Room calibration: YPAO, MCACC, MRAC, Audyssey - Which is the best?

[Horrabin]

Hi all! I'm wondering if any of you have an opinion about which of the different room calibration tools that the suppliers include in their receivers is the best. Have anyone tried different versions of these in their own living room or in a demo room?

I'm mostly interested to know the difference between the following:

YPAO - Yamaha's room calibration which is supposedly in the third generation, 10 bands EQ. Can be found in RX4600, RX1600, RX2600 among others
MCACC - Pioneer's room calibration, 9 bands EQ. Can be found in AX4AVi, AX2AV and others
MRAC - Marantz room calibration that you can find in SR9600, SR8500, SR7500
Audyssey MultEQ XT - Denon's room calibration which does configurations for up to eight different positions in the room. Can be found in A11XV, 3806, 4306

Any comments or opinions on any of these, or even comparisons?

 

[skinnyfat]

I may be on the wrong track here but IMO while auto setup routines are jolly nice to have and make your life a lot easier, it shouldnt be a determining factor when it comes to choosing a receiver. I have only seen one other auto setup other than my yammy's and to me they all aim to achieve the same thing and consequently I feel more than one beeing better than the other, they all improve the quality of the sound of the receiver they are equalising. Denon's latest certainly seems the most advanced but whether it has any benefits or vast improvements I cant say because I havent seen/heard it in action. The only way I can fault my yammy's EQ/setup is the way it reads and sets up the sub, otherwise fantastic!. It measured teh sub to be 7m from mic when in fact it was only 4m. I believe other brands have the same problem.

Skinny

 

[samjet]

having used the yamaha (dsp ax750) and denon 3805 auto set ups i have found that at best they are average especially with regard to the sub settings - imo the only way to do it properly/accurately is the manual way - measuring speaker distances and using an spl meter

sadly i could not do this and had the get 'help' from an expert - but even with the better denon auto set up the results are astonishing

 

[Gary_W]

Skinnyfat - Whilst older room setups did little more than set levels / speaker distances, some of the latest ones are promissing all kinds of things.

Until I bought a decent sub and an SPL meter, I had absolutely no clue whatsoever as to the effects of room acoustics on sound. The difference of putting a Behringer feedback destroyer in the system was astonishing. I needed a 22dB cut at 50Hz to get rid of a huge room gain spike which was absolutely ruining the sound quality.

The promise of the Denon Audysey system is that it can apply 12dB of gain or 20dB of cut at ANY problem frequency across the range (this info is purely me reading between the lines of the Denon review linked on the Audysey website). I'm not sure what the Pioneer or Yamahas do, but I am guessing they will be trying to do similar things.

As such, it is not so much the auto setup that is a deciding factor for me but the promise of auto EQ being able to compensate for a less than ideal room; you can put a £10,000 system in my room and it still won't perform at its best unless you get rid of the spikes in the response. As acoustic isolation foam tends to do little for the aesthetics, I am all for doing what I can to correct the problem electronically. So for me, these systems are THE deciding factor in a receiver. At the £700-£1000 mark, they all do 7.1 and have plenty of power. Seems like most of the new bunch switch HDMI. It is the way that they compensate for your room that will seperate the the best of the bunch IMO.

Gary

 

[shodan]

I've found the one on my 3805 to be uncannily accurate once I've run it and checked it with Avia and an SPL meter. Mind you the real thing is... I always up the surrounds and rears (7.1 system) because that is how I prefer it.
These auto systems are only as good as a programmer in a computer gubbins place! Your own enviroment and your own personal taste has to be taken into consideration.

 

[gnikolaidis]

My experience is limited to the auto setup of the Yamaha RX-V657. I think it did a good job in measuring distances and equalization of room acoustics, but it failed miserably on setting up initial parameters for my system. More specifically:

1. It failed to recognize that my setup consisted of very small speakers, I am using the B&W MT-10 mini theater system, registering all speakers as "Large".
2. Since it failed to recognize my speakers as "Small" it did not compensate for the subwoofer crossover frequency, leaving it at 80HZ an unrealistic setting since I was not getting any bass out of my system. (I had to manually raise this setting to 200HZ to get some bass response).
3. It muted the subwoofer output level to -7.5db, making the problem of the wrong crossover setting even worse.

So, I think these systems are in general a good starting point but to get decent results you still need your own personal judgement.

 

[skinnyfat]

Odd, my 2500 worked a treat. Only sub distance was an issue otherwise all settings, delay and EQ was great.