MC Receivers and Audyssey Room Correction
Tom Martin -- Sat, 11/08/2008 - 09:07
In Issue 188, December 2008, of The Absolute Sound (which subscribers should be receiving soon), RH reviews the Onkyo TX-SR706. He seems favorably impressed with this $899 receiver when hooked up to the Wilson Alexandria X-2s. The Onkyo has Audyssey room correction.
RH says "Audyssey seemed to clean up the problem frequencies while maintaining the fundamental character of the sound in my room".
AHC, a few issues ago, while giving a Golden Ear to two Onkyo receivers, didn't seem happy with Audyssey set up at least.
JV, in an email to me says "ergonomically it is a nightmare (including that vaunted DSP program)"
We'd love to hear the experiences of others who have tried this (whether in an Onkyo, Denon, NAD, Marantz or other product).
Audyssey is utterly fantastic. As REG suggested in his TAS article, it is indispensable to me. I would never again be without it. It is especially critical for proper multichannel imaging. The improvement it makes is huge, and it is easily verifiable: turn it off, turn it on.
Think about this for a second. The calibration mike pics up the signal in the room. But, that signal originates in the DSP of an AVP or AVR and goes through the AVR's DACs and analog output stages plus interconnect cables, amps, speaker cables and speakers, and finally into the room. So, the automatic EQ that is applied corrects for the net result of all of these elements at the same time, because Audyssey does not know or care what the sources of non-linearity are. The result is that the system is not only room corrected, but the voicing and integration of each channel into a sonic whole is dramatically improved. Each channel is EQ'ed for the same target curve at the listening area. This is also the secret weapon of much current inexpensive home theater gear that enables it to sound considerably better than you might expect.
Note that even identical speakers can sound different at different room locations. Audyssey and similar EQ pretty much do away with that.
Also note that Audyssey applies corrections in the frequency AND time domains. So, arrival time issues as a function of frequency in each channel are corrected as well as frequency abberations. This time domain correction as a fuction of frequency is on top of the single time delay for each channel to compensate for speaker distance.
This is really powerful stuff, yet junior versions of it are built into receivers starting under $1,000!! At the same time, it's built into expensive high end stuff like the Simaudio AVP and Wisdom Audio speaker systems.
I have immense respect for Tom Holman and the geniuses at Audyssey who have built years of research into this product. I also respect Anthem's ARC system as built into their AVP's, which is based on years of Dr. Floyd Toole's research. Other proprietary approaches do not seem to have the research pedigrees of these two.
Not having heard it, some audiophiles pooh pooh it, saying room treatments are better. But, unprofessionally applied treatments give variable and unpredictable results. Even so, the best treatments cannot do all that Audyssey can do or vice versa. I believe Audyssey can improve the sound of even an expertly treated room and that the ideal is to do both. Audyssey is useful for arrival time and frequency issues, whereas treatments work mainly on decay time issues.
Audyssey is an absolute requirement for my next controller.
In looking for a new controller, my priorities are (in no particular order):
Dolby TrueHD decoding
Discrete multichannel analog input
THX processing
Audyssey
Good user interface
Selectable crossover frequencies for each channel independently
Clean-sounding pass-through mode when listening to the multichannel analog input (from a multichannel SACD player)
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