JBL HDI-3600 Speaker Review

[Theriverlethe]

I'm just describing Anthem Room Correction. You measure manually.

I must have forgotten that completely.

 

[Alice of Old Vincennes]

My only experience is Audyssey and Anthem. I never liked Audyssey. I'll try Dirac in future due to Anthem high prices.

 

[Theriverlethe]

My only experience is Audyssey and Anthem. I never liked Audyssey. I'll try Dirac in future due to Anthem high prices.

I found ARC out of the box to be much less detrimental than Audyssey. Dirac is similar.

 

[Sal1950]

Well, there is no actual "distance" setting, it's just a weird user interface choice.

I have error experience with the system but just from the hypothetical case it seems if you
have to correct the softwares determination by 7ft to get good fr, somethings in error. It should be relatively
easy for the program to get these basics right?

I found ARC out of the box to be much less detrimental than Audyssey. Dirac is similar.

I don't think you can judge any DSP on it's OTB performance from a enthusiasts point of view.
They're made for Joe Sixpack that just wants an automated click click click result he finds pleasing,
and we would hope is relatively accurate.
Then thru various channels they all offer us tools to get under the hood and do it better.

 

[Theriverlethe]

I have error experience with the system but just from the hypothetical case it seems if you
have to correct the softwares determination by 7ft to get good fr, somethings in error. It should be relatively
easy for the program to get these basics right?



I don't think you can judge any DSP on it's OTB performance from a enthusiasts point of view.
They're made for Joe Sixpack that just wants an automated click click click result he finds pleasing,
and we would hope is relatively accurate.
Then thru various channels they all offer us tools to get under the hood and do it better.

I believe the error was coming from attempting to integrate multiple generations of subwoofer with possibly different delays. It could also be a phase issue with a ported vs. sealed subwoofer. I took the PB12 out of the equation and the SB2000 is much easier to integrate. I still seem to get a "smoother" response when I set the delays manually, but I don't have to go to 16ft when the sub is only 7ft away.

I agree that auto-correct systems should give a pleasing result out of the box, but it's pretty clear that Audyssey's default target curve is counter to Harman's research and even B&K's research going all the way back to the 70's. Audyssey attempts to adapt a theater curve to a small space where it's totally inappropriate.

 

[peng]

I found ARC out of the box to be much less detrimental than Audyssey. Dirac is similar.

I found ARC Genesis very frustrating to use. The interface looks nice but is very restricted, to power users who regularly use REW to check the actual results will find that it has too many guard rails. The trouble is if you make even a slight change in deep bass, and room gain settings (just to name two examples) it affects a lot, including in the frequency point where you don't expect it to be affected.

For those who just read the manual, marketing material, and forum member talks, just run it and leave it then they could be happy as the predicted curves basically always look good. It is only when you listen, with open mind unaffected by what you have been told, and/or run REW, you wouldn't know the results, while would work to a point, could have left plenty of room to improve.

In my cases, and I could see it in those posted their REW graphs, have the same issues I have been experiencing. It typically would take me days to tweak it something almost comparable to the results I was able to get after just a few hours of tweaking, same for Dirac. To me, Audyssey and Dirac are much more effective "out of the box" and can achieve excellent results in terms of accuracy if one invests a few hours to tweak. I am okay with the final results, just that it take a lot of patience and time. Those who don't check for the actual results but just go by ears, can definitely say it is the best, there is no way I can prove anyone wrong and when you go by ears, there is no right or wrong, sound good or bad anyway as it is 100% subjective.

 

[Theriverlethe]

I found ARC Genesis very frustrating to use. The interface looks nice but is very restricted, to power users who regularly use REW to check the actual results will find that it has too many guard rails. The trouble is if you make even a slight change in deep bass, and room gain settings (just to name two examples) it affects a lot, including in the frequency point where you don't expect it to be affected.

For those who just read the manual, marketing material, and forum member talks, just run it and leave it then they could be happy as the predicted curves basically always look good. It is only when you listen, with open mind unaffected by what you have been told, and/or run REW, you wouldn't know the results, while would work to a point, could have left plenty of room to improve.

In my cases, and I could see it in those posted their REW graphs, have the same issues I have been experiencing. It typically would take me days to tweak it something almost comparable to the results I was able to get after just a few hours of tweaking, same for Dirac. To me, Audyssey and Dirac are much more effective "out of the box" and can achieve excellent results in terms of accuracy if one invests a few hours to tweak. I am okay with the final results, just that it take a lot of patience and time. Those who don't check for the actual results but just go by ears, can definitely say it is the best, there is no way I can prove anyone wrong and when you go by ears, there is no right or wrong, sound good or bad anyway as it is 100% subjective.

I’m actually using a Yamaha receiver with manual PEQ at this point. My HDI-1600’s really don’t need anything besides some minor bass tweaks, but I managed to timbre match an SVS Prime Center fairly well.

 

[peng]

I’m actually using a Yamaha receiver with manual PEQ at this point. My HDI-1600’s really don’t need anything besides some minor bass tweaks, but I managed to timbre match an SVS Prime Center fairly well.

I have never tried the latest YPAO, but with Yamaha, at least you can use PEQ, and actually to get decent result I have to use my subs PEQ to help too, it is really disappointed to find that out. Even with Audyssey, I never had to touch the PEQ settings on my subs, and I put the 2X4 HD minidsp as soon as I went from Audyssey XT to XT32 SubEQ HT.

 

[Theriverlethe]

I have never tried the latest YPAO, but with Yamaha, at least you can use PEQ, and actually to get decent result I have to use my subs PEQ to help too, it is really disappointed to find that out. Even with Audyssey, I never had to touch the PEQ settings on my subs, and I put the 2X4 HD minidsp as soon as I went from Audyssey XT to XT32 SubEQ HT.

The fact that Audyssey wants $200 per unit to manually adjust their horrible stock curve is a complete non-starter for me.

 

[peng]

The fact that Audyssey wants $200 per unit to manually adjust their horrible stock curve is a complete non-starter for me.

I used the $20 app, got great results. Others have too, but to be fair, that's with the helo of Ratbuddyssey that is a freeware.

 

[Sal1950]

The fact that Audyssey wants $200 per unit to manually adjust their horrible stock curve is a complete non-starter for me.

Editor app is only $20 and does a fine job within it's limits.
But even the $200 sounds cheap to me compared to the numbers I see for Dirac

 

[Theriverlethe]

Editor app is only $20 and does a fine job within it's limits.
But even the $200 sounds cheap to me compared to the numbers I see for Dirac

I’ve used the editor app. Even with range limiting and a custom curve, I found that Audyssey created a “dead” sound in my room. I do have thousands in acoustic treatment at this point, so maybe Audyssey over-corrected.
The few times I’ve had Dirac available, I don’t think I’ve heard it produce a bad result. But I’m also not convinced it’s doing anything careful use of PEQ with good speakers can’t accomplish. Regular Dirac still screws up subwoofer integration pretty badly.

 

[gelv]

Could someone explain how hdi 1600 is considered to measure better than this
The waterfall on 1600 looks messy at the crossover while this looks good
Same with distorsion

 

[Theriverlethe]

Could someone explain how hdi 1600 is considered to measure better than this
The waterfall on 1600 looks messy at the crossover while this looks good
Same with distorsion

1600 has less vertical directivity error around the crossover region, which could make an audible difference. I can’t comment on the waterfall plots very intelligently, but neither speaker shows distortion or compression issues that would present an audible problem.

 

[Theriverlethe]

1600 has less vertical directivity error around the crossover region, which could make an audible difference depending on listener position. I can’t comment on the waterfall plots very intelligently, but neither speaker shows distortion or compression issues that would present an audible problem.