"OFFICIAL" Pioneer MCACC thread - Page 118

Originally Posted by madturbosnake 

both subs when calibrating in mcacc, the only thing i noticed now that both subs are calibrated is more output from left sub than the right sub, have it set at 80 hertz, and all speakers set to small.

Originally Posted by Oli90s 

Helo everyone

How can I fully clear the MCACC memeory (settings) on my Pioneer VSX-527 model to get the factory settings? I tried to reset my receiver but the sound quality is not as good (loud) as it was before the MCACC test.

Thank you in advance

Originally Posted by rangerzx3 

Im also wondering about this. Any one have any answers?!

Originally Posted by Legairre 

The mics are calibrated to Pioneer receivers so you'll have to get it from Pioneer. You can order it here, just enter your receivers model and then select the setup mic assembly. http://parts.pioneerelectronics.com/index.asp

Originally Posted by ss9001 

I just answered this in another thread maybe last week for one of the lower VSX models. the higher models have the capability but the budget models don't. you'll have to check the manual for your specific model.

for example, in the SC-68/67/65/61/1522 models, you can do it by going into MCACC Data Management menu option, select Memory Clear & select the preset you want cleared. If your model doesn't have MCACC Data Management in the MCACC setup menu, I think you're out of luck

the VSX model I posted about, in checking his manual, it didn't have the Data Management feature - his was one of the ~$500 or less models. I don't know which VSX models don't have it, you'll need to read the manual if you own a VSX.

Originally Posted by ss9001 

^^
blame it on the wife!
hint - mine get re-packaged & put in one of the drawers where I keep all my accessories, remotes, etc. I label them as well in case my memory goes

Originally Posted by Blind Guardian 

Hi there & Happy New Year.
I have an SC LX 75 (European Version OF SC 55)
2 weeks ago an expert in Sound Calibration came and made his settings because i could not achieve good results.
He made some equalisation settings with a big spl meter he had and set also the levels.I think he did a 85db setting for all the speakers and 82db for the surround.I think is right.
I am satisfied but by reading the manual it says that we can make a manual Mcaac after having done a full or auto mcaac.
So i took the mic i ran the auto mcaac procedure at the ''keep speakers settings'' which are all small and the xover at 80hz.Then i set the equalizer at the settings as the calibrator had done (i had kept a copy printed).
I noticed that the auto mcaac with keeping the speaker setting does not include phase control as the all section has.
Must i run a simple full band phase control measurement?
Also must i run a reverb measurement?If yes with the EQ On or OFF?
Thanks!!!

Originally Posted by Blind Guardian 

No Answer at all ?

Originally Posted by ss9001 

did you look at the manual?

yes you can run the reverb and IIRC, you don't need to do it manually, it picks its own delay time based on the measurements.

to be honest, you know what you did manually, all I can do is guess what you did. I certainly don't know exactly what adjustments you made or where in the menu you were to make them.

I'll ask 3 simple questions.

if you had this pro calibration but wanted to tweak it, why did you re-run AUTO MCACC? you could have copied the preset he did to another preset, and tweaked settings in the new copied preset. that way you haven't over-written his work forcing you to start over.

why did you tinker with the calibrator's preset to begin with? If I had paid someone to do a professional sound calibration, I certainly wouldn't be so quick to mess with it until I did MY homework, read the manual & knew what I was doing to it.

if you ran the full AUTO MCACC for all 3 modes, Symmetry, Fr Aligned & All Ch Adjust, and if you had selected the full AUTO, then you would have automatically gotten the reverb compensation, standing wave filters, phase control.


before you do anything, 1) re-check the before & after group delay measurements, and reverb measurements to see if they are still there in the preset you worked on & 2) read the manual again on how to do these steps. it shouldn't be necessary to do the manual reverb adjustment unless you want to, you can re-run it automatically IIRC.

and finally, instead of asking "no answer?" after 2 weeks & 7 hours, you mean you couldn't re-read the manual & try to figure it out? it's there, all described how to do perform what you say you want to do.

I'm sorry but anyone who waits 2 weeks before asking why there's no answer, one kind of assumes that you hadn't bothered to try understanding what the manual says or tried doing this on your own. if you had tried figuring it out with the manual & still not sure what to do, you could have said that. just asking why "no answer" with a confused icon implies you expect someone to spoon feed it to you. I know I wouldn't have waited 2 weeks and done nothing to help myself! I would have copied the preset and gotten started trying out the MCACC adjustments to see what they do! then I'd know! it isn't that hard.

if you ran FULL AUTO you would have gotten everything. If you did a MANUAL MCACC, telling it to keep speaker settings, then I'm not sure what it has not done. In all the years I've owned Pioneer AVR's, I personally haven't done it that way. I run full auto and keep the presets. when I want to preserve the original, I run FULL AUTO MCACC in a new, clean preset so my original is untouched. did you do it that way or overwrite the one the calibrator did?

Originally Posted by Blind Guardian 

Thanks for your interest and your big post.
Even if you judge me for second time in that forum , i will answer you this:
I am an employee of a GM Company and work 67 hours/week. I could not write or ask something earlier because of not having time & because i wanted to try things on my own.Something that i could not do , and here i am i returned at the forum.
Anyway i don't judge you, i just tell you about me.
Now as far for your answer a BIG Thanks.
I kept what the calibrator did untouched in a preset.
BUT because even i like the sound after his work, and because i have the perfection ''illnes'' i just wanted to confirm his work.
Before him when i had done the Full Auto Mcaac myself the sound was bad.
So i called him and payed him 150 euros.
Finally my concern is if i must copy his work in another preset and just do a phase or reverb measurement without affecting his EQ adjusts!
Thanks
Cris

Originally Posted by ss9001 


fair enough

yes, that's looks like the best approach. you can manually do the phase adjustment. you can look at the reverb measurements but to do anything about them means re-running the Acoustic Professional EQ (what Auto MCACC uses) & that will overwrite the EQ your calibrator did. the reverb compensation in Acoustic Professional EQ adjusts the time after the mic 1st receives the sound until the sound for each freq band to increase in volume & level off. the time where each one levels off is used as the measurement time for increasing or reducing the freqs. so it's a test tone, measure, adjust, re-do test tone & re-measurement approach to arriving at the final equalizer settings.

this is hard to explain but I'll give it a try.

the reverb compensation automatically happens when you do Auto MCACC which uses it to do the Acoustic Professional EQ. If you re-run that, you will overwrite your calibrators EQ settings. reverb compensation doesn't accomplish anything if its a manual EQ because those freq's have already been adjusted.

you can manually do Reverb View in which you view the reverb characteristics the Acoustic EQ Professional did. or you can do Reverb Measurement, in which you actually do the measurement, so you can manually set the time delay to a desired point that you decide.

however, IMO, if the calibrator's EQ settings sound good to you, then there's no further need to do anything with the reverb measurement because he did all his EQ manually to begin with. the reverb adjustment is for telling Auto MCACC when to do its measuring & adjusting. it's superfluous for a manual EQ since it's not used nor needed because it was set manually by another method (SPL, hearing)

Phase Control: on the other hand, would be something for you to do since 1) that has no effect on your EQ settings and 2) adjusts every speaker's group delay so that sound from each driver arrives at your ears mostly in phase. that is a totally separate measurement that follows the EQ in Auto MCACC has no effect on it. and you turn on or turn off Phase Control by itself in the audio parameters. so do that one manually and then you can select Full Band Phase Control, Bass Phase Control or Off as you wish. so that one is one to do manually.

Standing Wave Filters: you didn't say if your calibrator used these in his manual measurements or not. if he did, you're done. if he didn't, you can manually run them but they are a simple form of parametric EQ for 3 bass freq's. if you don't have audio measuring software & measuring mic like XTZ Analyzer, Omnimic, REW, Room EQ Wizard, I'm not sure how you would do this by ear...you really can't know how to make adjustments to reduce bass peaks & valleys. you could try but it would be working in the dark without a real time freq response measurement. your calibrator probably could have or did use something like a real time analyzer in which case he could have set these, if he was familiar with Pioneer & knew it existed. if he didn't, you'll have to live with what he did in the graphic EQ section for the bass freq's. Standing Wave Filter picks 3 specific bass frequencies either automatically when you do Auto MCACC or you pick manually and works to reduce nulls or peaks near those selected freq's. that's why its impossible to do it manually without some form of real time analyzer. hopefully, your calibrator used them but if he didn't, if audio sounds good to you know, I wouldn't worry about it.

from your post, its very hard to know exactly what advice to give you so that you can use the tools yet not un-do your calibrator's work. none of us know exactly what he adjustment he used & did not use. you seem like a knowledgeable, nice person who just wants the best audio and looking for advice. I hope what I'm posting now helps you. its unfortunate that forum posts miss a lot of the details and you end up having to guess what the poster did or looking for. it's also unfortunate that you're caught between the things done manually & what the Pioneer would have done automatically.

I think my advice would have been to run full Auto MCACC THEN have the calibrator do measurements with THOSE presets & make his minor adjustments on each freq band. Rather than start from the beginning with a blank preset, he does his measurements, now trying to backtrack and use the other tools. maybe he did use the Auto MCACC presets as his starting point...this is not clear from your posts. if he did, you're in good shape but if he didn't, starting from a blank preset, then whatever changes you make are going to effect his work.

Hope this helps. as enthusiasts, the more experienced we become, we have more desire to see everyone get the most out of his gear. and when it looks like someone may be approaching something in a way that there not going to get optimal results. believe this or not, it's a bit painful when you try to help when you're not sure what they did, possibly could have done better or they've made more work for themselves.

your calibrator may have done a fantastic job, had used the reverb measurements, set up the standing wave filters & phase control delay as part of his calibration...and given you the best sound for your room or he may not have used them at all...we don't know. the end product is how it sounds & that's what's important. so if it sounds great to you, that's the main thing

so do the phase control, review the standing wave filters to see if he set them (you'll know because the defaults are 0.0) and review the reverb measurements (but these aren't changeable unless you re-run the Auto EQ)

I'm sorry my reply was blunt, but in the spirit of seeing someone who paid money, now asking for help, and we don't know exactly was done....I hope you understand why I posted the way I did. frustration more than anything that I wasn't sure how to help & do something positive with what you have.

Originally Posted by navaneethg 

@ss9001 - thanks for the response to this query. Below are answers to your questions:

The Walls : they are concrete blocks.
Ceiling : its false ceiling - i believe it is plaster of paris
Flooring: thin layer of carpet on concrete floor
Fabric : absolutely no fabric anywhere - no drapes, no curtains, no rugs - the walls are just dry-lock painted.
Utility Area : there is no physical divide between the 2 areas. The 150" projector screen acts like a partition.
Ceiling height (to false roofing): 7 feet

Originally Posted by Pioneer61 

I recently bought the Definitive bi-polar HT Package (BP-8060ST, CS-8040HD, SR-8040BP) and have set it up in my basement as show in the attached picture. The basement is quite large with a dimension of 22' x 42'. The Media Tower also houses a Pioneer Elite SC-61 (got an open box for $550 at local BB) and hooked it all up. The 2 BP-8060ST towers have built-in sub-woofers and are connected to the 2 Subwoofer outlets of the SC-61 receiver.

Without any MCACC calibration the sound out of the system was not up to my liking - it was too harsh and the female voices were very pitchy and very un-natural. The sound of trumpets sent my ears ringing for quite a while. Overall the sound quality was simply very metallic/un-natural.

I followed the steps outlined in the beginning of this thread - did the auto MCACC thing, then setup the front speakers to small and the subwoofer to yes and left the surround speakers as small and crossover to 80. Ran through the MCACC calibration, made copy of the captured MCACC data, re-ran the reverb measurements at 30-40ms as advised and after doing all this and returning back to listening to the same DVD music - no improvement - in fact it made it worse - the vocals are not natural. Music is either too loud and noisy and not smooth and pleasant.

I reset the receiver to factory defaults and re-ran the MCACC setup - this time, set the front speakers to large and subwoofer to No. This time around it was slightly better, but still the music is not smooth and pleasant; vocals are harsh and especially the female vocals and small tingling sounds are very harsh and ear piercing. I played Michael Jackson's Billy Jean and the music was somewhat okay but as the vocals kicked in, they were barely loud enough and very pitchy and squeaky.

I have so far tried different reverb measurements and crossover settings. I have even tried setting the speakers to large and the subwoofer to plus and even then no improvement. Subwoofer just gave me a headache with the type of boom it created in bass heavy music and movie scenes. Turning subwoofer down or setting it off does help, but then I'm loosing all the good punch and blasts and action from the movies.

At this point, I'm not sure if it is the Pioneer Receiver, the Bi-polar sound stage or the way the HT is setup in the basement or is it just me! Now is the time to turn for help and there is where you all come in. Please let me know what else I could try before I can make a final decision to keep or return the receiver and the speakers.

Your help is much appreciated and I thank you all in advance for your time.