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[d_pert]

One of the many things MC has going for it is its respect for details like this...

Although it's a nifty feature to make some manual adjustments and hopefully hit a better sound, the term "Room Correction" is, formally speaking, being misused in MC. When I first saw this appear in MC14 I said, WHAT?! WOW! Then was promptly disappointed (although not really surprised) that what's being offered under that term is not really room correction in the generally recognized sense.

"Room Correction" is generally understood to mean you're getting some kind of measurement facility, using an omnidirectional microphone, for measuring the room responses using different test-tone sweeps, taking an average of multiple tests (at a listening location or locations), using an algorithm to create an averaging, offsetting, compensation from the tests which ends in a highly complex combination of EQ and delay in the form of a filter that's added at the end of the audio chain.

It's showing up (with the term used properly) in upper-priced consumer A/V receivers.

Perhaps "Loudspeaker Customization" would be a more accurate and no longer misleading term?

[Mediahome]

I think that they got it right.  Room correction is the adjustment of volume, phasing, and polarity of the speakers in a given room to optimize the sound space in that room.  It used to be that you had to do this manually no matter what equipment that you had.  Now, a lot of high-end audio equipment include automated room correction using a microphone and automated adjustment processes.  It would be cool if MC had that but I think that there are higher priorities on the wish list.

Mediahome

[Vincent Kars]

automated room correction using a microphone and automated adjustment

Not to nag you but this is part of Windows audio from Vista on.
In essence room correction is EQ so you can't compensate for everything.
In fact you can do a lot of harm
http://seanolive.blogspot.com/2009/11/subjective-and-objective-evaluation-of.html

[d_pert]

I think that they got it right.  Room correction is the adjustment of volume, phasing, and polarity of the speakers in a given room to optimize the sound space in that room.  It used to be that you had to do this manually no matter what equipment that you had.  Now, a lot of high-end audio equipment include automated room correction using a microphone and automated adjustment processes.  It would be cool if MC had that but I think that there are higher priorities on the wish list.

Mediahome

They got it right if they were inventing a new term that wasn't already in wide use to describe somthing else. Room Correction involves some of the things you listed, however, as with the MC usage, the main points are still missing. Any pro would take one look and say, "nope, that's no RC".

I found this nice summary of what the term is now widely taken to mean:

"DRC (Digital Room Correction) is the principle of playing test "tones" through your hifi system to measure its frequency response and character using a microphone placed in the listening position (and possibly other locations as well). We know what the tones were supposed to be, we know what we recorded, and so to some extent we can construct an inverse filter to improve the subjective audio quality which arrives at the listening positions."

http://www.duffroomcorrection.com/wiki/Main_Page

MC's use of the term is misleading and makes it look like they don't know what room correction really is, although I'm sure they must. That's really all my point is.

As for manually doing it in the past: yes, although that would always have made use of sweep tones of various kinds, a scope of some kind , and a delay box and at least a 31 band eq on every channel - the bare minimum and still not what MC is including.

[d_pert]

Not to nag you but this is part of Windows audio from Vista on.
In essence room correction is EQ so you can't compensate for everything.
In fact you can do a lot of harm
http://seanolive.blogspot.com/2009/11/subjective-and-objective-evaluation-of.html

Hi - I think you've got "tones" confused with the white noise generator "shhhhgshhh" noise that you can cycle through on Windows since Vista (agreed) and pretty much any home threatre receiver to judge from your seating position whether the overall output level of the speakers are matched.

In my post above to Mediahome, you can see that "Room Correction" means somthing completely different, whether the results of it are good or bad.

[d_pert]

Further reading for those who want to know what Room Correction means:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_room_correction

http://www.trinnov-audio.com/en/optimization/more-info/how-it-works/acoustic-correction

http://www.duffroomcorrection.com/wiki/Main_Page

http://www.ikmultimedia.com/arc/features/

From the first link (above):

Although digital implementations of the equalizers have been available for some time, digital room correction is usually used to refer to the construction of filters which attempt to invert the impulse response of the room and playback system, at least in part. Digital correction systems are able to use acausal filters, and are able to operate with optimal time resolution, optimal frequency resolution, or any desired compromise along the gabor limit. Digital room correction is a fairly new area of study which has only recently been made possible by the computational power of modern CPUs and DSPs.

> This last link is to a produce page for a system that I use in two studios.

[cncb]

Hi - I think you've got "tones" confused with the white noise generator "shhhhgshhh" noise that you can cycle through on Windows since Vista (agreed) and pretty much any home threatre receiver to judge from your seating position whether the overall output level of the speakers are matched.

They actually did add some multichannel EQ/"room correction" to Vista that is calculated by taking measurements with a microphone (http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windowsvista/pages/450038.aspx).  I think sound cards need to meet some standard driver requirement for it to be enabled.