Where Sound Comes Together
AccuEQ is a room acoustic calibration solution featured on select Onkyo A/V receivers. It fine-tunes every speaker in your home theater, even if they are not symmetrically placed, creating a harmonious sound-field in your movie room. The receiver analyzes data and calibrates audio response to optimize speaker performance in unique listening environments. Your speakers work together to form a cohesive and spatially seamless soundstage. Directional sounds are convincing, bass is taut, and details resolve clearly. AccuEQ unifies the sonic picture so your audience is comfortably immersed in the movie soundtrack.
Presence, Distance, SP Level, Crossover, and Room EQ
After unboxing the receiver, connect your speakers, plug in the supplied mic, and launch the on-screen guide. First, AccuEQ detects the presence of speakers and evaluates the impedance of each. Next, it pinpoints their distance relative to the main listening position using the mic and sets suitable sound-pressure levels. Then it selects the optimal crossover frequency so that deeper bass rolls smoothly off to the subwoofer. Finally, AccuEQ performs frequency response equalization based on room-acoustic and speaker data collected via microphone. The sound-field is now tailored around the listening position, resulting in a more immersive and realistic in-film experience.
Onkyo’s Premium Multipoint Room Acoustic Calibration Solution
AccuEQ Advance is Onkyo’s premier room acoustic calibration technology. It’s featured on A/V receivers capable of theater-reference sound. In addition to the AccuEQ fundamentals, such as speaker presence, distance, SP levels, and crossover, it supports multipoint microphone measurement to detect the presence of standing waves, and sophisticated equalization technology to remove them from your room. AccuEQ Advance is also the only room acoustic solution that listens and compensates for subtle background noise (such as the hum of an HVAC) to ensure a higher degree of measurement precision.
Detection and Elimination of Standing Waves
Standing waves are soundwaves of the same frequency that don’t move spatially, creating acoustic peaks in areas of your room that have a significant impact on audio reproduction quality. They result from sounds reflecting off parallel surfaces of walls, floor, and ceiling, and they affect our perception of sound, sucking the dynamism and punch from bass. AccuEQ Advance employs multipoint microphone measurement to map out a detailed picture of frequency interactions within your room. Using this data, equalization is applied to eliminate standing waves. With unwanted peaks removed from the room, sound springs clearly into focus, dynamic, musical, and true to the source.
Identifying Standing Waves
Before Calibration
Peaks from standing waves negatively affect sound quality.
After Calibration
AccuEQ Advance adjusts frequency response to eliminate peaks.
AccuReflex™ Phase-Matching Solution for Dolby Atmos®-enabled Systems
Dolby Atmos-enabled Onkyo A/V receivers include AccuReflex technology as part of the AccuEQ or AccuEQ Advance suites. AccuReflex optimizes the reproduction quality of object-based audio soundtracks played through Dolby Atmos-enabled front speakers, Dolby Atmos-enabled upward-firing modules, or in-ceiling speakers. If these are not properly calibrated, the resulting sound-field can lack cohesion and be discomforting to hear. This is because frequencies in the high-directional bandwidth are perceived as reflected sound from the ceiling, while frequencies in the low-directional band are not. To resolve phase-shift arising from this path difference, AccuReflex technology calibrates the phase of sounds originating from Dolby Atmos-enabled speakers so they integrate with your floor speakers. Along with improved localization, a 3D field with vertical movement and overhead dimensionality is produced, letting you enjoy harmonious object-based sound just as the film creators intended.
AccuEQ Advance is not only about achieving balanced surround-sound. It’s also about enjoying the things you love about your speakers: something distinctive in their personality that makes listening so enjoyable. As a speaker manufacturer of 70 years’ experience, we recognize that room-acoustic correction should reveal the spirit of your speakers, not alter the way they sound. AccuEQ Advance uses a technique called partial-band equalization to remove standing waves without affecting your speaker voicing. The harmonic characteristics that give “life” to music are found in the ultra-high frequency range. Partial-band equalization corrects frequency response below a certain point, leaving high-order harmonics untouched. Your speakers are free to reproduce the emotion of the recording without standing waves compromising sound quality before it reaches your ears.
Speakers are normally tuned in acoustically dead chambers, free from echoes, reverb, and standing waves. In the real world, all rooms suffer from some kind of acoustic anomalies that compromise reproduction quality.
The combination of speaker-tuning and the acoustic properties of your room changes how your speakers should ideally sound. AccuEQ Advance eliminates standing waves so the speaker sounds as its designer intended. Higher frequencies are left untouched. The speaker gives voice to emotion within the recording with its own unique personality.
Corrected Frequency Response
The chart above shows the corrected frequency response (in red), which now fits within specific level parameters. The result: clear, accurate sound.
While AccuEQ and AccuEQ Advance fulfill the task of correcting your room’s acoustics, a lot of people like to play with levels. AccuEQ Advance therefore includes three memory presets you can use to save your own EQ settings, perhaps tailored to suit different content such as movies, music, or games.
A lot of factors influence what we perceive to be “good sound”, some objectively measurable and others down to personal taste. However, one thing everyone wants is for their equipment to work at its best regardless of room shape or any limitations concerning speaker placement. This is what AccuEQ technologies achieve: organizing and unifying the sound-field for comfortable playback, tailored to you, and clearing the air so the vitality in soundtracks and music arrives untouched through your favorite speakers.
