MCACC vs. YPAO

[pwh03]

I haven't dealt with either of these but I have been doing some reading as I am looking to move into a home theater setup.

I am curious though to see who preffers one to the other. I know there are different "versions" of each MCACC has manual, automatic 1 & 2 and advanced. while yamaha adds more and more to their YPAO system as you go up in their product line.

Which do you preffer and which would you suggest

first off overall comparing the best vs the best

secondly comparing middle of the road for instance the pioneer elite's automatic 1 vs a middle of the line yamaha htr

thanks for the input
PH

[pwh03]

come on now I've been a member here for a year now and I know some of you guys have tried atleast one of these systems out uf not both.

dust off the keyboard for me please.

thanks

you could throw the denon room calibration system in there too or any others you have tried

thanks again
PH

[nick4433]

OK, I'll bite! I have tried extensively the YPAO on the 1400 and the MCACC on the 2012K (45TX). I was initially very high on the YPAO or any calibrations for that matter because auto calibrations are an excellent thing if one is not good with receiver setup or speaker calibrations. So for those these Auto calibrating receivers is the answer. The auto calibration will "find" your speakers, check their polarity and determine their sizes and distances from the listening position as well. Then comes the room EQing (if available) and voila, you are set to enjoy movies and HT.
But, everytime I had the receiver calibrate for me, I would go back with a need to tweak some settings on the EQ as I simply did not "agree" with the auto setting. The disagreement would come after some days of listening to the auto settings. I would not be happy with the way the mids or the highs sounded or something else for that matter.
Without the benefit of calibrating the LFE frequencies, these auto features are OK to have in a receiver but not absolutely necessary as Wooch pointed out long time ago when I first did my review on YPAO. You can do very well with an SPL meter and calibrate your system with an Avia or VE disc and be happy.
So if you ask me which one is better, I would say of those two I'd take the YPAO over the MCACC as the YPAO uses a parametric EQ and not a graphich EQ as the one used by MCACC.