New subs and room EQ

[sminser]

Hello fairly new to home audio I bought 2 svs PB 2000 I was thinking doing the Room eq. Here’s my question my home theater is my living room with an open floor plan would room correction help?

 

[Sonnie]

In most cases room EQ will help, especially in the low frequency range. Your Denon will have Audyssey that you can use, and REW will help you see what it is doing if you want to learn more about your room. REW can also help you properly locate subs prior to EQ if you have placement options.

 

[Todd Anderson]

Congrats on your purchase! Those are great subs... plenty of great bass is on your way!

Set up is going to be key, starting with placement. As Sonnie eluded, you can download Room EQ Wizard and use that as a tool to figure out placement. The software has a room simulator that you can use to get an idea of what might work... then you'll need to take things to the real world.

Your Denon's Audyssey is going to do a decent job at EQ, but the impact will be primarily limited to your seating area. Two subs was the right way to go, as that will help even out the response, but EQ is probably going to end up being your friend.

I hope you ask lots of questions and bring us along on your journey!

 

[sminser]

Thanks I have ordered a mic so hopefully this weekend I can play with it and yes I will have more questions

 

[sminser]

I ran the Room EQ Wizard, trying to get my subs to sound better. I put the mic at the ear level listening position. I set the generator for pink periodic noise and used the SPL meter. I raised the volume to reach around 75db for the speaker cal. I set both subs to -30db for the volume so when i did the sub cal it was around 79db and here are my results. I know I'm probably not setting something up correctly, it just doesn't look right. let me know what you think. Thank You

 

[Sonnie]

It would be better to upload your .mdat file for the measurements... then we can show you the correct settings to present your graphs.

 

[ckzv]

You should put the limits on REW from 20 Hz - 20 kHz and 40 db to 105 db (pres limits knob on the left). You should also pres knob AllSPL

 

[sminser]

Here is the file and still looking for the other settings mentioned

 

[sminser]

You are talking about these settings?

 

[Sonnie]

You are measuring the subs only... assuming these are combined. If this is NOT with the mains, then you wouldn't worry about anything over 80Hz (or wherever your xover setting is). I would also measure with the mains to see how they integrate and what the room is doing to the overall response.

For the measurements you have done, below are probably the best settings to view the response. This looks pretty good

 

[sminser]

I'm still figuring out REW, and no that was just for the left sub and this morning I can't even duplicate the results i send to you. So here's what happened this morning I set the speaker cal to 75db and the sub cal to 78db. To get that I had to set the sub volume at -30, and ran the measurements for the left, right and then together. The results came out a lot different, it needs some work. I'll try playing around with the parametric EQ to help improve it, let me know what you think, and thanks Again!!!

 

[Sonnie]

I think the proper way to measure would be the subs alone... both subs... for one measurement without the mains. Measuring 0-200Hz with the graph showing 10-200Hz is fine.

Then measure the left front speaker with the subs... and again the right front speaker with the subs... separately. Measuring 0-22,000Hz with the graph showing 10-20,000Hz is fine.

You'll have three separate measurements that should be helpful.

 

[sminser]

Like this, for me hard to read. How should I look at this to see what I can try and correct using the parametric EQ?

 

[Sonnie]

Use 1/6 octave smoothing and All SPL to see them together... doesn't look too bad from 400Hz on up, although a little bit off with the levels between left and right. I would run Audyssey to see what it does.

 

[sminser]

I ran audyssey again, disabled Dynamic EQ . What i did notice was one of my subs is louder that the other. I did the factory reset then on the audyssey setup on the SW level matching my left sub was at 93 db and my right one was at 96db. Is this normal, because my last 2 klipsch subs did the same thing. After audyssey i adjusted the sub levels so I had to set the right one at -10db and the left at -5.5b to get them to read close to the same using a SLM and here are the measurements

 

[Sonnie]

It is not unusual for the subs to be different in level. Audyssey may be balancing them as needed to get the correct response. My front subs are different by several dB than my rear to get the correct combined response I am looking for.

Your overall response does not look like it has Audyssey applied... or perhaps Audyssey hasn't done as well as I would expect it to, especially from 50-400Hz. Actually, it doesn't look like it has frequency balanced your speakers.

I assume you are using the Audyssey mic that is provided with the Denon... see if you can get both mics where the tips are side by side at the same height... both setup at the same time. Run REW before Audyssey, then run Audyssey with the Denon mic right next to the REW mic, then run REW after Audyssey. The response should be smoother than what we are seeing, but I'm thinking it is differences in mid locations between measurements.

Keep the before and after measurements so we can see what Audyssey is doing. Don't worry about the subs only measurement at this point... do full sweeps.

 

[sminser]

Just so I'm clear. make sure the umik and denon mic are at the same level. I'm going to run REW from the main listening position, run Audyssey for the 8 positions, and re-run REW. When I run REW it's just like before 3 measurements, 1 with subs, 1 with subs and left and 1 with subs and right?

 

[sminser]

Here are the measurements, to me just strange that it changed that much

 

[Sonnie]

Is there a particular reason you are running 8 positions?

This is strictly my opinion and there are those that will differ, but I have personally not been able to get any better response out of the other seats by measuring multiple and correcting multiple seats vs the primary listening position. If you simply do 3-4 measurements in the main listening position, you nail that position down and it sounds great, especially for two channel, but for movies too. The other positions still sound as good as they would if you'd measured and corrected multiple positions, but you don't destroy the primary position. Hopefully that makes sense.

I would setup both mics at the primary position... run REW with the subs +left and then subs +right. Then run Audyssey... leaving the Audyssey mic right next to the REW mic at that primary position. Run about 4 of the Audyssey seating positions, all at the primary position. Then run the same REW measurements to see how they compare. Now you have one really good listening position, and the rest are as good as they would have been if you'd ran 8 positions, but now you have at least one premium seat. Wife and kids generally won't know the difference anyway.

You can always try it both ways and see what you like the best, but I want at least the one near perfect listening position. YMMV.

 

[sminser]

Honestly I never thought about doing just 3-4 measurements. I will try it, this is the only seats that get used and we rarely have people over with no kids. I know i need to try 1 things at a time, but i'll ask anyway. I upgraded the subs which sound a lot better than my previous ones. One reason I picked these was the ability to change the EQ on the subs and that was the reason I bought the umik as well. Assuming the best bass I can get is without changing the EQ and even if I can get better bass. In your experience do you think I could get better sounding bass from buying a mini DSP? I know each system is different as well as the room.

 

[Sonnie]

Purely preference for me, but I do like Dirac Live better than Audyssey, HOWEVER... I have not used Audyssey in a LONG time, so I'm not as familiar with what they are doing with it now. You can get Dirac in the miniDSP and you'd have a lot of extra PEQ filters and shelf filters available. However again... I'm not sure you need the PEQ filters, as you raw sub response looks pretty good... assuming that first graph I posted is your subs combined with no EQ.

 

[sminser]

If you mean no EQ as in no Audyssey, then no.

 

[Sonnie]

Correct... no EQ whatsoever... we need to see the subs combined with no filtering of any kind.

 

[sminser]

I will try that, is this the Mini DSP you are talking about?

https://www.amazon.com/miniDSP-DDRC-24-Digital-Correction-Processor/dp/B07ZHHJTD5/ref=sr_1_6?dchild=1&keywords=mini+dsp&qid=1634060066&sr=8-6

 

[Sonnie]

If you just want to do your subs, that would work... and/or it would also work for your subs and mains. But then you'd have to run Audyssey on top of it. Otherwise you'd need a DDRC-88BM.

I think if you simply run the one mic position with Audyssey, you'll like the results, especially at the primary seating position.