I'm an instrumentation junkie at heart, but I'm a pragmatist first. I have a cheap receiver and cheap speakers. What I want so badly is for software solutions to be properly cheap. Rooms are relatively static conditions, meaning a simple FIR filter can be tuned once and give consistent results. Calibrating speakers and room multipath should not be gatekept with $1000+ hardware. Freedsp is the only name I know that offers a cheap option. They are a modest operation that only supply designs and bare boards. Integrating freedsp into a modern home theatre setup requires inelegant solutions (Source -> TV -> Receiver -> freedsp -> amplifier).
I just wish there was any competition left in the big players to push measurable home audio performance higher.
If you already have a receiver, pretty much anything these days will come with a room measurement system to create that FIR filter. You don't get the coefficients, though.
I just wish there was any competition left in the big players to push measurable home audio performance higher.