When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Heres how it works.
We have an important question for TechRadar’sHome Theater Week: Whats your AV receivers most valuable feature?
Lotsa of watts from lotsa channels?
Room correction processing improves sound quality in home theaters by compensating for “room modes”
The answer is none of the above: it is the room correction system embedded in its setup routines.
Room correction is a broad term that encompasses two major functions.
First, alas, a bit of acoustics.
Room correction processing improves sound quality in home theaters by compensating for “room modes”
So setting up a listening rooms speaker and listener locations to avoid the worst of these nulls remains important.
Whats the Upside?
The most obvious benefit of room correction is smoother, more accurate bass.
Audyssey MultEQ-X software
As a result, some bass notes will boom while others all but disappear not good.
What about the treble?
This is a thornier subject.
Dirac Live software setup
Many systems let the user set an upper limit to the correction process.
Another important feature offered by most room-correction systems is a target curve.
Many a divorce lawyers boat has been purchased with the proceeds.)
Trinnov’s Altitude 32 processor with Trinnov Optimizer
Dirac does much the same things as Audyssey, though its technical underpinnings are a bit different.
These incorporate sophisticated acoustic-correction technologies dubbed the Trinnov Optimizer.
The Full Bandwidth (up to 20 kHz) version is $100 more.
Trinnov’s custom calibration microphone
Theres also a JBL surround processor derived from a Trinnov model.
WaveForming is currently available on all Trinnov processors.
Most of the Rest
As mentioned, there are plenty of additional room-correction technologies out there.
Anthem Room Correction (ARC) is found on the Canadian firms AVRs, and is generally well-reviewed.
Next come subwoofers: selected woofs from Elac, MartinLogan, SVS, and many others incorporate bottom-octaves-only correction.
Many of these use a smartphone/tablets onboard microphone for the measurement process with surprisingly good results.
Numerous two-channel room-correction systems exist, both built into products and free-running on outboard computer or tablet hardware.
It also requires external DSP hardware to load and launch the resultant equalization-data files.
(Dirac also has a standalone version to run on a computer or other external hardware.)
Which is Best?
And Ive heard very impressive off-site demos of Trinnov.
However achieved, taming a rooms principal modal peaks remains room corrections first and biggest benefit.
And when you get the bottom four octaves right,everythingsounds better.
