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Audyssey's Next Generation of Room Correction (MultEQ-X)

Are you a current Denon/Marantz AVR Owner and if so what do you think of Audyssey's MultEQ-X?

  • I'm a current AVR owner. $200 price is acceptable. I've already purchased it.

  • I'm a current AVR owner. $200 price is acceptable. I’m willing to spend the money once I learn more.

  • I'm a current AVR owner. $200 price is too high. Anything lower is better.

  • I'm not a current Denon/Marantz AVR owner. $200 price is acceptable.

  • I'm not a current Denon/Marantz AVR owner. $200 price is too high. Anything lower lower is better.

  • I'm a current AVR owner. $200 price is acceptable, but I don't like the restrictive terms. Wont buy.

  • I'm not an owner. $200 price is acceptable, but I don't like the restrictive terms. Wont buy.

  • Other (please explain).


Results are only viewable after voting.

joentell

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@jhaider You are correct that the MiniDSP 10x10 is a closer match than the DDRC88A. I want to be clear that I mentioned the 88A because that's what I personally came from. If you plan on applying PEQ to more than 10 channels, you will need an additional MiniDSP device.
 

Haint

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You aren't incorrect. But, what if you already own a Denon X4700H and you like it, but you have an itch for better room EQ. You might look into those alternatives from Onkyo, but you'll have to sell your AVR and buy a new one from Onkyo. If you don't want to go through the hassle of selling yours, then you have to shell out $1000+ for the Onkyo. If you had no AVR, then just go for the Onkyo if you want Dirac. But, if you like everything else about the Denon and just want more tuning capabilities, this is a way to do it for $200. I'll be more specific in saying, if you already own a compatible Denon or Marantz product and just want to tinker and tweak, this might be the least expensive way to do it.

People actually do want to use a MiniDSP DDRC88A to add Dirac to their non Dirac capable system. That's what I wanted to use it for and I did use it that way for a while. Other people who are interested in buying it from me mostly want to do exactly that. I'm not even sure what else someone would use it for.
I meant no one in the rhetorical sense, in that it's an infinitesimally small market. Certainly there's exponentially higher demand for wholesale AVR upgrades, be it for better room correction, HDMI 2.1, more wattage, or what have you. I agree that the $200 license might make some level of sense specifically for X700 Series owners who plan to keep them until they die, but for the reliable upgrader or those with older models it's incredibly difficult to justify.

As I mentioned, tying the license to a single user and serial number actively discourages that customer from ever buying a new Denon/Marantz (as you're effectively flushing $400 in software licenses down the toilet--$200 wasted on your old unit, and another $200 buying a redundancy for the new unit). Factor in customers who own multiple D&M AVR's (who they should be rewarding for their loyalty, not actively spiting) and you'll eventually multiply that by 2x, 3x, 4x, or more.

I get that they're ostensibly targeting "Pro's" here, but that's a very small market, and the overwhelming majority of projects using Denon/Marantz are just installers dumping a bunch of Klipsch speakers in a partially finished basement. 9 out of 10 of them don't even bother running Audyssey and the 1 who does sets the mic on the floor or the seat of the couch. The people doing fully treated $50,000+ rooms with real measurement based setup are being upsold "boutique" electronics and speakers, not Denon's.
 
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joentell

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I meant no one in the rhetorical sense, in that it's an infinitesimally small market. Certainly there's exponentially higher demand for wholesale AVR upgrades, be it for better room correction, HDMI 2.1, more wattage, or what have you. I agree that the $200 license might make some level of sense specifically for X700 Series owners who plan to keep them until they die, but for the reliable upgrader or those with older models it's incredibly difficult to justify.

As I mentioned, tying the license to a single user and serial number actively discourages that customer from ever buying a new Denon/Marantz (as you're effectively flushing $400 in software licenses down the toilet--$200 wasted on your old unit, and another $200 buying a redundancy for the new unit). Factor in customers who own multiple AVR's (who they should be rewarding for their loyalty, not actively spiting) and you'll eventually multiply that by 2x, 3x, 4x, or more.

I get that they're ostensibly targeting "Pro's" here, but that's a very small market, and the overwhelming majority of projects using Denon/Marantz are just installers dumping a bunch of Klipsch speakers in a partially finished basement. 9 out of 10 of them don't even bother running Audyssey and the 1 who does sets the mic on the floor or the seat of the couch. The people doing fully treated $50,000+ rooms with real measurement based setup are being upsold "boutique" electronics and speakers, not Denon's.
Ok, I can agree with most of what you said. This entire industry is niche. I thought we all knew that.

I've told the Audyssey folks that they should rethink their licensing model.

I hope they are watching these forum posts. Instead of saying the obvious, what do you propose they change?
 

sarumbear

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iTunes "knew" you by your iCloud ID, called Apple ID then I think. As to how it worked, no idea. It just worked.
As I said it worked by checking the MAC ID of the network chip of the device. If you changed your network card your access to your music library was gone. It happened to me and I lost one out five allocation.
 

amper42

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Ok, I can agree with most of what you said. This entire industry is niche. I thought we all knew that.

I've told the Audyssey folks that they should rethink their licensing model.

I hope they are watching these forum posts. Instead of saying the obvious, what do you propose they change?

Denon/Marantz have already raised prices significantly and plan to do so again in Jan. They should offer MultEQ-X as a $50 option or include it for free. Other receivers are coming to market with Dirac included. If Sound United wants to be competitive they should include Dirac or MultEQ-X as part of the product. Trying to tie a $200 EQ purchase to each receiver is a losing strategy for the company. It will entice customers to move to other brands with Dirac and destroy brand good will. The aim of creating new receiver models is to entice customers to upgrade. Any peripheral sales should align with that strategy.

If Sound United had marketing vision they would include MultEQ-X free to all existing users as a reward for brand loyalty and entice new customers with the idea that by staying with Denon/Marantz you are buying into a company dedicated to adding value to your purchase even after the sale. If we were looking at that formula now, these discussions would be entirely about praising the company.
 

Trell

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Denon/Marantz have already raised prices significantly and plan to do so again in Jan. They should offer MultEQ-X as a $50 option or include it for free. Other receivers are coming to market with Dirac included. If Sound United wants to be competitive they should include Dirac or MultEQ-X as part of the product. Trying to tie a $200 EQ purchase to each receiver is a losing strategy for the company. It will entice customers to move to other brands with Dirac and destroy brand good will. The aim of creating new receiver models is to entice customers to upgrade. Any peripheral sales should align with that strategy.

If Sound United had marketing vision they would include MultEQ-X free to all existing users as a reward for brand loyalty and entice new customers with the idea that by staying with Denon/Marantz you are buying into a company dedicated to adding value to your purchase even after the sale. If we were looking at that formula now, these discussions would be entirely about praising the company.

The current Denon AVC-X4700H is 50% more expensive than my Denon AVR-X4200W (2015 year model) where I to upgrade today, and that is going to be more expensive?

For that I could have access to the Audyssey app which would be useful, more amplifiers I won't use, HEOS for streaming music that could be nice to have but I don't stream music today anyway, and better pre-amplifier output (I think, not seen 4200W measurements) which would be useful should I decide to use active speakers in my living room.

To me the current Denon pricing is not that attractive today. The new Windows app could have been an incentive but not from what I've read about it so far.
 

bo_knows

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Ok, I can agree with most of what you said. This entire industry is niche. I thought we all knew that.

I've told the Audyssey folks that they should rethink their licensing model.

I hope they are watching these forum posts. Instead of saying the obvious, what do you propose they change?
I'm willing to pay $100 for the software and I want to be able to use it on any new Denon/Marantz receiver, pre-pro that I may purchase in the future. This way, the engineering team gets paid and they can continue to advance the application.
 

Dj7675

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Ok, I can agree with most of what you said. This entire industry is niche. I thought we all knew that.

I've told the Audyssey folks that they should rethink their licensing model.

I hope they are watching these forum posts. Instead of saying the obvious, what do you propose they change?
Hopefully the backlash against really unfair licensing (IMO) will get them to reconsider. I mean licensing doesn’t follow the original purchaser or the hardware. Nuts.
 

Haint

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Ok, I can agree with most of what you said. This entire industry is niche. I thought we all knew that.

I've told the Audyssey folks that they should rethink their licensing model.

I hope they are watching these forum posts. Instead of saying the obvious, what do you propose they change?
The only way they'll even be included in a conversation with Onkyo/Pioneer is if X is included for free with every new XT32 series going forward. Even at that, their models being generally more expensive, their microphones being questionable, and XT32 being widely regarded as less sophisticated than Dirac is going to put them at a clear disadvantage. That is the absolute minimum they have to do though. I simply can't believe this wasn't intended to be a direct response to Onkyo/Pioneer securing Dirac, the timing would have to be a cosmic level coincidence otherwise. This was such an easy layup for D&M, it's honestly astounding how out of touch their decision makers are and how badly they managed to bungle a gimme.

With regards to existing owners (and lower series buyers), a $200 license is going to merit blowback (and poor sales) regardless, but would at least be somewhat justifiable if it was tied to (for example) your HEOS account, and that one time fee operated on as many Denon/Marantz as you own (or will ever own). The app as I understand it is already heavily DRM'ed with constant server side validation and would be trivial to attach an IP address to a "Residence" (like all the streaming cable services do) to keep installers from using 1 license in all of their projects. They would obviously sell far more software units at $20, $50, or $100, but tying it's use to a single serial number (regardless of price) is just completely braindead from a hardware business perspective.

As you said, this is a relatively niche industry in the grande scheme, which means a bulk of their sales are earned through reputation and word of mouth recommendation. Their present path will ultimately cost them a majority of their high end AVR sales, which doesn't seem a wise trade just to pick up a few hundred or a few thousand software licenses. Truthfully, D&M need to be cheaper than Onkyo/Pioneer, because right now they'd be a second choice even if X was free for everyone.
 
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joentell

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The only way they'll even be included in a conversation with Onkyo/Pioneer is if its included for free in every new XT32 series going forward. Even at that, their models being generally more expensive, their microphones being questionable, and XT32 being widely regarded as less sophisticated than Dirac is going to put them at a clear disadvantage. That is the absolute minimum they have to do though.

With regards to existing owners (and lower series buyers), a $200 license is going to merit blowback (and poor sales) regardless, but would at least be somewhat justifiable if it was tied to (for example) your HEOS account, and that one time fee operated on as many Denon/Marantz as you own (or will ever own). The app as I understand it is already heavily DRM'ed with constant server side validation and would be trivial to attach an IP address to a "Residence" (like all the streaming cable services do) to keep installers from using 1 license in all of their projects. They would obviously sell far more software units at $20, $50, or $100, but tying it's use to a single serial number (regardless of price) is just completely braindead from a business perspective. Their present path will ultimately cost them a majority of their high end AVR sales, which doesn't seem a wise trade just to pick up a few hundred or a few thousand software licenses.
I've already made them aware that people don't like the idea of tying it to both a single person and a single serial number. I also am not for that. I would rather the license be tied to the serial number only so that if you buy it for a particular AVR, it would go with that AVR when you sell it and you could possibly recoup a bit of the money.

A few things to consider. Audyssey and Sound United, parent company to Denon & Marantz, are separate companies. This is an Audyssey product.

The other thing is they're partially targeting custom installers. If they did not tie it to a particular unit, an installer could buy a single license and use it for every AVR they came across. In that case, they would probably want to charge a much higher price.

For me, the ideal scenario would be for the customer to be able to transfer their license to a new AVR, but it would deactivate it on another AVR. Kind of like how when you buy a Kindle book, you're allowed to have it on a few devices. If you add it to another device it deactivates on another. Maybe limit the number of moves to 3. Just an idea.
 

amper42

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I've already made them aware that people don't like the idea of tying it to both a single person and a single serial number. I also am not for that. I would rather the license be tied to the serial number only so that if you buy it for a particular AVR, it would go with that AVR when you sell it and you could possibly recoup a bit of the money.

A few things to consider. Audyssey and Sound United, parent company to Denon & Marantz, are separate companies. This is an Audyssey product.

The other thing is they're partially targeting custom installers. If they did not tie it to a particular unit, an installer could buy a single license and use it for every AVR they came across. In that case, they would probably want to charge a much higher price.

For me, the ideal scenario would be for the customer to be able to transfer their license to a new AVR, but it would deactivate it on another AVR. Kind of like how when you buy a Kindle book, you're allowed to have it on a few devices. If you add it to another device it deactivates on another. Maybe limit the number of moves to 3. Just an idea.

This is the problem with Conglomerates. They lose sight of what's in the best interest of acquired companies and their customers. Instead, they look for ways to milk Denon/Marantz for all they're worth until they discard them. There is no long term vision. From my view, I had to wonder why any company would want to buy B&W. They are the anti-audiophile company. :D

Sound United was probably thinking crap, all the other receiver companies are paying a licensing fee for Dirac and we don't want to. How do we keep raising prices and not pay Dirac. Oh, I know let's get Audyssey to build a computer interface and charge extra for it so we don't have to pay them either. Problem solved right? lol

What would have been better would be to allow Denon/Marantz to also include Dirac with receiver models. Audyssey doesn't have the team to come out with Mac/PC compatibility or UMik compatibility or support existing EQ curve formats. Everything will be a rebuild for them and they will want money that Sound United is reluctant to pay. In the end, Denon/Marantz lose customer goodwill and Audyssey will lose interest in developing the product. As an example, look how poorly the Audyssey App is documented now for Denon receivers. Finding Audyssey App directions is not easy. Or look at HEOS. Why it doesn't offer Qobuz support after all these years is mind-blowing.

If Denon was in charge I can't imagine they would agree to this arrangement or want the bad PR it brings. Heavy handed copy protection restrictions that license a copy of the MultEQ-X app to each receiver are dumb. They only make sense in a bubble outside of customer input. I would love to have seen the results of a customer focus group on this single receiver licensing scheme. :D
 
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Sal1950

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It's a shockingly consumer unfriendly move.
Not based against what Dirac charges. $200 for Live to Full, and another $500 for the DLBC bass app.
Other receivers are coming to market with Dirac included. If Sound United wants to be competitive they should include Dirac or MultEQ-X as part of the product.
Most AVR's come with Dirac Live, the downscaled version. If you want the Full app, that will cost you another $200 for the upgrade. Then if you want the DLBM bass management app, that will cost you another $500. As it stands most D-M AVRs come with Audyssey and the Editor update is only another $20.

At this point I need to see how much X will add over running Editor in Bluestacks emulator on my Win PC before I lay down the $200.
As I read things though, this is only a starting point for X, with more features, etc to come. BUT it's not promised that they all will be useable on the older gear. It takes a lot of internal processing power in the AVR to do this DRC and as the program gets stronger, I beleive this is where the older units like my AV7703 will run into trouble. Thats my only beef with the license, if I buy a new Marantz sometime in the future, I'd either want Audyssey X to come on it for free, or be transferable from my 7703. That's just like the $200 I paid to upgrade my AV7703 to Auro-3D, I've no problem with that, I believe it was worth the money and since all new models come with it installed for free.
Can't wait to download the new program and use it's free demo to see exactly what it's all about at this point.
 

Haint

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I've already made them aware that people don't like the idea of tying it to both a single person and a single serial number. I also am not for that. I would rather the license be tied to the serial number only so that if you buy it for a particular AVR, it would go with that AVR when you sell it and you could possibly recoup a bit of the money.

A few things to consider. Audyssey and Sound United, parent company to Denon & Marantz, are separate companies. This is an Audyssey product.

The other thing is they're partially targeting custom installers. If they did not tie it to a particular unit, an installer could buy a single license and use it for every AVR they came across. In that case, they would probably want to charge a much higher price.

For me, the ideal scenario would be for the customer to be able to transfer their license to a new AVR, but it would deactivate it on another AVR. Kind of like how when you buy a Kindle book, you're allowed to have it on a few devices. If you add it to another device it deactivates on another. Maybe limit the number of moves to 3. Just an idea.
Your first proposal fails to address multi-unit owners though, who are probably much more likely to be the enthusiasts that know and care about this. Almost certainly more so than people buying bargain second hand AVR's off Craigslist or FB.

There are also myriad solutions to curb installer abuse with a server validated app like this. As I proposed above, require an IP address and ISP to be registered as a "household/residence" like the streaming cable systems do. The same network and internet connection are already required for both the app and AVR. When the app attempts to set up AVRs out of the residence, force a verification process that can only be that can only be changed once every X-number of months. Set a reasonable soft limit of like 5 AVR's per license and require enhanced verification to expand it or to remove deprecated models. This is how streaming cable providers keep people from sharing subscriptions. Even if some installer is crazy enough to buy a static VPN IP and use a tether or pocket router for all his setups, they'd be caught by the soft limit. Not that that's a reasonable concern in the first place, the vast majority of them won't even use this, and those that do will have no problem tacking an extra $200 on their comically inflated invoices.

$200 for a single unit (transferable or not) simply isn't a reasonable cost given the competition and market realities. AFAIK Audyssey doesn't even have a business outside of their OEM licensing, so a cratering of Denon sells is going to mean a cratering of Audyssey sales. D&M owners by the way already paid substantial Audyssey licenses when they bought their AVR (I've seen XT32 estimated to cost around $200+ per unit).

Not based against what Dirac charges. $200 for Live to Full, and another $500 for the DLBC bass app.

Most AVR's come with Dirac Live, the downscaled version. If you want the Full app, that will cost you another $200 for the upgrade. Then if you want the DLBM bass management app, that will cost you another $500. As it stands most D-M AVRs come with Audyssey and the Editor update is only another $20.

At this point I need to see how much X will add over running Editor in Bluestacks emulator on my Win PC before I lay down the $200.
As I read things though, this is only a starting point for X, with more features, etc to come. BUT it's not promised that they all will be useable on the older gear. It takes a lot of internal processing power in the AVR to do this DRC and as the program gets stronger, I beleive this is where the older units like my AV7703 will run into trouble. Thats my only beef with the license, if I buy a new Marantz sometime in the future, I'd either want Audyssey X to come on it for free, or be transferable from my 7703. That's just like the $200 I paid to upgrade my AV7703 to Auro-3D, I've no problem with that, I believe it was worth the money and since all new models come with it installed for free.
Can't wait to download the new program and use it's free demo to see exactly what it's all about at this point.

This might be a good point if the "downscaled" Dirac in Onkyo/Pioneer wasn't already more advanced, feature rich, and customizable than XT32 with Audyssey X.
 
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Sal1950

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This might be a good point if the "downscaled version" on Onkyo/Pioneer wasn't already more advanced, feature rich, and customizable than XT32 with Audyssey X.
Then cuddle up with your preferred mix and move on.
 

Webninja

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Then cuddle up with your preferred mix and move on.
I agree, it’s odd to me how upset some of these posts are. Yes, Audyssey could have done a better job with pricing, but no one is forcing us to install this for our AVRs to function.

You don’t like Audyssey or D&M AVRs or how this is priced, vote with your wallet and make your next AVR another brand.

For now I’ll stick with the app, and wait to see how this add on tool progresses in features and maybe a better pricing structure.
 
OP
sweetchaos

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Poll Added.

Please vote!

Edit: Mistake option 3. I can't edit the poll anymore.
I'm a current AVR owner. $200 price is acceptable. $200 price is too high. Anything lower is better.
should be:
I'm a current AVR owner. $200 price is acceptable. $200 price is too high. Anything lower is better.
 
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amper42

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That Poll is screwed up. :D

I own two Denon 4700 receivers. I wouldn't spend $200 on them for a computer interface that's not Mac compatible and doesn't offer much more than the existing Audyssey app. The license requirement locking the software to a single receiver is not something I will support. My next AVR will likely be another brand after this announcement.

poll22.png
 

chych7

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I'll fork over the $200 if it actually provides $200 worth of improvement over what I currently have. Waiting to hear about that.
 
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