Auto Room Equalization?

Quite the contrary, its precisely on topic. In case you forgot, the question you asked is: 
 

What do you currently think of Automatic Room Equalization

Well, that is what I think. Its based on not only very solid understanding but also extensive personal experience. 

Here's another example, perfectly on topic and precise and measurable as can be: the Fletcher Munson curve. https://ehomerecordingstudio.com/fletcher-munson-curve/

What this means in simple English is we human beings are not meters.

What you said, 

Frequency and Amplutide IS Audio and IS Paramount, no squeaking out of that one.

Is bull hockey. It only makes sense in the imaginary world of molecules moving back and forth. Here in the real world of human beings trying to enjoy music it makes no sense at all. For proof look no further than the above curves. What they show quite clearly is you can test and equalize to your hearts content, automatically or manually, and all you will ever be is chasing your tail. Because the minute you change the volume it all goes to hell. Which, guess what? Its music! The volume is always changing!

But you go ahead and chase your tail. When you fall down all dizzy and throwing up don't blame me.

EQ alone is crap.

EQ + Room acoustics can be magical.


Best,
E

Manual EQ is better than Auto Correction. Plus, I suspect that in the end the microphone just doesn’t interpret our systems the way our ears do...and it might not really matter what measurement parameter you care to talk about: frequency, time, phase, dynamics, distortion, etc, etc...our ears will just hear things differently. Not saying that there’s no insight to gain from that, just that the idea and the act of simply attempting to defer to the mike in the long run is folly. Our ears will always have the final say.

What I don’t like about Auto Correction also is that the algorithm used is necessarily stupid. It doesn’t know much about your room or even much about its acoustics and nothing at all about the abilities of your system. Its decisions about which frequencies should be boosted and which should be cut are all carried out blindly to what your system’s response in fact may or may not be capable of. Many systems are at least fairly efficient at reproducing mids or highs, but, as Al rightly alludes to above, many comparatively struggle with bass efficiency - in any room. That can be attributable to a lot of different things like: woofer efficiency at lower frequencies, setup position, amp type and design, power treatments, wiring and much more...and no, whether or not your speaker or gear says it’s rated to such-and-such frequency at +or- whatever has nothing at all to do with it. But, the problem is that stupid algorithm doesn’t know how to apply any "cut-only" strategy in order to flatten, IME. It only knows how to misapply the EQ (boost and cut), no matter who made the algorithm or how whiz-bang it’s said to be.

Note that it’s far more common, IMO and FWIW, that Most systems have Much more trouble with bass efficiency (again, in Any room) compared to the rest of the spectrum than don’t. Even with like 70 or 80% of the subs out there. My point with that is that some systems, despite what their owners may feel they understand about them, may not have yet evolved to the point of being in possession of enough efficiency across the board to have the reserve of bass energy it might take to more successfully apply a cut-only strategy to not only tame the response through the low end, but still audibly have proper amp and speaker headroom at all volume levels after it’s done. Remember: EQ itself is just a command - your system has to be up the task of answering it...and preferably, it should be a little **more** than up to that task, not just adequately so...certainly if you're going to use it to boost, that is.

With Auto Correction, you get flattened response whether your system sounds better with it or not. You might can tweak it some, but it’s still a tweak on EQ that’s been misapplied...at that point you’re putting a bandaid on a bandaid.

Personally, for myself I prefer straight, digital, parametric, Manual EQ...no chaser. But, even for manual EQ, the more efficient in the bass I can make my system to begin with, the better the EQ results will sound to the ear. (Old EQ axiom: you can’t boost what isn’t there).

My two cents.

Regards

@almarg 

Yes, I did end up murdering what I stated that Al said in his post above about typical systems being rather less efficient to our ears in the bass. Al in fact, of course, was Not saying that at all (although I am). Sorry Al.

But, the quote he made of the DEQX manual I would lump in with what I said above about microphones not hearing things the way we do.

I think Audyssey allows for a cut-only approach if you dial it in, but I'm not really aware if there are many others with that capability. I haven't looked at them all, but I'm not so far aware of others that do.