The Cutting Edge

package—a room-equalization system that could have significant
implications for audiophiles. In an interview with TAS,
company co-founder Dr. Chris Kyriakakis (Associate Professor
of Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California)
explained that while the Audyssey system is targeted primarily
toward high-end home-theater and multichannel-music
enthusiasts, it offers clarity and resolution sufficient to satisfy
audio purists (e.g., users of systems based on low-powered SET
amplifiers and high-sensitivity loudspeakers). While room EQ
systems, per se, are nothing new, the radical Audyssey system
breaks new ground both in terms of the technologies it applies
and of the end results it aims to achieve in the listening room.
Unlike other EQ systems, the Audyssey Sound Equalizer
corrects both for time and frequency-response problems with
remarkable precision, creating correction programs that provide
a whopping 1024 correction points per speaker. What is
more, the system provides correction not just for one central
“sweet spot,” but for every listening position in the room. If
that claim sounds far-fetched, it helps to know that the
Audyssey system was born out of an intensive five-year,
greater-than-$5M research program conducted at the
Immersive Audio Laboratory within the USC Integrated
Media Systems Center. A central objective of the research program
was to develop a comprehensive understanding of the
negative effects of room acoustics on sound reproduction, and
then to address those negative effects.
The resulting system uses MultiEQ Pro software and a
calibrated microphone/mic preamp to take elaborate, in-room,
channel-by-channel measurements of time/frequency response
characteristics from up to 32 different listening positions.
Then, MultiEQ Pro applies advanced proprietary “fuzzy logic”
techniques to calculate custom, 1024-point EQ correction programs
for each speaker in the system—programs that offer
much more precise equalization than competing graphic or
parametric EQ systems. Correction programs, in turn, are
downloaded into the powerful, DSP-driven Audyssey Sound
Equalizer, which is inserted in the signal path between preamps
(or multichannel controllers) and power amplifiers.
Having briefly auditioned the Audyssey EQ system in two
different settings, we can offer some preliminary observations
18 THE ABSOLUTE SOUND ■ SEPTEMBER 2006