Using Audessey Multi-EQ but manually tweaking 9 band EQ on Denon AVR.

I read over both the Denon manual (for various AVRs) and batpig's informative "Denon to English" document, but I'm still unclear on one point: Can you manually adjust the EQ after using the Audessey setup and still use all the Audessey "Dynamic EQ" and "Dynamic Volume" features? I'd like to be able to tweak the EQ a bit on my parents' system in order to compensate for some hearing loss in the upper mid range, but I can't tell if I can do this and still use the Audessey's Dynamic Volume feature.

The Denon manuals and batpig's document both seem to imply that you can do this with the 9 band "Manual EQ" feature, but I've been unable to confirm this. Am I correct that the best approach would be to use the "Base Curve Copy" function to first copy the Audessey's "Flat" auto-calibration curve to the 9 band EQ, and then make adjustments to it manually and select "Manual" for the Audessey's "Multi EQ" setting?

Is there a better way to do this? I'd like to simply make some coarse adjustments to the mid and upper-mid range frequencies while still using the Dynamic EQ and Dynamic Volume features.

Thanks for any clarification on this,

Larry

I was simply confused by the fact that the Audessey "Multi EQ" settings offer a "manual" setting that also offers the ability to "copy" the base curve. The document says:


This wording (as well as the wording of the Denon manual) did not make it clear (to me) that when you do this, the unit only "approximates" the Audessey's EQ filter curve with a simple 9 band EQ (this is what you're saying, correct?) I thought that it exactly copied the curve, then allowed lower resolution "adjustments" to the curve using the 9 band EQ. It doesn't "seem" like this would take much more processing power than using the Audyssey EQ by itself.

Is there some "official" documentation that actually makes that clear? I re-read the Denon documentation, and there is absolutely no indication that the "copied" base curve is only a low resolution approximation of the Audessey curve.

I agree that it would be great if you could use some simple tone controls on top of the Audessey correction, and I'm actually really surprised that you can't do this. The "all or nothing" approach of the Audessey controls are a bit annoying -- they allow for zero "personal preference" adjustment of the tone, which strikes me as an obvious omission.

Thanks again for all the feedback here,

Larry

Thanks for the replies.

I have a followup question:

If I set the Multi-EQ to "Manual" and tweak the settings there, I'll lose the high resolution EQ filtering, but can I still use the Audessey "Dynamic EQ" and "Dynamic Volume" features? The documentation (seems to imply that I can since Multi-EQ is not "off," but some posts here imply that this is not the case.

Thanks,

Larry

Sorry -- I just keep getting different impressions from reading different statements in the various documents, and it gets confusing to try an ingest all this at once. It's easy to forget various parts of what I've already read, and it's even more confusing when the statements appear somewhat contradictory.

For example, the "MultiEQ" section of the manual makes it clear that you must have MultiEQ "On" to use Dynamic EQ and Dynamic Volume, and it lists 5 "states" for the MultiEQ feature: "Audyssey," "Audyssey Byp.L/R," "Audessey Flat," "Manual," and "Off." This, to me, would seem to indicate that the MultiEQ feature was "On" unless you use the "Off" setting since "Manual" is one of the settings for "MultiEQ," and since "Manual" is not "Off." This in turn would seem to say that "Manual" would not prevent the other Audyssey features.

Even in your much better written "Denon to English" document, the "Manual EQ" section does not say anything about this preventing the other Audyssey features.

It's just really confusing to jump into this and try to understand all the permutations of the various settings.

Thanks again,

Larry