Is MCACC/calibration necessary? (1 Viewer)

[Rob_Z]

Let's face it, before about 6 months ago nobody new anything about auto calibration (this is in reference to the common joe, me).

I mean home theater has been around for 10 years or more and millions of owners have gotten by. If Pioneer didn't come out with MCACC, I would have bought a receiver/pre/pro hooked it up and not thought twice. I bet that 90% of the people out there simply hooked up the components and let it rip.

Are you telling me all those set ups either don't sound good or are totally out of whack?

If I don't buy the 49TX, and hook up something else, will it not sound good right out of the box?

thoughts?

 

[ColinM]

HK = EZset...

Somebody got the message about calibration problems leading to dissatisfied customers and now it is a feature instead of an an urban legend.

 

[Joe Schwartz]

MCACC helps in two ways. First, it automates the receiver's speaker setup -- speaker "size", distance, and level. This is helpful, but it's nothing you can't easily do with any other receiver using a tape measure and a Radio Shack sound level meter.

Second, MCACC provides an automatic 7-channel 9-band equalizer. IMHO, this is the real value of MCACC. It definitely makes the speakers sound more similar to each other, and it helps compensate for room effects. To duplicate it, you'd need a similar equalizer and a spectrum analyzer. You can certainly live without it, but I think it makes the sound noticeably better.

 

[Brian Burgoyne]

"If I don't buy the 49TX, and hook up something else, will it not sound good right out of the box?"

Yes, but you would still benefit from some basic calibration on that receiver. Like Joe said, you'll still want to set the speaker size, distance and level. You can set the level with the built in pink noise on the receiver by ear, but it will be much more accurate with an spl meter from radio shack. HT is like any other hobby. You have three levels: beginner, intermediate and totally obsessed!

 

[RajeeK]

Well your question is almost like a loaded gun. Is MCACC calibration necessary. Certainly not. But then are thousands of dollars worth of equipment necessary to listen to music. Certainly not again. The clear far and away majority of the U.S. and world for that matter are probably happy with their simple mini stereo systems or home theater in a box setup or even clock radios (sans the Bose Wave radio oweners ). However this place is not for those people. I think most all users here are willing to tweak their system as much as financially possible to get what we "consider" the purest/truest reproduction of sound. Are we right, who knows. But MCACC helps many of us attain that. Would I be happy with a non-MCACC receiver such as a upper end Denon, you bet. But I am that much happier with my MCACC.
I must also add MCACC also does quite a bit for those who are not as educated with distance delays, timber matching, level settings and so on. It makes is virtually plug and play for people with less time or knowledge to have a wonderful sounding setup with minimal work. And from that there are us tweakers who can go even further.

 

[PaulKH]

> Are you telling me all those set ups either don't sound good or are totally out of whack?

Hey Rob - We know what we have and most people like what they have or don't know how much better it could be. I was very happy with my Sony DA90ESG 5.1 receiver for 4 years although I always thought my center channel (for dialog in particular) didn't sound that good, but I thought that was the speaker. One day the Sony broke, so I went out and got a 49TX. After running MCACC, I was blown away by how much better dialog sounded out of that same center speaker. Of course not just the center sounded better. Everything (CDs, DVDs, etc.) sounded better.

Can a room be calibrated without it? Possibly, but unless you're really a pro, I don't see how you can easily equal the MCACC results because it handles gain, EQ and delay separately for each speaker so effortlessly.