Lows much too loud when EQd to flat

[jan.didden]

When I EQ my subs (~100Hz xover to ESLs) for reasonable flat response on REW with a UMIK-2, they sound extremely boomy and much too loud.
When I set the sub level to what sounds to me like a reasonable level matched to the main speakers, and I measure with RTA, the sub level is almost 15dB lower than the main speakers.
What could cause that descrepancy? Could it be some setting in the measurement I may have missed?
I used the standard swept sine method.

Jan

 

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

Only one thread per topic please.

Lows very boomy when EQ'd to flat

When I EQ my subs (~100Hz xover to ESLs) for reasonable flat response on REW with a UMIK-2, they sound extremely boomy and much too loud. When I set the sub level to what sounds to me like a reasonable level matched to the main speakers, and I measure with RTA, the sub level is almost 15dB lower...

www.avnirvana.com

Regards,
Wayne

 

[AudiocRaver]

Not sure if this will help, but here goes:

When I ran a Dirac Live calibration a couple of years back, following the recommendation to turn the subwoofer gain all the way to max so the Dirac Live process had that gain to work against as it reduced gain to "do its EQ thing", I ended up with super-uncontrolled boomy bass, even though it measured fairly flat. So I backed off the sub gain (from 5:30 max knob position to about 2:30 knob position where I had gotten better results previously), reran the calibration, and the result was nice, tightly controlled bass, not quite perfectly flat, but pretty close.

In my case, my cheap JBL subs might be to blame, thinking they might be running toward the edge of not having proper feedback to completely control the signal as well when set at full gain. That is just a guess. I have really not thought about it too much, it just works better not pushing the gain more than necessary to get decent frequency response - in my experience.