made only 2 measurements with audyssey and 2-3 different curves and i can honestly say after watching the movies i always watch as reference that it is completely insane difference. The denon is soo much better to the point that am hating arcam for loosing 2 years of my life not listening to my theatre the way it is supposed to sound. I can post numerous REW files with the arcam compared to what I now have with denon and audyssey for evidence if required even seat to seat consistency is almost perfect.
First of all, congrats to your success! My guess is that regardless of the ASR measurements, few people would make such brave move from a highly regarded/hyped up boutique class AVR to a utility class Denon.
Now, about Audyssey, I don't know how you made the adjustments but I would like to share my recent experience using the Editor App and Ratbuddyssey. As you probably know and would agree, using just the App to draw/shape the target curve is not easy, that is, if you want to end up with a REW graph that shows less than 4 dB peak-peak variations between 20 and 110 Hz. I tried many times and got tired of it. Amir seemed to have done a pretty good job reshaping the curve in his review, I wonder how he did it. In my set up, Audyssey has been able to get the reference curve to within about 9.5 dB peak to peak with no smoothing and about 7.8 dB with 1/12th smoothing, that's +/- 3.9 dB. I think that's good enough based on my threshold of audibility but does not look good on paper.
So I thought I would try doing it with Ratbuddyssey that allows me to enter the adjustments point by point manually, instead of reshaping the target curve by hand or touch pen. The steps I took are as follow:
1. Use REW to plot the FR between 15 to 200 Hz (or 20-110 as a first step, that is, just get the subwoofer curve fixed first), no smoothing.
2. By looking at the curve, set my target SPL, I picked one that would result in most of the adjustments needed for correction to the target end up being cuts, not boosts. In my case I couldn't avoid a few boosts due to room modes.
3. Set up a spreadsheet to calculate the required adjustments at each of the selected frequency points, I would use 25 points minimum between 20-110 Hz but it depends on how the reference curve look.
4. Enter the calculated adjustments, by typing in the numbers on the Ratbuddysssey's data table for correction to the target SPL for each selected frequency point. No drawing/shaping required!
5. Load the new Ady file to the Denon.
I tried this method several times and was able to get within around 4 dB peak to peak no smoothly and under 3 dB peak to peak at 1/12th smoothing.
After that, a few more trial and error tweaking would get me in within 2.3 to 2.8 dB peak to peak between 20-110 Hz, without even touching the FL/FR curves. I actually was able to get within less than 2 dB peak to peak, that is +/- 1 dB 1/12th smoothing a few times.
That tells me Audyssey is not capable of getting the FR tight enough for me to look at (not to sound as I couldn't tell a difference anyway) but that's must be due to the mic accuracy and the way I set the 8 mic positions, and/or Audyssey's data collection algorithm does not have enough resolution for what I need. Using REW to measure the actual results and use the results to force Audyssey to create a new set of filters for the new non flat (in fact a very busy looking target curve with lots of peaks and dips) is able to fool Audyssey to correct to it, thereby ended up with a flat curve.
The amazing thing is that after the curve is flattened, probably because Audyssey is till in charge of creating the filters, the listening bubble is very well preserved. I could move the mic about 12 inches to the left, right above and below the main mic position, and the resulting average curve is still very closed to the targeted 2.3 to 2.8 dB peak to peak variations.
Based on my new flat curve, I can now tweak it some more to get the 15-80 Hz to tip up towards the low end, that shouldn't be too difficult.
I don't know if there are 3rd party software like Ratbuddssey for Dirac Live, that allows manual adjustments on selected frequency points but I did use the trial version that works like the Audyssey Editor App, that is, I had to change the target curve by manually shaping the curve, not manually entering/typing in the adjustments.