"Official" Audyssey thread (FAQ in post #1) - Page 194

Originally Posted by aaranddeeman

It is against the wall, like a couple inches from it.

Originally Posted by audyssey

The fact that your sub trim is reported at -2.5 dB and the other channels are high positive numbers tells me that the volume control on your sub is too high. Usually, the LFE input bypasses the volume control. But in this case it may not. So, I would suggest turning the volume control down on the sub to the 1/4 point or so and rerunning MultEQ.
Chris

Originally Posted by Peter Galbavy

Could both of you have problems with the internal cross over wiring in the front speakers ? Each driver may be fine, but what if one of the outputs from the cross over is out of phase - I would hear this as a really bad noise immediately, but then again maybe not in the drivers all covered a different frequency range...

Originally Posted by David Aiken

Is the front left speaker connected to the correct speaker connection. It may be connected to a pair of terminals that say Front Left but if your Onkyo has provision for 2 pairs of front speakers which can be switched between (Speakers A and B), do you have it connected to the wrong set of terminals for the front speaker pair you've chosen to run?

Originally Posted by JonFo

Regarding the Audyssey doesn't detect speaker X' problems, I have a theory based on some observations working with my large dipoles (MartinLogan Monoliths).

Even before having an Audyssey equipped device, I would measure my speakers and the room to tune my active crossovers. During those measurements (using ETF / R+D, REW), it was easy to see the effects on the impulse response that various speaker design and room induced factors had.

I believe some of you have speaker to room interface problems that smear the impulse response to the point of where the Audyssey algorithm can't measure a valid sample from that driver, which leads it to say it's not there.

Causes for this are highly reflective / refractive surface near the speaker or between the speaker and the mic. Things like shiny glass topped coffee tables are some of the worst, as they will create a secondary impulse well within the usual measuring window (10ms or so) which looks really funky on the impulse response.

Dipole or bipole speakers present several challenges, as their impulse responses are full of reflected spikes from the rear/side-wall reflections from their rear waves.
Again, depending on model and position, Audyssey will often claim an out of phase' for these classes of speakers due to weighting the rear-wave impulses (which are out of phase).

Other causes can be having the speaker too close to the edges of other vertical furniture surfaces, and those edges causing additional reflection points and diffraction.

Some repositioning of the speakers or treating the reflective surfaces in some way will generally clear this up (and improve the sound as well).

Look at the path the audio will travel between your speakers and the mic, look for highly reflective surfaces that are within less than 3 feet of that path (in all directions) and see if you can somehow attenuate the surfaces that are closest to that path. Rugs, fiber wall hangings, padded cloth furniture, etc. will all help.

At a minimum, moving the speakers (or the mic to another location) should be done before saying something is broken' with the mic or the receiver.

Originally Posted by audyssey

Hi Jeff,

I agree. For the benefit of the thread, SMPTE 222M (also referred to as modified X curve) has the following spec:

Flat to 2 kHz and then 1.5 dB/octave roll-off above that.

A variant of that makes it flat to 4 kHz and then follows a 3 dB/octave roll off

Yet another (rarely used) variant has a low frequency rolloff below 60 Hz.

The SMPTE curve was derived based on very specific listening room acoustical conditions including requirements for critical distance, volume, etc.

Since these conditions are difficult to match in a typical home listening room, the Audyssey curve is somewhere in between:

Flat to 4 kHz, then -2 dB at 10 kHz, then -6 dB at 20 kHz. Very similar to variant #2 above, but with a key difference being the double knee in the roll-off. That decision was based on very long experiments that looked at several competing variables including speaker directivity, critical distance, and perception of the balance between direct and reverberant sound as a function of speaker directivity.
...

Originally Posted by tocaje

Chris, if Audyssey is 'balancing' the sub to the rest of the system, would it matter which way you turned the sub's volume control?
For the above example, turning the volume control down 1/4 way might give a sub trim as 0 db or turning it up 1/4 might give a reading of -5.0 db. But does it matter as long as the trims are within Audyssey's allowable parameters (I think I read here that 12 or 15db is what Audyssey allows; but maybe that's just for the other speakers and not the sub.)

Anyway, my first run gave a sub value of +6.0 db, I turned sub's physical volume control up and next run was +3.5db. I turned volume up and next run was +.5db.

In all cases I had the exact same amount of bass and it was too earth-shaking. My Denon 1909 is set to 'LFE' only. I love what Audyssey has done for my listening environment (I've never had such an enveloping soundfield and yet detailed) BUT finally ended up just turning my sub volume control down and I'm perfectly happy.

(I might add that when I first started reading this thread and people were reporting not enough bass that I was leery of buying an AVR with Audyssey. But I decided whether Multeq worked or not, Dynamic EQ and Dynamic Volume were the way to go. I'm glad I did...everything is fantastic but just surprised to find I had too much bass and I do love bass, just not the amount I was getting.)

Originally Posted by umr

I find that very high quality speakers like Aerial 20T's that I work on in a typical HT environment follow the standard (2kHz knee point) SMPTE 222M curve very closely with zero EQ and sound wonderful at the listening position. I personally have more respect for the applicability of SMPTE 222M in the home. Deviating from Dolby and other recommended recording studio setups seems like a mistake based on my experience.

Of course the db difference being discussed here between these two curves is less than the error possible with your microphones.

Originally Posted by tocaje

Chris, if Audyssey is 'balancing' the sub to the rest of the system, would it matter which way you turned the sub's volume control?

Originally Posted by JonFo

I believe some of you have speaker to room interface problems that smear the impulse response to the point of where the Audyssey algorithm can't measure a valid sample from that driver, which leads it to say it's not there.

Originally Posted by audyssey

The fact that another pair of speakers is being detected fine in the same location would indicate a problem with the original speakers (wiring, drivers, etc.).

Originally Posted by Gary J

Do you think any of those three problems can be fixed by running Audyssey? Have you tried a speaker forum?

Originally Posted by srsly

No, these appear to be possible symptoms of why the Audyssey calibration on my receiver isn't working. This is the conclusion of getting advice from this thread on why Audyssey was failing to find my left front speaker and I figured since that's what we concluded that maybe someone here would have a suggestion on where to go next.

Originally Posted by javajaws

How does using Audyssey (using MultEq XT and Dynamic EQ) for your subwoofer compare to using something such as an SMS-1 or DEQ2496? If this has been addressed in the past 194 pages, please just throw up a post or page number...

Originally Posted by mrmbarrington

Greetings, all!

My apologies upfront for what I'm sure has been covered before, but after several hours of reading, I can't find anything that covers my situation very closely. Also, I've done my own speaker calibrations for years, so it's a little difficult to just sit back and accept whatever Audyssey proivides.

I have an Onkyo 605 and I am using a Harmon Kardon HKTS 15 7.1 speaker set-up (not a high end system, but an excellent bang for the buck). All the satellites are coming back with their crossovers set at 150 and the sub is set at 100. The satellites are rated to 105 (-6 db) by HK. I'm torn between just living with it this way (it sounds pretty good), and wondering if I'm missing something (based on all the Xover discussions so far) and bringing down the levels for the satellites.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Mark M.

Originally Posted by MBL

Anyone knows if Marantz AV8003 is prepared for a Audessey Dynamic EQ update (as the Denons?). Thanks in advance.

Originally Posted by pepar

From the Audyssey website - "How is MultEQ different from other equalization methods?"

Originally Posted by srsly

That being said do you have any suggestions as to how I figure this out?

Right now I have three possible problems.
1. Part of my couch is too close to the speaker.
2. Wiring in my speakers/drivers are messed up.
3. Wiring to the speakers is messed up.

Moving the couch to see if that's the problem is easy enough. But if that doesn't get me to speaker detection do you have any suggestions on what I can do to see if it's the wiring or the speakers themselves?

(sorry if someone already mentioned how, this is my first crack at a receiver with Audyssey)

cheers.

Originally Posted by MBL

Chris: Are you able to answer this one? Really appreciated.

Originally Posted by srsly

That being said do you have any suggestions as to how I figure this out?

Right now I have three possible problems.
1. Part of my couch is too close to the speaker.
2. Wiring in my speakers/drivers are messed up.
3. Wiring to the speakers is messed up.

Moving the couch to see if that's the problem is easy enough. But if that doesn't get me to speaker detection do you have any suggestions on what I can do to see if it's the wiring or the speakers themselves?

(sorry if someone already mentioned how, this is my first crack at a receiver with Audyssey)

cheers.

Originally Posted by mrmbarrington

Greetings, all!

My apologies upfront for what I'm sure has been covered before, but after several hours of reading, I can't find anything that covers my situation very closely. Also, I've done my own speaker calibrations for years, so it's a little difficult to just sit back and accept whatever Audyssey proivides.

I have an Onkyo 605 and I am using a Harmon Kardon HKTS 15 7.1 speaker set-up (not a high end system, but an excellent bang for the buck). All the satellites are coming back with their crossovers set at 150 and the sub is set at 100. The satellites are rated to 105 (-6 db) by HK. I'm torn between just living with it this way (it sounds pretty good), and wondering if I'm missing something (based on all the Xover discussions so far) and bringing down the levels for the satellites.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Mark M.

Originally Posted by javajaws

How does using Audyssey (using MultEq XT and Dynamic EQ) for your subwoofer compare to using something such as an SMS-1 or DEQ2496? If this has been addressed in the past 194 pages, please just throw up a post or page number...

Originally Posted by tocaje

Chris, if Audyssey is 'balancing' the sub to the rest of the system, would it matter which way you turned the sub's volume control?
For the above example, turning the volume control down 1/4 way might give a sub trim as 0 db or turning it up 1/4 might give a reading of -5.0 db. But does it matter as long as the trims are within Audyssey's allowable parameters (I think I read here that 12 or 15db is what Audyssey allows; but maybe that's just for the other speakers and not the sub.)

Anyway, my first run gave a sub value of +6.0 db, I turned sub's physical volume control up and next run was +3.5db. I turned volume up and next run was +.5db.

In all cases I had the exact same amount of bass and it was too earth-shaking. My Denon 1909 is set to 'LFE' only. I love what Audyssey has done for my listening environment (I've never had such an enveloping soundfield and yet detailed) BUT finally ended up just turning my sub volume control down and I'm perfectly happy.

(I might add that when I first started reading this thread and people were reporting not enough bass that I was leery of buying an AVR with Audyssey. But I decided whether Multeq worked or not, Dynamic EQ and Dynamic Volume were the way to go. I'm glad I did...everything is fantastic but just surprised to find I had too much bass and I do love bass, just not the amount I was getting.)

Originally Posted by audyssey

Hi,

#1 has no effect on detection. It will have an effect on calibration and that part of the couch should be avoided when measuring.

I still think it's blown drivers and the only way to determine that is to play wideband pink noise from a CD and listen. Ideally, you would hook up one of these and the other speakers that worked fine and listen for big holes in the response.

Chris

There are two basic (and many more esoteric) differences in MultEQ:

1) the way it captures data in the room and combines the multiple measurements in the time domain

2) the way it generates the room correction filters to give the proper weighting to the most important problems found from the measurements

The other methods use parametric EQ that has several shortcomings including the types of filters it uses and what they can do to phase. Also, most parametric EQ methods do not have a way to combine multiple room positions and weigh them appropriately

Dynamic EQ is a technology that addresses the problem of loudness compensation. It uses the MultEQ measurements to calculate absolute sound pressure level in your room for your system and then constantly adjusts the frequency response depending on the content it sees. The adjustments are designed to provide the same tonal balance and surround impression that you can now only get when playing at ear-splitting reference level.

Chris

Originally Posted by penngray

Does it have any sort of SSF below 20Hz. Even the SMS-1 for years had a hard SSF set at 18Hz. Which sucks for anyone doing high SPL into single digit frequences but on the other hand anyone building sub systems will need a protect filter down low to protect the drivers.

Originally Posted by audyssey

There is no built-in subsonic filter. But MultEQ does measure the capabilities of the driver on the low end and it will not boost beyond the limits it finds.
Chris