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Really curious how the sound quality optimizations based on room acoustics work.

I'd imagine it's a lot of signal processing and such, but I'm curious how they quantified optimizations and tested to see that it actually enhanced the audio based on room acoustics.

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Companies look like Dirac and Audyssey do this, but require you to move a microphone around a room while a test signal plays (from speakers that are usually spaced throughout a room). The big mystery to me would be how effective such room processing can be, when you're limited to measuring from the point where the sound is generated. (My personal experience would say not very. It'd make more sense to me if the user maybe held up their iPhone as a microphone and the system calibrated itself as they moved throughout the listening space.

Sonos also does auto tuning now. The speaker plays a test tone as you walk around the room with an iOS or Android device with the Sonos app listening.

It seems strange to throw so much processing power at making it an "active" technology. Traditionally you had a professional sound engineer tune your audio system for your room. The sound drivers on my computer have that same functionality built in, I just have to setup the mic and run the wizard. These speakers have to plug into the wall, so I doubt they are going to move around very often...

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