread-faq-post-1-a-102.html#post22429521
 
The only thread I could find on this topic on AVS is defunct so I thought I'd try starting a new one. We shouldn't have to go to HTShack for this discussion, should we? There seems to be some renewed interest in Pro calibrations lately. So let's see if it flies.

I'm new to the game, and have only run Pro a few times on my XT32 equipped A100. I only ran 8 positions as the instructions recommend 8-10 for average-sized rooms as a good start. Can add more later. So far I'm very impressed with XT32 as it really kicked things up a notch from XT in my AVR4310 without Pro. With Pro so far I haven't tweaked any curves or played with midrange comp. I overrode the suggestions and opted for 80 Hz xovers. So far, my impression is that Pro adds further SQ improvements, smoothness, integration and polish.
 
#52 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by SoundofMind /forum/post/20677046


^Hi mj, here's an interesting tidbit. When I first ran autosetup on the A100 ( without Pro) I set both Velodyne DD10 subs vol to 11/99, which was apparently fine and sounded good. When I ran Pro the first time, I left them at that level as it appeared each just made it under the max level per the sub level test screen. It sounded good but the Pro Combined Subs curve on the Certificate looked real goofy with significant peaks and dips. I called Luke at Audyssey CS and he advised me that because the combined sub ch trim was now -10.5, that limited what Audyssey could do to smooth the overall FR. He also told me to ignore the phase warning on the subs, which are positioned half way down the front and back walls. I turned them each down to 8 and it completely smoothed the subs curve and trim is now at -6. And it sounds quite good indeed. It makes sense but seems confusing and contradictory to the old "if the channel trim's not at +/-12, it's OK" adage.

I checked this out with Chris at "Ask Audyssey" and here was his response:


"Sorry.. there is no technical reason that keeping the subwoofer trim to smaller range has any benefit. Unless of course the subwoofer somehow is not linear and performs poorly at higher settings of its volume control (very unlikely). There is certainly no harm in running the calibration again after lowering the subwoofer volume control. Just don't expect any miracles!"


In other words, he completely contradicts what Luke said.


Mark
 
#53 ·
Mark, I have no clue. As I posted, it seemed contradictory to what we'd been told by Chris.


I explained the situation in detail to Luke, he looked at my certificate, he told me what to do and I did it->much smoother sub curve.



BTW that is a very cool HT you have there.
 
#54 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by counsil /forum/post/20683149


...

After printing your certificate to CutePDF (thus creating a pdf file) you can upload it here by clicking on the paperclip...

Everything works except the last step. I have posted many pics etc but these 100KB pdfs won't upload for some reason.
 
#55 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by streetsmart88 /forum/post/20691503


I checked this out with Chris at "Ask Audyssey" and here was his response:


"Sorry.. there is no technical reason that keeping the subwoofer trim to smaller range has any benefit. Unless of course the subwoofer somehow is not linear and performs poorly at higher settings of its volume control (very unlikely). There is certainly no harm in running the calibration again after lowering the subwoofer volume control. Just don't expect any miracles!"


In other words, he completely contradicts what Luke said.


Mark

Follow up on Ask Audyssey with what Luke said; one of them is wrong.
 
#56 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by pepar /forum/post/20691848


Follow up on Ask Audyssey with what Luke said; one of them is wrong.

I don't really want to follow up because in my query at Ask Audyssey, I actually quoted what SOM said. My take is that Chris acknowledges that Luke made a mistake.


Having said that, how come SOM got a much smoother curve by following the "incorrect" advice of Luke? Dunno.


Mark
 
#57 ·
Look at my Audyssey Pro certificate above. I had a sub trim of -12 (the max) yet my subs were fully equalized.


I call BS
 
#58 ·
I recently purchased the integra dhc 80.1. Is it worth investing in the pro kit. I am bit hesitant since the cost of the pro kit is half of what i paid for the ssp. Any advise!!!!!
 
#59 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by rockydj /forum/post/20693012


I recently purchased the integra dhc 80.1. Is it worth investing in the pro kit. I am bit hesitant since the cost of the pro kit is half of what i paid for the ssp. Any advise!!!!!

Let me take a stab at this. If we don't consider the source, my own priority list for audio improvement is as follows:


1. Speakers

2. Acoustic treatment

3. Speaker and Listener placement

4. Good electronic EQ (your Integra 80.1)

5. Even better electronic EQ -- Audyssey Pro kit

6 and worse --- Power amps, cables, interconnects, snake oil, voodoo dolls, etc etc


Within the constraints of your circumstances (WAF, room, whatever), if you've done everything you can for items 1 to 3, I guess you *should* get the pro kit.




Mark
 
#60 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by streetsmart88 /forum/post/20693052


Let me take a stab at this. If we don't consider the source, my own priority list for audio improvement is as follows:


1. Speakers

2. Acoustic treatment

3. Speaker and Listener placement

4. Good electronic EQ (your Integra 80.1)

5. Even better electronic EQ -- Audyssey Pro kit

6 and worse --- Power amps, cables, interconnects, snake oil, voodoo dolls, etc etc


Within the constraints of your circumstances (WAF, room, whatever), if you've done everything you can for items 1 to 3, I guess you *should* get the pro kit.




Mark

I guess I should bite the bullet and order it. I have a earthquake cinenova grande 7 amp. I really don't want to go interconnects, cable and voodoo route. thanks mate.
 
#61 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by counsil /forum/post/20692468


...I had a sub trim of -12 (the max) yet my subs were fully equalized...

Wow, I hadn't noticed that.
Are you breaking the "If it says -12, turn those damn subs down and rerun autosetup!" rule?





Still tryin to upload my certs...
 
#62 ·
I am not taking one side or the other on this but just reporting my efforts to learn more and get better SQ.


I just called Luke back and questioned him on this issue again. He patiently clarified that Audyssey filters operate in a +9/-15 range. So sub channel trims near the extremes can limit how much Audyssey can do to cut the room peaks and thus flatten the overall response. In my case, I have huge peaks at 40 and 50 Hz in the room and with the sub channel trim of -10.5 the full needed correction could not be applied. This was negatively affecting the result. OTOH Luke says they do not want people needlessly chasing "0" trim but he likes +/-3 as a good general target. Interestingly, IME prior to Pro, my impresssion (no measurements, mind you) was that it actually sounded better to me when I got the sub trim closer to 0 vs -10. I'd attributed it to placebo.


irt Council's results, a couple of questions come to mind. Council, are you sure -12 is proper trim so you do have reference-level bass? Had you done any recent calibrations (without the Behringer DC with sub ch trim at less neg than -3?
 
#63 ·
So I guess it's better to go against the sub level trim section and set my subs lower. My last calibration I set each sub to the lowest recommended level of 71.5db but still had the levels pegged at -12 after calibration. I will have to try it out at each sub at 65db and see how it goes. I don't trust the after graphs, I go back ad check the response with my SMS-1 and they are not as flat as I was hoping but still sound good.
 
#64 ·
My subs read 79/80dB during the level matching screen (I am only using one sub out on my Denon). Therefore I expected Audyssey to come back with a -5 to -8 trim. It didn't. It came back with -12. I haven't had time to lower my gains and re-run Audyssey yet.
 
#65 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by mjaudio /forum/post/0


So I guess it's better to go against the sub level trim section and set my subs lower. My last calibration I set each sub to the lowest recommended level of 71.5db but still had the levels pegged at -12 after calibration. I will have to try it out at each sub at 65db and see how it goes. I don't trust the after graphs, I go back ad check the response with my SMS-1 and they are not as flat as I was hoping but still sound good.

I have been trying to calibrate my newly acquired dual subs as well and the trim is set to -12. I will ignore the 75db setting and start at 65db while doing the calibration tonight.
 
#66 ·
Hi again counsil. I am a bit out of my depth but my question had to do with the possibility that the poor XT32 results you were getting without the Behringer might have improved with lower sub levels.


It also looks to me per your subs "Before" response that your setup required much less correction than mine. I wonder if dialing in time alignment with the Behringer might have improved overall response in the room- do you have a pre-Behringer cert to compare to?


I'm still unsuccessful at getting my cute-generated pdf to upload. You posted your graph in the body of your post. How do you do that?
 
#67 ·
A "Luke tip": One can optimize the speakers, subs, acoustic treatments, etc. using the Pro kit by comparing the "Before" graphs from successive runs.


To make things go faster for subs, I unselected all but FR/L and CC, ran only 3 mic positions before calculating, then just viewed "Draft" results without loading the filters to the AVR. That went pretty quickly.
 
#68 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by SoundofMind /forum/post/20695364


Hi again council. I am a bit out of my depth but my question had to do with the possibility that the poor XT32 results you were getting without the Behringer might have improved with lower sub levels.


It also looks to me per your subs "Before" response that your setup required much less correction than mine. I wonder if dialing in time alignment with the Behringer might have improved overall response in the room- do you have a pre-Behringer cert to compare to?


I'm still unsuccessful at getting my cute-generated pdf to upload. You posted your graph in the body of your post. How do you do that?

The image had already been uploaded to home theater shack and he embedded the URL from that site into his post here. My images are always embedded because I upload them to my server and put links to them there in my posts.
 
#69 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by SoundofMind /forum/post/20695426


A "Luke tip": One can optimize the speakers, subs, acoustic treatments, etc. using the Pro kit by comparing the "Before" graphs from successive runs.


To make things go faster for subs, I unselected all but FR/L and CC, ran only 3 mic positions before calculating, then just viewed "Draft" results without loading the filters to the AVR. That went pretty quickly.

That's pretty cool and a way to use the kit for more ... real time .. measuring. For downright simplicity, though, you can't beat the XTZ/Omnimic solutions. I use REW and still drool over how easy it is to use those. The right tool for the job is not necessarily always the most feature complete one.


Jeff
 
#70 ·
Of course the Audyssey cert AFTER graphs are not real measurements. I'm trying to get more adept with the OmniMic system. But my OmniMic graphs do not sync well with Audyssey before OR after graphs so I'm messing up somewhere.


But I really need to focus on getting more day job work done and then still have some time at the end of the day to enjoy this great-sounding HT!
 
#71 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by counsil /forum/post/20695291


My subs read 79/80dB during the level matching screen (I am only using one sub out on my Denon). Therefore I expected Audyssey to come back with a -5 to -8 trim. It didn't. It came back with -12. I haven't had time to lower my gains and re-run Audyssey yet.

Chris has stated that the process used to measure level in the "dual sub level match" screen is not as accurate as the Audyssey "chirp" during MultEQ. I think that first level match screen just uses a standard pink noise tone for the subs. So the results can (and usually will) be different.
 
#72 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by SoundofMind /forum/post/20695642


But my OmniMic graphs do not sync well with Audyssey before OR after graphs so I'm messing up somewhere.

Are you using the averaging function of OmniMic and measuring in the same (approximately) positions that you do with Audyssey?


If you do this it will be much closer but I'm not sure how much smoothing Audyssey does with their graphs -- it appears to be a lot !
 
#73 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by SoundofMind /forum/post/20694917


I just called Luke back and questioned him on this issue again. He patiently clarified that Audyssey filters operate in a +9/-15 range. So sub channel trims near the extremes can limit how much Audyssey can do to cut the room peaks and thus flatten the overall response.

Maybe I'm not very smart but I don't understand this. Can anyone patiently explain the logic here? There are a lot of missing steps in this syllogism.


Mark
 
#74 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by audioguy /forum/post/20696028


Are you using the averaging function of OmniMic and measuring in the same (approximately) positions that you do with Audyssey?...

Yes, but averaging 3-5 measurements over a 4 sq ft area around MLP doesn't seem to make much difference to the curves.


I focused mostly on the subs and the response up to 200 Hz. I stretched out the FR screen so I could see more detail in the low freqs. The Omni "no Audyssey" graph shows a peak at 70 and 100, a dip between them and another at 120, about 10 dB variance overall. The "Audyssey engaged" graph looks MUCH flatter, within +/1 2dB except for a peak at 48-52 Hz of 4dB. Not bad, really. Averaging does not appear to be an option with the OmniMic Bass Decay screen


For my last calibration, with subs at -6.5, the Audyssey Certificate Subs curve initially showed about +/-1dB flat all the way till roll offs at the ends below 20 and above 120or so. I may not have finalized that properly as I was taking the wife to dinner and in a hurry. I later had a problem getting that file to upload to the A website so I recalled it on the laptop and recalculated it without adding any new mic positions. Strangely, it now shows a 2dB bump below 30 Hz, then the rolloff. But not bad at all, much better than the results with subs at -10.5 and even -9.5. Still trying to post graphs....
 
#76 ·
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