Gaming Audyssey?

[mattkhan]

Evening

question, probably primarily at those who use both audyssey & BFD/SMS-1....

I decided last night to repeat my audyssey setup (the centre has always sounded slightly wrong in a way that is hard to put your finger on what is wrong) and at the same time repeat my BFD setup but this time taking readings from the same 8 positions consumed by Audyssey & filtering the average.

As a result I now have before and after graphs which show that my "audyssey off" setup tracks my house curve nicely but gets slightly ugly around the crossover while my "audyssey on" shows a nicer crossover but at the expense of essentially equalising my house curve away (i.e. the pre crossover region is quieter, the post crossover region is slightly louder). I haven't listened to this yet because IME when the sub isn't broadly tracking that house curve then it just sounds a bit crap.

So the question is if you plan on approaching this as a 3 step process (EQ-audyssey-EQ) then do you use a different approach to EQing on that 1st pass? What I'm thinking of is EQing flat first then running audyssey and then EQing for a house curve to avoid audyssey attempting to tame my house curve.

Just thought of a 2nd question... how do you approach the 2nd pass at EQing, do you sweep with no filters set or something else?

btw for those who like to use 1/3 octave smoothing on their results, I suggest just sweeping across the listening area and averaging instead. The extremities of the graph are (IME) similarly damped but you actually have a view on your whole listening area as opposed to an artificially induced smoothing.

btbtw I wish Audyssey was quicker, at least tending towards REW speed. It takes so long to complete and is such an user unfriendly (on the onkyo) piece of software, 1 misstep with the remote (easy to do as what else is there to do while it beeps away apart from drink ) and all that sitting there doing nothing wasted.

Cheers
Matt

[mattkhan]

re the 2nd Q.... one approach would be to simply remeasure with the BFD bypassed and then dial in a new set of filters to another channel, i.e. treat the audyssey'ed response as the raw response. However I wonder whether this will have a negative impact on audyssey with respect to how it has decided that it should EQ the response, i.e. I'm overlaying a set of filters on top of a set of filters that were designed (at least in part) to deal with a set of filters that no longer exist. OTOH it could be that the impact of this is actually vanishingly small as the majority of the job is done at frequencies above those that I'm dealing wth.

It's a shame you can't maintain multiple audyssey states, both in order to save time (i.e. experimenting with audyssey doesn't destroy your existing setup) and to enable you to compare n audyssey runs which appear to be interesting both theoretically (to demonstrate the repeatability of the results) and practically (to compare effects of different configs).

The above has been prompted btw by some music listening which confirm that I won't be turning audyssey off & that I have to determine the best way to EQ the sub with it in place. It (audyssey) has a relatively substantial impact on the sound making the no audyssey sound rather muddy in comparison.

Cheers
Matt

[russ.will]

FWIW, I Audyssey with the SMS-1 set to Preset 6 (Bypass) to get the distances/delays etc setup right. I then turn Audyssey off and EQ the Sub to my desired preferences and adjust phase etc to get the smoothest and flattest on-screen result.

I then re-Audyssey for it to sort out the time domain errors that you can't display on the 2D plot on an SMS-1 or REW screen and trust Audyssey's results. All I then do is add a bit of boost (actually it's less cut, so harmless) via the SMS-1 to fatten up the bottom end in one of the movie presets, but I leave preset 5 completely alone for music purposes.

On the SMS-1s display, some of the cuts Audyssey applies as a result of averaging the listening positions, or as a result of anomalies in the time domain, can result in apparent dips in the response. I've learned to ignore them as they just aren't audible in a negative sense. However if I swap seats with the wife, turning Audyssey off makes a big difference.

If I ever get REW to run stably, I shall have great fun with the waterfall plots that display time based corrections.

Russell

[mattkhan]

some waterfalls attached comparing results from the same position, with the same BFD filters and with audyssey on & off. I've cut the slices down to show the 150ms point (15 * 10ms slices) as it seemed to show the effect nicely. 2 things stand out, firstly that audyssey has applied a cut at about 25Hz which is responsible for the reduced house curve, and secondly that it's clearly taken steps to smooth out the response over the entire frequency range. I only swept upto 1kHz here so that's why the waterfall ends there.

Audyssey Off - 150ms
eq_yes_audyssey_no_waterfall_150ms.jpg

Audyssey On -150ms
eq_yes_audyssey_yes_waterfall_150ms.jpg

FWIW extending the waterfall out to ~300ms shows that absolute decay times are similar. Arguably the attempted cut at 25Hz or so by audyssey is even more pointless (as I want the house curve) as it's eventually overwhelmed by a natural, long lasting resonance at that point. Perhaps I should revisit BFD filters to attempt to target that more accurately in the first place? I wonder if audyssey is reacting to the extended decay as opposed to the house curve itself??

Audyssey Off - 300ms
eq_yes_audyssey_no_waterfall_300ms.jpg

Audyssey On -300ms
eq_yes_audyssey_yes_waterfall_300ms.jpg

Cheers
Matt

[AngelEyes]

I also like a house curve and use the SMS-1 1st and go as flat as I can bearing in mind this is what Audyssey will try and do anyway.

Then run Audyssey to let it sort things out around the crossover and then use the SMS-1 to put the house curve back in. usually this means removing some cuts or adjusting the levels a bit.

I have no idea if this is the right or wrong way to do things but the inflexibility of Audyssey when it comes to your own preferences is hard to get around.

Adam

[mattkhan]

Originally Posted by AngelEyes

I also like a house curve and use the SMS-1 1st and go as flat as I can bearing in mind this is what Audyssey will try and do anyway.

Then run Audyssey to let it sort things out around the crossover and then use the SMS-1 to put the house curve back in. usually this means removing some cuts or adjusting the levels a bit.

I have no idea if this is the right or wrong way to do things but the inflexibility of Audyssey when it comes to your own preferences is hard to get around.

Adam

Hi

I revisited this over the weekend and ended up following this approach. I went flat 1st and then ran audyssey, comparing the audyssey vs no audyssey sweeps shows that audyssey was doing v little (if anything) beneath about 60Hz or so. I then swept again with the BFD in bypass and then calculated a new set of filters to go on top of the audyssey results. Initial impressions are that the results are good, audyssey definitely makes a difference to the clarify of the sound while the BFD transforms the sub from a 1 note wonder. Whether it is better than before I don't know & since you can't store n audyssey results then I guess I'll never really know. One thing is certain though is that having a BFD allows me to put the sub somewhere I otherwise would be mad to put it.

Cheers
MAtt

[AngelEyes]

Originally Posted by mattkhan

Hi

I revisited this over the weekend and ended up following this approach. I went flat 1st and then ran audyssey, comparing the audyssey vs no audyssey sweeps shows that audyssey was doing v little (if anything) beneath about 60Hz or so. I then swept again with the BFD in bypass and then calculated a new set of filters to go on top of the audyssey results. Initial impressions are that the results are good, audyssey definitely makes a difference to the clarify of the sound while the BFD transforms the sub from a 1 note wonder. Whether it is better than before I don't know & since you can't store n audyssey results then I guess I'll never really know. One thing is certain though is that having a BFD allows me to put the sub somewhere I otherwise would be mad to put it.

Cheers
MAtt

As long as it sounds good, that is enough

[mattkhan]

Originally Posted by AngelEyes

As long as it sounds good, that is enough

definitely, the bass sounds tighter & the centre channel is no longer a bit lost as it was before.

it would be nice if audyssey/onkyo provided the option of connecting the receiver to a PC and supplied software so that it could farm out the task of displaying/tweaking/storing state to the PC. The blackbox nature of audyssey is mildly frustrating.

Cheers
Matt

[AngelEyes]

Originally Posted by mattkhan

definitely, the bass sounds tighter & the centre channel is no longer a bit lost as it was before.

it would be nice if audyssey/onkyo provided the option of connecting the receiver to a PC and supplied software so that it could farm out the task of displaying/tweaking/storing state to the PC. The blackbox nature of audyssey is mildly frustrating.

Cheers
Matt

I couldn't agree more. As good as Audyssey is, the decision to 'shut out' the enthusiast even with the Pro version, is a little condescending but then again imagine the support headache free reign would reap upon them

Adam