Audyssey MultEQ XT32

Duane

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Does anyone who has a component that uses the Audyssey MultEQ XT32 room correction technology care to comment on it, good or bad?

Trying to gather information before making a possible purchase. I'm most interested in hearing how it performs with music, basic tv audio and, of course, movies. I am leaning towards any of the Marantz units. Audio quality if first priority. I have an EAD processor that still sounds amazing and I'd certainly wouldn't want to have a unit that sounds worse.
 
My Marantz AV7005 has just MultiEQ XT. Same basic principle just less filter/correction points that XT32.

How much it has improved my system is a bit hard to say. It's been some years since I ran my previous Anthem AVM 20v2 processor. Perhaps more importantly, I don't believe it's negatively impacted the sound quality.

You can turn it off. As well there are a couple different curves too, but I don't recall the detail off top of my head.
 
Thanks. What I've read from online reports from users is a mixed bag.Some rave about it, others seem to dislike it and turn it off.
 
Some have become very used to what their speakers have sounded like and ANY room correction makes the 1st priority correcting the sound for your particular room so of course the speakers are now eq'ed. So by comparison the speakers will seem a little different, depending on how badly one's room elevates or reduces certain frequencies.

When you go into a modern newer theater to watch a movie, the sound is typically very close to how the movie producer/director intended it to be. And let me tell you I've been in some very excellent sounding theaters. That is what Audyssey is trying to do with your room.

And that is the question mark, your room. Some people put their system in a room or location they simply have no business putting it, then expect a room correction to wave a magic wand and make it sound perfect. A rectangular room is going to be the best room shape with without some oddly shaped vaulted ceiling. The front speakers should be at least 2 1/2 feet away from the side walls, more is better. The center speaker's tweeter should be on the same plane as the left and right speakers. You would be surprised how many won't do these basic things, and then wonder why the front soundstage is not very coherent sounding.

Anyway, Audyssey XT32. I have a pretty good room, and I've had MultiEQ XT and the XT32, and I've also set up the entry level Audyssey(can't remember the name) for a friend. XT32 is head and shoulders above, and is really quite stunning at times. With the old system, my subwoofer was boomy and seemed badly tuned at times but XT32 took care of that, and it is now seamlessly integrated by comparison. So are my 4 surround speakers, 2 are dipole and 2 are bipole, not exactly an easy set up for a room correction. But they sound better than ever, and the whole effect is clearly superior above Audyssey's other systems.

Also, my current receiver is a Denon, and they have more flexibility than my Onkyo with regard to curves and options. Onkyos tend to be cheaper though, so it was a trade off. But Onkyo has dropped audyssey, and now only has their own house brand room correction, which is very entry level and mediocre by all reports. So Denon is the only Audyssey option, but they really do a great job with it.

If you want your system to sound as close to how the movie is supposed to sound, XT32 is the way to go. But if you have an odd shaped room, or no wall behind your front speakers, or a vaulted ceiling, any room correction can only do so much.
 
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And that is the question mark, your room. Some people put their system in a room or location they simply have no business putting it, then expect a room correction to wave a magic wand and make it sound perfect. A rectangular room is going to be the best room shape with without some oddly shaped vaulted ceiling. The front speakers should be at least 2 1/2 feet away from the side walls, more is better. The center speaker's tweeter should be on the same plane as the left and right speakers. You would be surprised how many won't do these basic things, and then wonder why the front soundstage is not very coherent sounding.

Anyway, Audyssey XT32. I have a pretty good room, and I've had MultiEQ XT and the XT32, and I've also set up the entry level Audyssey(can't remember the name) for a friend. XT32 is head and shoulders above, and is really quite stunning at times. With the old system, my subwoofer was boomy and seemed badly tuned at times but XT32 took care of that, and it is now seamlessly integrated by comparison. So are my 4 surround speakers, 2 are dipole and 2 are bipole, not exactly an easy set up for a room correction. But they sound better than ever, and the whole effect is clearly superior above Audyssey's other systems.

So Denon is the only Audyssey option, but they really do a great job with it.

Thank you for your input. I've read where others have described how well the sub sounds after implementing Audyssey XT32.

However, Denon is not the only Audyssey option. Marantz' HT receivers and pre/pros have it as well. I auditioned the Marantz SR7009 yesterday and it was good. I'd have to audition it in the home environment to see if it's worth the change.
 
Oh that's right, I forgot about Marantz. They and Denon are both owned by the same ownership group. Marantz is typically priced higher than Denon and seems to be placed as the higher end option.

Concerning Audyssey XT32, I'd also add that the dialogue became more clear which was a big plus.
 
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Audyssey XT32 is very useful to improve speakers integration. Even more important is SubEQ option which is often comes with together with it. SubEQ allows integration of pair of subwoofers, and two sub's are way better than one. The side effect is that XT32 downsaples all high-res audio to 48K samples per second.
 
Audyssey XT32 is very useful to improve speakers integration. Even more important is SubEQ option which is often comes with together with it. SubEQ allows integration of pair of subwoofers, and two sub's are way better than one. The side effect is that XT32 downsaples all high-res audio to 48K samples per second.

I did a little reading on that, it's not Audyssey that does the downsampling, that decision is left to the manufacturers who usually go with downsampling as they'd need way more processing power otherwise, and would drive up the prices. It seems that Trinnov(high end room correction) also has downsampling as does the highly regarded Anthem version on some of their avrs.

All I know is the result in my system is exceptional and with some music it rivals my more expensive old school 2 channel system.
 
I did a little reading on that, it's not Audyssey that does the downsampling, that decision is left to the manufacturers who usually go with downsampling as they'd need way more processing power otherwise, and would drive up the prices. It seems that Trinnov(high end room correction) also has downsampling as does the highly regarded Anthem version on some of their avrs.

All I know is the result in my system is exceptional and with some music it rivals my more expensive old school 2 channel system.
Actually previous version of Audyssey XT (not 32), was working with audio streams up to 96K in all brands of receivers. It had less filters though, and could only handle one subwoofer.
 
Which room corrections have you heard? Have you heard XT32?
I heard XT32 and using XT in my HT setup. I also heard Dirac Live, and all custom filters using MiniDSP. It all comes to how bad room was before digital correction and how proficient was one who did tuning. Even in plug and play system like Audyssey choice of microphones positions and silence while measuring are critical.
 
And were you able to make a determination as to which version of Audyssey you preferred?
XT32 sounded beter - wider sweet spot for bass. But system had two subwoofers across the room. Actually downsampling is not a big deal for movie playing - I didn't find even one movie BD that uses 96K or 192K sampling rate (though music BD do often use high sample rate).
 
MulitEQ XT = 16 filters for speakers, 128 filters for subs, 8 measurement locations.

MultiEQ XT32 = 512 filters for speakers, 512 filters for subs, 8 measurement locations.

They both do the same thing just XT32 does with more points of adjustment/filters/resolution; particularly for the speakers.

As to downsampling, as long as the overall sound is better does it matter? No, IMO.
 
I moved my outboard DAC to a headphone system because my Denon 4311ci sounds much better with Audyssesy on and being sent a digital signal.

Does someone have an article related to the downsampling being a limitation for Audyssesy? I remember reading an article about a specific Marantz that does downsampling, but I haven't heard that it was a limitation of the technology.

In any event, most people have mainly 44.1 and 48khz sources. However, you can toggle it off if you think a specific hi Rez source sounds better that way.
 
It's generally a case of DSP horsepower, not limited to Marantz. I don't believe it's inherent to Audyssey.
 
I moved my outboard DAC to a headphone system because my Denon 4311ci sounds much better with Audyssesy on and being sent a digital signal.

Does someone have an article related to the downsampling being a limitation for Audyssesy? I remember reading an article about a specific Marantz that does downsampling, but I haven't heard that it was a limitation of the technology.

In any event, most people have mainly 44.1 and 48khz sources. However, you can toggle it off if you think a specific hi Rez source sounds better that way.
Main complains are about downsampling from DSD64 to 44.1 PCM while playing SACD, which completely erases all advantages of DSD encoding. PCM processing at 88.2 would be almost equivalent to a native DSD.
 
XT32 in a good room is pretty magical. I'm definitely a Yamaha man and I have used numerous Yamaha HT receivers but YPAO has never done for my room what XT32 did. I have had two Onkyo 818s and I'm using a Denon 4520 now. Yamaha's latest (2014) with YPAO volume are their best yet but (still) not up to the 818. The Denon is amazing except for the very audible muting artifacts when the DSP switches modes; I tried an X4000 and sent it back because of that. I tried one machine, I think an Onkyo 609, with "mere" Audyssey XT and it was adequate but not amazing. Of course, those Audyssey versions tend to be in lower end machines with lesser bills-of-material so that could be it. I have't tried a high-end machine with 2EQ or XT like an Onkyo 905, although I did have a Denon 3808 with XT now that I think of it, but never gave it a full audition.
 
Main complains are about downsampling from DSD64 to 44.1 PCM while playing SACD, which completely erases all advantages of DSD encoding. PCM processing at 88.2 would be almost equivalent to a native DSD.
do you have a link related to this issue?. As I mentioned, if it sounds better with some material without Audyssey turned on, you can toggle it off in most systems. Personally, I mainly listen to streaming sources and ripped CDs and they sound substantially better with it on.
 
I did a little more research on the down sampling in Audyssey. Here is an quote from Facebook that I found on AVS Forum:

Chris Kyriakakis MultEQ (all flavors) has no problem processing any bit depth or sampling rate. However, the processing requirements of any digital process go up by a huge amount when you go to higher rates. That means there is not enough processing power in the included DSP chips to handle it. One solution would be for manufacturers to include another DSP, but that is quite costly and they have not yet done it.

Marshall Guthrie So, how are high bitrates handled in AVRs without the powerful DSP chips? Are they downsampled? Is there a way to tell if we are purchasing an AVR capable of applying Audyssey to higher bitrates?

Chris Kyriakakis Some downsample and others pass it to Audyssey as is. Unfortunately I don't know of an easy way to check that. Perhaps their tech support guys would know. Or maybe it's hidden in the manual somewhere.

But let’s not forget some basic things: There is no loudspeaker that can reproduce frequencies above 30 kHz (I’m being generous here). There is also no mic that can capture frequencies above 30 kHz. So an algorithm that is in the business of measuring sound from speakers using microphones receives information up to 30 kHz (did I mention I was being generous?).

That would imply that there is no need for this algorithm to do anything beyond 60 kHz sampling rates per Nyquist’s Theorem. There is no information from the room that would tell the filters what to do up there.

So, yes, MultEQ will process high-resolution signals without having to downsample them. It’s just that it won’t be doing any “correction” at such high frequencies because there is nothing to correct.
 
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