Dirac > Audyssey XT32 ... Sure, Always?

[peng]

I've already noticed that. How you yourself write the whole of the placebo effect.

Thank you for your comments, but I can't take credit on this placebo effect, and other bias related thing. There are plenty of threads on various forums including our own ASR, and lots of members much more knowledgeable than I have posted on the topic.

I could hear the difference. But why.

I have a Sony BDP-5100 blu ray player and a Magnetar UDP blu ray player. I think the Sony was $109 new and the Magnetar (Oppo clone?) is $1600. For some reason I can hear a difference between them with the magnetar being the better player. I’m bypassing the DAC in both running HDMI to my AV10...

www.audiosciencereview.com

Even on speakers, that almost anyone can hear differences between them, even between very expensive ones, yet our respected Dr. Floyd had in the past stressed the importance of blind tests, and that if not done blind, he wouldn't care what people said about the differences they claimed they heard.

An Enticing Marketing Story, Theory Without Measurement?

Correct. This is why it is important for at least the mastering, if not the mixing, of recordings be done in spaces that approximate average domestic listening rooms. This sometimes happens, but not always. This is a component of the circle of confusion. Hello Dr. Toole, a question on this...

www.audiosciencereview.com

As I mentioned more than once on this thread, I won't debate with anyone on their claims, because there is no point, people hear or think they hear and there is no way to prove them right or wrong, so I would just respect their (including yours obviously) claims and assume they heard what they said they heard. I would continue to limit my comments on the need to try and remove bias based on my own belief, that's all.

 

[GSM58]

Thank you for your comments, but I can't take credit on this placebo effect, and other bias related thing. There are plenty of threads on various forums including our own ASR, and lots of members much more knowledgeable than I have posted on the topic.

I could hear the difference. But why.

I have a Sony BDP-5100 blu ray player and a Magnetar UDP blu ray player. I think the Sony was $109 new and the Magnetar (Oppo clone?) is $1600. For some reason I can hear a difference between them with the magnetar being the better player. I’m bypassing the DAC in both running HDMI to my AV10...

www.audiosciencereview.com

Even on speakers, that almost anyone can hear differences between them, even between very expensive ones, yet our respected Dr. Floyd had in the past stressed the importance of blind tests, and that if not done blind, he wouldn't care what people said about the differences they claimed they heard.

An Enticing Marketing Story, Theory Without Measurement?

Correct. This is why it is important for at least the mastering, if not the mixing, of recordings be done in spaces that approximate average domestic listening rooms. This sometimes happens, but not always. This is a component of the circle of confusion. Hello Dr. Toole, a question on this...

www.audiosciencereview.com

As I mentioned more than once on this thread, I won't debate with anyone on their claims, because there is no point, people hear or think they hear and there is no way to prove them right or wrong, so I would just respect their (including yours obviously) claims and assume they heard what they said they heard. I would continue to limit my comments on the need to try and remove bias based on my own belief, that's all.

I think the theories and studies about the equipment are very good and interesting.
I value the auditions too. After all, what counts is what you are hearing from a certain system.
I've heard a millionaire system playing badly and other great ones.
Entry system will always have its limitations, but not everyone is worried about it.
I always seek balance in my system. I'm very happy with what I got with Audyssey XT32 + App Editor. In the end, that's what matters.

 

[Oddball]

I do appreciate the results that double blind test conducted by researches have established - and I do believe in those. They are simply objective and I try to think of myself that I would fall in the "educated listener" group , if such distinction was made in the test. But perhaps not. But then in our everyday life and desire to upgrade, we are faced with logistics limitations and can't really do double blind.

A theoretical (and maybe not so theoretical) example. I have a piece of gear, say Marantz AV-10, and I want to upgrade. I would consider REW graphs but ultimately would not want to choose the pretties graph but would really want to decide by ear between the graphs that measure reasonably well. The options are not many, but could be Anthem AV-90, Trinnov 32, or Storm 24.

While I have seen some members on various forums ordering and returning multiple processors to do the above, I really don't have time to do that. Calibrating each of those would take me forever to get it where I think it would be comparable. Between the 3 above, I think 2-3 months with couple of hours spend a day as I am not ARC, Dirac ART or Optimizer expert, so would need to learn all that . If someone else (like dealer) would calibrate, it would not make me comfortable that these are really comparable to start with. Furthermore, it will be difficult to get units calibrated quite comparably as they feature different room correction systems. The best scenario is to calibrate each to the best of its capabilities and one's preferences.

Due to this limitation, best I could do is compare one of the competing processors to AV-10 at the time. And even that is questionable as in Europe return policies are not very flexible and dealers will give you demo max 2 or 3 days (with the security deposit mostly). So reality is that I could do a single blind test (i.e. knowing what I am listening to) but for someone to switch between two units while I don't know which one is playing. To start with, I do have 50-50 chance to pick what I want (crave/desire/etc. - could be validation for AV-10 or respect for e.g. Trinnov 32) to pick - which is not great. And since I spend significant time on calibration, I already have clues how to differentiate two units as they will likely have some kind of differences in calibration.

Furthermore, should one test with or without video (which apparently takes at least 50% of the attention span). In real life use, that would be the case so it might make sense to test with video. Also, if you have e.g. 9.4.6 system then it probably makes sense to test that level of performance. Bad news is that paying attention to 16 channels at the time (and video) will be difficult - so what exactly you will hear in terms of differences?

Lots of questions and not many answers. I picked probably the worst component for comparing. Speakers should be easier and other stuff you can just buy based off the reputable reviews and pretty pictures.

 

[GSM58]

I do appreciate the results that double blind test conducted by researches have established - and I do believe in those. They are simply objective and I try to think of myself that I would fall in the "educated listener" group , if such distinction was made in the test. But perhaps not. But then in our everyday life and desire to upgrade, we are faced with logistics limitations and can't really do double blind.

A theoretical (and maybe not so theoretical) example. I have a piece of gear, say Marantz AV-10, and I want to upgrade. I would consider REW graphs but ultimately would not want to choose the pretties graph but would really want to decide by ear between the graphs that measure reasonably well. The options are not many, but could be Anthem AV-90, Trinnov 32, or Storm 24.

While I have seen some members on various forums ordering and returning multiple processors to do the above, I really don't have time to do that. Calibrating each of those would take me forever to get it where I think it would be comparable. Between the 3 above, I think 2-3 months with couple of hours spend a day as I am not ARC, Dirac ART or Optimizer expert, so would need to learn all that . If someone else (like dealer) would calibrate, it would not make me comfortable that these are really comparable to start with. Furthermore, it will be difficult to get units calibrated quite comparably as they feature different room correction systems. The best scenario is to calibrate each to the best of its capabilities and one's preferences.

Due to this limitation, best I could do is compare one of the competing processors to AV-10 at the time. And even that is questionable as in Europe return policies are not very flexible and dealers will give you demo max 2 or 3 days (with the security deposit mostly). So reality is that I could do a single blind test (i.e. knowing what I am listening to) but for someone to switch between two units while I don't know which one is playing. To start with, I do have 50-50 chance to pick what I want (crave/desire/etc. - could be validation for AV-10 or respect for e.g. Trinnov 32) to pick - which is not great. And since I spend significant time on calibration, I already have clues how to differentiate two units as they will likely have some kind of differences in calibration.

Furthermore, should one test with or without video (which apparently takes at least 50% of the attention span). In real life use, that would be the case so it might make sense to test with video. Also, if you have e.g. 9.4.6 system then it probably makes sense to test that level of performance. Bad news is that paying attention to 16 channels at the time (and video) will be difficult - so what exactly you will hear in terms of differences?

Lots of questions and not many answers. I picked probably the worst component for comparing. Speakers should be easier and other stuff you can just buy based off the reputable reviews and pretty pictures.

Great post !

Yesterday I finished the acoustics of my room and today I did the Audyssey calibration through the App Editor. I performed the eight positions with the AVR microphone + tripod.
I am very impressed with the result obtained. When I listen in multichannel it gets surreal.
I did a test in Pure Direct and it was also spectacular. I've never had such a cool multichannel sound. This Denon A10H is out of the curve for both music and movies.

I hope it lasts about 20 years... kkkkk

 

[Oddball]

Great post !

Yesterday I finished the acoustics of my room and today I did the Audyssey calibration through the App Editor. I performed the eight positions with the AVR microphone + tripod.
I am very impressed with the result obtained. When I listen in multichannel it gets surreal.
I did a test in Pure Derect and it was also spectacular. I've never had such a cool multichannel sound. This Denon A10H is out of the curve for both music and movies.

I hope it lasts about 20 years... kkkkk

I hope people don't misread it - I was using quite extreme example.

It's easy to pick the best graph, but then will it really matter if you can't hear the difference? Optimizer capabilities are far beyond Audy based on the information available and some limited graphs, but then I don't have golden ears either.

I certainly hope you will be happy for long time to come .

 

[XDM]

Not solid evidence but a piece of the long discussed knowledge on AVS Forum.
There are literally hundreds if not thousands of posts there over the years on the issue.
I know there was an "official" post by Audyssey supporting the belief buried in there somewhere.
I haven't done any homework on it in a LONG time but its sounding like it's becoming a bigger issue
now in the days of Atmos. Hell it may even have been redacted in a FW update lately for all I know.

https://www.avsforum.com/posts/61818172/

"The Audyssey engineers came to the conclusion that since humans can't hear sounds from behind or to the sides of them as well as they hear sounds coming from in front of them, with DEQ they added a boost to the surround channels as well as the bass as the master volume decreases. This surround boost is about +1dB for every 5dB under 0MV, so at -15MV your surrounds are being boosted ~3dB. This is pretty well known around AVS Forum."

Denon finally gave an update to turn the surround boost off (Surround Level Compensation), but only for AVR/AVC-X3800H and up: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...m-with-audyssey-dynamic-eq.36483/post-2354788

 

[Electric_Haggis]

The reason for all the dissent is basically that both (and ARC) are all generally very decent.

Don't sweat about it. Just go with whatever is on your brand of choice - then make sure your can tweak to taste after. There are WAY bigger priorities!

 

[Dougey_Jones]

Denon finally gave an update to turn the surround boost off (Surround Level Compensation), but only for AVR/AVC-X3800H and up: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...m-with-audyssey-dynamic-eq.36483/post-2354788

When was the update pushed? I’d be willing to try DEQ again if it was semi recently.

 

[Sal1950]

Denon finally gave an update to turn the surround boost off (Surround Level Compensation), but only for AVR/AVC-X3800H and up: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...m-with-audyssey-dynamic-eq.36483/post-2354788

When was the update pushed? I’d be willing to try DEQ again if it was semi recently.

So far I haven't been able to locate the On/Off switch that supposedly is available in the latest Audy for my Marantz AV20.
Great Pre/Pro, worst owners manual yet.

 

[Oddball]

So far I haven't been able to locate the On/Off switch that supposedly is available in the latest Audy for my Marantz AV20.
Great Pre/Pro, worst owners manual yet.

This update with surround level compensation was pushed out quite a while ago.

HEOS iOS App: 3.88.172
HEOS Android App / Kindle Fire App: 3.88.171
HEOS Firmware: 3.88.170

• New Feature: Access your Qobuz music directly in the HEOS app. (This feature will be available from July 30, 2025 - DELAYED)
• New Feature: Roon Ready - RCD-N12
• New Function: Add Audyssey Dynamic EQ Surround Level Compensation menu - AVR/AVC-X3800H, AVR/AVC-X4800H, AVR/AVC-A1H, AVR/AVC-X6800H, AVR/AVC-A10H
• New Function: Added 70Hz to the cross-over and other filter settings - AVR-S970H, AVR-X2800H, AVR/AVC-X3800H, AVR/AVC-X4800H, AVR/AVC-A1H, DRA-900H, AVR/AVC-S670H, AVR/AVC-A10H, AVR-X1800H, AVR/AVC-X6800H
• New Function: Allow saving of Dialog Enhancer values in Quick Select - AVR-S970H, AVR-X2800H, AVR/AVC-X3800H, AVR/AVC-X4800H, AVR/AVC-A1H, AVR/AVC-S670H, AVR/AVC-A10H, AVR-X1800H, AVR/AVC-X6800H
• New Function: Added a menu option to optimize the overlay GUI for 21:9 aspect ratio screens - AVR-S970H, AVR-X2800H, AVR/AVC-X3800H, AVR/AVC-X4800H, AVR/AVC-A1H, DRA-900H, AVR/AVC-S670H, AVR/AVC-A10H, AVR-X1800H, AVR/AVC-X6800H
• New Function: Add “Roon ready” on/off setting in the Setup Menu - AVR-S970H, AVR-X2800H, AVR/AVC-X4800H, AVR/AVC-A1H, AVR/AVC-A10H, AVR-X1800H, AVR/AVC-X6800H

• Fixed: When AirPlay is active in Zone 2, the Main Zone source changed from the current source to HEOS.
• Fixed: Line Input is no longer playing after unit comes out of standby.
• Fixed: The device randomly powers off during TV playback.
• Fixed: The audio coming from the subwoofer is out of sync with the sound bar.

On-Off for DEQ is in Audio menu > Audy.

Audyssey® AV 20

manuals.marantz.com

Not using Audy anymore, but sure will remember it for years given how much time I spent with it over the years . Also remember this one as added 70hz crossover, which was great.

 

[JRowland]

So far I haven't been able to locate the On/Off switch that supposedly is available in the latest Audy for my Marantz AV20.
Great Pre/Pro, worst owners manual yet.

It's under the Audio settings tab IIRC, might also be under the Audyssey tab within the Audio settings menu but I can't recall. You can select off, or 3 different levels of compensation. I liked off just fine.

 

[Sal1950]

On-Off for DEQ is in Audio menu > Audy.

It's under the Audio settings tab IIRC, might also be under the Audyssey tab within the Audio settings menu but I can't recall. You can select off, or 3 different levels of compensation. I liked off just fine.

Thanks gentleman!!! I'll getting ready to go grocery shopping here in a bit and will look at it again this evening.
I've had soo much going on around here lately I haven't really done any DRC yet beyond a manual setting for distance and level of the 11 channels I did when the AV first arrived. I've got plans to try a couple different DRC options going forward but I have to admit I really dread this tweaking crap now, when I was younger I found it fun, now it's just a royal PITA. I just want to listen to the music!.

 

[middlemarch]

Thanks gentleman!!! I'll getting ready to go grocery shopping here in a bit and will look at it again this evening.
I've had soo much going on around here lately I haven't really done any DRC yet beyond a manual setting for distance and level of the 11 channels I did when the AV first arrived. I've got plans to try a couple different DRC options going forward but I have to admit I really dread this tweaking crap now, when I was younger I found it fun, now it's just a royal PITA. I just want to listen to the music!.

I hear you on the PITA front. Same here. My suggestion, go directly to ART, run the baseline recommendation, sit back and enjoy the music. One and done. You can always tweak later, but only when you feel the interest, not because you need to. That's my experience anyway, such a blessed relief.

 

[Sal1950]

I hear you on the PITA front. Same here. My suggestion, go directly to ART, run the baseline recommendation, sit back and enjoy the music.

After I try the few other options I'm interested in, I MAY give ART a try.
Personally I find it obscenely priced for a piece of DRC software.
First thing after Audy+ $20 Editor app (I had excellent results with over the years) will be our own @OCA A1 Evo

 

[middlemarch]

After I try the few other options I'm interested in, I MAY give ART a try.
Personally I find it obscenely priced for a piece of DRC software.
First thing after Audy+ $20 Editor app (I had excellent results with over the years) will be our own @OCA A1 Evo

Trust me, I have been down that road extensively for the last several years. Can't count the number of revisions and optional configurations I've tried. Some were indeed very good and I thought I'd found my "forever" setup. But always unhappy with the complete bass picture. Once you've dumped $6K into a receiver, or over $3K on a center channel, just examples, spending only $800 for a piece of software that lets you go "aaah, there it is" and just listen finally, that to me was money well spent.

Not that the journey wasn't rewarding and sometimes even fun, sure learned a hell of a lot, REW and everything. But man, at some point you just want it to be DONE! For me, and many others, ART did that. It's the real deal, worth every nickel.

Kind of like tracking a car, you can spend a fortune on suspension setup, tires, brakes, etc., when what you really need, and what really matters, is training the guy behind the wheel. That's where the real performance improvements are found. Maybe not a perfect analogy, but I'm sure you get my drift. Not so much whatcha got, but how you use it.

 

[Sal1950]

Trust me, I have been down that road extensively for the last several years. Can't count the number of revisions and optional configurations I've tried. Some were indeed very good and I thought I'd found my "forever" setup. But always unhappy with the complete bass picture.

So from the above paragraph I would venture a bet that within a year or two you'll be looking for the next "reinvented wheel" that goes yet beyond ART. I remember the exact same things being said here about DiracLive + DLBC. I can guarantee Dirac will find a new way to once more up the cost of entry quite soon.
Trust me, I've been doing multich since around 1974 and have a bit of experience myself.

Maybe not a perfect analogy, but I'm sure you get my drift. Not so much whatcha got, but how you use it.

Agreed, that's why IMHO it may not be necessary to put $800 in the software

 

[OCA]

that's why IMHO it may not be necessary to put $800 in the software

Agreed! They get away with this pricing by DSP-locking the device. Even though we own the hardware, certain very capable filter slots are reserved for Dirac only, blocking users from running their own filters the hardware can clearly support. A better analogy is chopping off your arms first, then naming a premium price to be your talented driver.

 

[Chromatischism]

remember this one as added 70hz crossover

Grr, I want that on my X4500H.

 

[Sal1950]