Sorry for the delayed response; shopping and all.
Originally posted by bossobass:
I must tell you that it reads much more like a marketing blurb than a white paper.
What difference does that make? The style of the writing is not important; it's the content that matters. If Meridian is presenting lies as facts, point them out.
This sort of info is certainly for the uninitiated.
That's a complaint? Is there a reason why basic concepts should not be explained in that paper?
They then admit that 'Indeed, EQ like this [inverse curve PEQ] only really works for one listening position.'
So, first they spend 2 pages telling us why room equalization doesn't work, then they casually admit that it works for the primary LP.
"Admit"? You make it sound like they were grudgingly forced to concede something there were trying to hide from readers. Hardly. They describe the limitation of using an inverse curve in order to explain why that technique isn't employed for their automatic room correction. They have no interest in a correction system that results in improvements at only one listening location.
Well, if it ignores a 'peak at 50Hz', whether it's just a poorly designed subwoofer or a boundary gain issue, I wonder how it can be thought of as better?
Because they're trying to address unwanted contributions from the room, not the voicing of a speaker. A bump at 50Hz can be the result of deliberate speaker design or caused by boundry gain. That's why they don't correct it. It would be like full-range room correction that compensated for a treble roll-off designed into a particular speaker. If I bought a speaker specifically for its warm sound, I wouldn't want that sound to be "corrected". Better instead to deal with what they know the room is adding (e.g., reverberation) instead of something that may be part of the speaker design.
We now discuss that MRC only concerns itself with low frequencies, again PEQ 101 for those who employ one.
Again, this isn't something that Merdian was trying to hide from readers. They've been very clear about what their room correction system does: address long decay times for frequencies below 250Hz. They've never pretended otherwise.
Next, under 'Filtering and Resonance', we finally get to the fact that MRC is a parametric equalizer that identifies peaks and flattens them to a less peaky state:
Not all peaks. That's what differentiates it from many other automatic room correction systems.
Now we read that the range is 15Hz-250Hz. What is the range of the SMS-1?
The SMS-1 has an operating range of 15Hz-200Hz, but for a single channel only. Since low frequencies (and their associated problems) aren't limited to the just the subwoofer, MRC is applied to all channels.
I'll just say that MRC is nothing more than a PEQ that uses measurements from multiple spots in the HT, then averages them into a single FR graph, which it smoothes and then fashions PEQ notch filters to attack the peaks from 15-250 Hz.
It doesn't average the samples because a peak and a dip can cancel each other out when added, giving the impression that there isn't a problem when in fact there are two problems. None of the better automatic room correction systems (Audyssey, H/K, Lexicon, Meridian) use averaging when correlating data from different listening locations. MRC also doesn't attack every peak under 250Hz, only ones with long reverberation times.
It seems to be the latest gadget for the upscale owner who typically throws the manual away and wants to push a button for setup, IMO.
Wow, you say that like it's a bad thing. Would that every electronic device were designed with such a goal in mind.
Certainly the same tool gives different results depending on what you do with it, but, as your own illustration points out, a capable sculptor like Rodin will create a better result than the same tool driven by a computer program.
Oh that wasn't what my illustration pointed out. I was comparing Rodin to other sculptors, not some automated sculpting device. The point being that few individuals amongst their contemporaries are capable of creating better results using the same tool. But let's use your version of the analogy and try to create better results than a computer program (i.e., let's take the "automatic" out of automatic room correction).
Help me out here...exactly how does they typical SMS-1 owner become the Rodin of electronic room correction and digital PEQ programming?
Never mind what a digital PEQ may be capable of, exactly how do us consumers amass the knowledge needed to take proper measurements, build appropriate filters and apply them; all in a way that results in improvements at more than one single listening location?
Meanwhile, Happy Holidays to you and your's.