importance of room caliberration in avr

[sdurani]

How is having the violin in my room a fantasy?!?!?!?

Because you're conflating the original event with a facsimile (recording).

You seem to be okay with a tone altered version of the violin becasue you've bought into the lie that the room damages the sound of the instruments.

Other way 'round: you're OK with the room adding frequency response distortions that were never in the recording. I'm arguing that those distortions should be removed in order to hear less of the room and more of the source material.

BTW, it's not a "lie" that rooms damage sound, it's a fact. Which is why room treatments and equalization is used: to undo the very damage you believe doesn't exist.

 

[dazoy]

From my high-end audio experience all electronic room correction are just gimmicks. If you buy a robust well made AVR (marantz, NAD, arcam, rotel, anthem, etc) and get speakers that are balanced in sound production (there are many brands, the Andrew Jones Pioneer speakers are amazing for the price), and use decent cables you don't need electronic room correction. All you need are some curtains or soft wall hangings to cut down on room reflections.

All electronic EQ systems boost or lower frequency ranges and make instruments and voices sound un-natural. On not well built AVRs or not good speakers you may perceive an improvement but it is at the cost of fidelity to the original sound of the instruments/voice.

Best bet is to buy good equipment so you dont need eq correction and you can hear what was originally recorded and not some bloated tone altered version. This is the purists pursuit.

I run a Marantz sr6006 with a velodyne satellite speakers and a B&W subwoofer. Good quailty silver coated wire. After setting speaker distances and attenuation levels for the speakers on the AVR all room EQ is turned off.

I think you are oversimplifying the situation. Even if you have good speakers, etc, hw would you compensate for the time delay between speakers and subwoofer, and echo in the room? There is no perfect room specially the squarish rooms most of us have. diffusers and soft wall hangings help, but they can not compensate for time delay etc. The newer room calibrating software correct the flaws in the room by producing as straight a graph as possible for frequency responses and time delay. Yes, it bumps or reduces particular frequencies, but only where they are exaggerated.

In my opinion and experience it helps in getting as close as possible to what the sound mixer intended the sound to be like. Not perfect but closer to it, than without the room calibration, specially if there is a subwoofer involved.

All theaters and music arenas etc are heavily carpeted but still use the correction technology to correct for the time delay, dead spots and echo etc. Why should we not?

Cheers,

Saurabh