Does useing an SPL meter make a difference?

[coolmilo]

Originally Posted by CasualKiller

Going between Audyssey or a manual calibration of levels I'd have to say stay away from Audyssey if you have the means to do it yourself.

Audyssey has no way to calibrate personal tastes or preferences and leaves audio sounding "empty" and somewhat generic.

Really??? That is not my experience at all. After I calibrated my system using Audyssey Pro, my system became much more precise and the LFE is very accurate and frightening at times. Music sounds terrific too.

[Driver_King]

Originally Posted by Woody

Audyessy calibrates to what it "should" sound like. It takes no personal preferences of course. It also does FAR greater calibration than an SPL meter does.

SPL meter can only account for speaker levels.

I had a bad experience with Audyessy with my Onkyo HT-SR505 and I just set it up manually. When I got my 805, I used Audyessy and haven't looked back. I don't think I could've made it sound that good unless I spent many hours messing with settings. I'm sure many people would agree that it sounds right on target.

[Driver_King]

Originally Posted by CasualKiller

Audyssey has no way to calibrate personal tastes or preferences and leaves audio sounding "empty" and somewhat generic.

I think the more generic Audyssey receivers can give you that result (Audyssey 2EQ) because they have less filters and less tests performed compared to higher end recievers that have Audyssey MultiEQ XT. That's just what I've noticed. Other people may have better experiences too, so I'm not completely positive.

[Rustmonkey]

I've found that if I let my reciever do the setup first, that its much easier to fine tune everything with the SPL meter afterword (minor adustments to get much better sound) - of course, this was using Pioneer's MCAAC setup - however, I just ordered an Onkyo 605 (263.00 USD shipped on clearance - SWEET ) - the Onkyo has Audessy as opposed to MCCAC (which is supposed to work better) so we'll see how I like the results before whipping out the meter and tape measure