Royal EQ Rumble! Objective comparisons of Dirac vs Audyssey vs REW+EAPO vs Nothing

I have always been interested in comparing the results of equalizing my speakers using REW, Audyssey, and Dirac and taking objective measurements for the comparison. I am not someone who is a validated trained listener, but I will also give a brief subjective opinion.

First off, my setup is as follows:

L&R speakers = HTM-12 v2 (Erins Audio Corner should have kippel ‘better than anechoic’ measurements up in the next while of the HTM-12 version 2)

Subs = Two 18” Mach5 IXL-18 subs in VBSS enclosures tuned to ~20hz I believe. Running off a Behringer NX6000D which I have already optimized the time delays and phases and EQed the subs already.

Receiver = Marantz SR7002 which has Audyssey Multi EQ

Room = ~32ft x 12ft. Speakers at appropriate equilateral triangle. Listening distance ~10ft from each speaker.

Measurements = Using the Umic-1 and REW and the moving mic method for the overall frequency response. I put 1/12th smoothing on the measurements as I wanted to keep a lot of the resolution for the comparison, but likely for real life one could use 1/6th or psychoacoustic smoothing. I also took measurements at the main listening position to compare the impulse responses etc.

Anyways, after a long evening of measuring, here are my results!

No EQ:
Baseline / raw measurements with no EQ:


REW + Equalizer APO:
Using the above measurements I then used REWs EQ function and based on variable smoothing I produced L and R filters which I loaded into Equalizer APO on the computer, remeasured and it gave these results post EQ


Listening test = Can tell it is more neutral sounding. Slightly better soundstage across all frequencies.

Audyssey:
I realize that my Marantz SR7002 does not the most recent version of Audyssey

yet I wanted to know how well it worked, and also if it got the same timing and delays and sub integration that I achieved by using REWs time alignment feature and confirming with numerous measurements.

I took the 6 measurements in the exact same position where I would eventually do my Dirac measurements so they theoretically would be making an EQ based on the same data.

Here are the Audyssey results immediately post EQ:


Wow, so it clearly made things worse, so changing back to a crossover of 100hz gave me this:


Ok, clearly the time delays where also off, (it added 5.5ft to the distance of the subs), so I took it back to the delays that I manually calculated and it gave me this (so just keeping the EQ portion, and manually doing the crossover and the delays):

(so it is just keeping the EQ which I could look at and see was: L = 50hz +1, 2k -1, 16k +4 and R = 50hz +1, 4k +1, 16k +4)

Playing around with the AVR EQ settings a bit more, I found that you can manually change the 9 preset filters of 63hz, 125hz, 250hz, 500hz, 1k hz, 2k hz, 4k hz, 8k hz, 16k hz yourself. I am not sure what the Q value on these filters are, but it does seem quite wide and based on moving mic measurements an EQ of seemed to be the best. After playing around using these filters (125hz -1(L) -4 (R), 250hz +2, 500hz +1 , 4k +1 8k = -2) I got:

This is the best I could get my older version of Audyssey to get it. And it was sad that I had to manually measure and EQ myself based on the 9 preset filters.

Hopefully this is just because I have an older version, but it was scary how bad vanilla Audyssey made it, and if I did not have a measurement mic then I would be in the dark with how to improve on what Audyssey gave me… wrong crossovers, wrong delays, and wrong EQ. Scary stuff.

Do new version let you manually see the EQ it is doing or allow you to put in the EQs that you want?

Listening test = I can tell the difference from no EQ, but hard if I was blinded to say which one was actually better.

Dirac:
Ok, now I went back to baseline and then used Dirac. Measured in the same locations that I used for Audyssey (plus a few more as Dirac allows more than 6 measurements).
Here are the result from Dirac.

Now I also know that Dirac uses a combination of FIR and IIR filters but this is where my knowledge becomes a little thin. I don’t know the best way to compare the measurements from the REW + EAPO group vs Dirac. I know that Dirac should help with the phase and the impulse response, but I don’t know what is the standard way to look at these results and publish them. But anyways here is a comparison of the impulse response pre and post:

Pre (No EQ)



Post (with Dirac)




What else should I be comparing pre and post Dirac?
I activated a 14 day dirac trial, so if people have other suggestions for measurements that I should obtain with Dirac active that would be much appreciated as I can get them asap before my trial runs out.

Listening test vs REW EQ = Has subtle improvements in imaging, overall tone and ‘neutrality’ of speaker not improved beyond what REW+EAPO did.

Final side by side comparisons:
Finally I measured the L+R speakers at the same time with the moving mic method and here is a comparison of all the methods:

Green = No EQ
Red = REW EQ
Purple = Audyssey (after changing back the crossover and delays)
Blue = Manual EQ via Audyssey
Orange = Dirac

Ok, and for people who just get way too anxious about seeing all the small imperfections. Here is the same graph but with psychoacoustic smoothing so you realize that some of the changes are not earth shattering:

Green = No EQ
Red = REW EQ
Purple = Audyssey (after changing back the crossover and delays)
Blue = Manual EQ via Audyssey
Orange = Dirac

So it seem like the ranking is:
Dirac > REW + EAPO > Manual Audyssey EQ = No EQ > Audyssey EQ >>> Audyssey sets EQ and crossover and delay

Take home points:
Don’t trust old versions of Audyssey! Like really don’t trust it! Do we trust the new versions?

You need a measurement mic and REW to even get the initial setup done properly.

Using REW for EQs (instead of Dirac) gets you 80-90% of the way there.

Dirac works very well, as many people have previously mentioned.

(Also, what else should I measure while I have access to Dirac?)