How much am I really losing in sound quality when I'm using a Denon X1700H which has a mid-range compensation dip that can't be disabled?

[KENI]

Hello everybody!

I'm thinking about upgrading and thinking about my home theater experience in general. I don't even have surround sound yet, I have a 3.0 system. But this got me thinking after having seen it being mentioned elsewhere.

Is the Denon X3800H the minimum I have to buy in order to have the ability to disable the mid-range compensation dip in the 2khz range?

It seems that this particular AVR would be my best option because I also don't want to switch to a different brand that doesn't use Audyssey, then I'm afraid I'll lose the Dynamic EQ option, which I find highly enjoyable and useful because I'm almost never listening at reference volume levels.

Happy to hear your thoughts on this matter, and if you have been through this before or have any personal experience to share!

 

[Todd Anderson]

Hi Keni, welcome to the forum!

First question, when you look at your pre and post Audyssey calibration results do you see a dip in the 2kHz region in the pre measurement graph?

I only ask, because if you do, turning off the BBC/midrange dip might actually correct a dip that your speaker manufacturer has purposefully baked into the crossover of your speaker. Does that make sense? In that case, you'll want to leave the dip on, regardless.

I agree with you, if you are loving the Audyssey room correction impact, stick with it. And that definitely means Denon/Marantz is what you'll need to look at.

 

[KENI]

Hey Todd, thank you. It was recommended to me by DJ, a friend of yours.

I don't remember seeing a graph. Wasn't it just place your mic here, there, and then it just finishes the calibration?

I may be misremembering. I also don't have any external measuring equipment which complicates things.

I use modern speakers and I don't see any dips in the measurements in the reviews posted (DALI Spektor 1).

I think first things first is I will need to buy a mic so that I can see in more detail what is happening with my speakers.

My main concern is that its not possible to disable this dip unless I upgrade my AVR, because the AVR applies a dip to the 2 khz range for all speakers. I guess what I cant hear wont bother me.

 

[Todd Anderson]

I *think* if you go into the settings, you can call up a before and after of a rather rudimentary graph.

Here's one of set of measurements... though to tell what is actually happening. @Sonnie Parker or @JStewart, do you have any experience with the dip that Audyssey adds?

 

[JStewart]

I have no direct experience with Audyssey midrange compensation, but it’s well documented that it’s a cut of 3dB at 2000Hz with a Q of 1.
@KENI , if you use any digital sources, like a computer for example, that had a parametric EQ, you could use the values above with a 3dB gain to reverse the compensation. This way you could hear it before buying a new AVR for the purpose.

There’s equalization freeware for computers if you need it.

The original intent of the BBC dip (midrange compensation) was to reduce harshness and there are those that like speakers with it baked it. Personally, it sounds comparatively dull to me with a cut in that frequency range. But we are talking a matter of taste.

Looking at the in-room response on the chart below which was produced from the same raw data as the chart Todd posted above and pulled from spinorama.org, a repository of known quality speaker measurements, it’s clear there’s no dip baked in to the speaker that’s centered on 2000k.

Also from spinorama.org, this is what you would get in room if the speaker was EQ’d to be flat anhecoicly, indicating this speaker responds fairly well to EQ.