Very good discussion all!

I can give a case for both sides using my own equipment.

1. I did an experiment where I hooked my bluray directly to a Bryston 4B (on loan) through my mains. The sound was amazing! For stereo I've never heard my system sound better. I never tried this with my Outlaw 7700. I've since upgraded my Bluray to an OPPO 103 so I can give it a go sometime.

2. With my current setup I've done the MCACC (Pio VSX81TXV) and sound leveling meter. I played several movie and music disc's with full eqing, direct and eqing disabled. Without eqing the sound was dull and lifeless. The full and direct sounded far better. However the full was more detailed than direct, both had there merits, but I perfered full due to this difference.

As for room treatment (RT), I had an opportunity to audition some music in a treated setup. It was very sweet sounding, perfectly balanced and dynamic. How much the RT made a difference was hard to say as I never heard the space without it. Also the system was very high end which I'm sure had as much to do with the sound quality and maybe more. I couldn't really say. As I don't use much treatments - WAF - I'm a little limited so I have to rely on eqing for most of my corrections. I do have a dedicated HT room with near perfect speaker placement for my 7.0 (no sub yet). This is why I'd prefer to have some eqing for my setup.

I'm sure that a properly treated room would sound as good, and possible better, than one without and using any of the current sound correction technologies alone. But most people I know don't have the ability or will to invest in the room. They use whats available to get their best sound, ie: MCACC, XT, Tact to name a few. I guess I fall into the second group as I'd never get RT past the wife. I'd gladly try a few home built RT's but bass traps would never fly! Perhaps some wall panels and the like but not much else. Damn this hobby

Time marches on. It used to be computationally impossible...then just expensive to "eq" a room. Now, most smart cellphones likely have enough dsp grunt to pull it off in real time and processor builders have a number of prefab solutions to choose from at various price/complexity points. I wouldn't waste a penny on room treatments anymore when you can achieve superior or equal results with a setup mic and a press of a button. One less battle with the significant other to deal with.

Those that want to continue believing that it can never get better than firebottles mechanically coupled to a spinning piece of plastic are after more of a lifestyle experience than trying to accurately reproduce what was recorded in their listening room. But I digress....

Ritz, I'm sorry, but I have to respectfully, but vehemently disagree with you. There is no electronic room correction system that can adequately compensate for a highly reflective room. I have experienced it personally. You will not find a recording studio anywhere that does not have sound absorption panels all over it. Auralex makes some very attractive panels that are a little expensive, but not out of reach. They made more difference in the sound of my system than any single component I have every purchased. I currenlty have Audysey XT32 and prefer the sound of the system without its attempt at room correction. I think the current buz about room correction is pure marketing by the electronics manufacturers who are trying to satisfy the consumers demand for the latest bells and whistles and want every possible "gizmo" included in their system. It is similar to the hype over expensive cables and power conditioners.

Fire Bottles. Spinning Plastic. No room treatment. Gizmo. Cables.
Don your flame suits and let the games begin!

Or to quote one of my favorite frivalous movies, Tropic Thunder:
"Here we go again...again."

This article sums up what I believe and why you should not base your decision to buy a processor on what type of room correction it has.

http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/blog/2012/10/03/rethinking-room-correction

Excellent Article XenonMan. I agree with it 100% and it adds some credability to my thoughts on the subject. The issues that I have had with room correction have all been bass related. This article confirms that is where the problems usually are. Acoustic wall treatments corrected that for me much more effectively than electronic room correction.

Excellent artical. Even the reviewer, of the 975, mentioned the use of bass (200hz and lower) eqing as the only necessary adjustment for listening. In his artical he mentions a Behringer product that he uses specifically for this purpose. However I believe this is for a sub only and I've yet to add this to my system.

That's fine. We're here to discuss our views and they will differ. It's hard to contradict the science and measurements, but that's not enough for some folks. To each his/her own.

That said, Outlaw didn't omit room correction because they thought it didn't matter. It's purely a cost and time to market consideration for this unit.

I might disagree with Outlaw from time to time (seems more often these last few years), but at least they appear to listen and don't summarily delete posts they don't like...which seems to happen on competitor equipment forums.

Best,

I don't think there is any disagreement that the 975 was designed from the get-go as a product to meet a specific price point and with a timeline that was shaped by other failures.

I have heard systems in very well treated listening spaces and while they generally sound better than a similar system in a room without any treatments it is not my experience that room treatments are the be-all and end-all -- virtually all professionals incorporate some amount of electronic correction into setting up a system. This allows for not just the "rough edges" to be smoothed over but it also is extremely helpful in creating the most convincing sound field for both two channel and multi-channel entertainment.

While a Pre-Pro w/o any electronic correction can certainly handle all the duties of switching and decoding the content it puts a lot more emphasis on proper physical speaker placement and acoustic correction. For rooms that are not just dedicated to a "perfect sound" the lack of electronic corrections is less than ideal.

I agree that many firms have foolishly choosen to market only the highest quality correction systems on the most feature laden products which is about as stupid as choosing only to offer anti-lock brakes on the highest performance cars --- fact is hobbyists most dedicated to tweaking the beejus out of their listening space are LEAST likely to benefit from the highest grade correction and folks with more pedestrian spaces could benefit the most...

Finally any comparison that takes Pre--amps out the mix altogether almost certainly are benefiting from reduced noise floor and increased gain more than anything else.

I might sound like a kill joy but I am the kind of guy that wishes wine reviews would put samples through a gas chromatograph to identity the copounds responsible for different flavors and audio reviews would stick to measurable characteristics instead of subjective terms like "sweet, open, airy" other ridiculous phrases...