Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners The SMS-1...should I get one?

Welp, though the EP500 was a nice improvement over my previous sub (DefTech PF-15), I've always had issues with bass in my room. Certain frequencies boom while others are lacking, regardless of sub placement and crossover / phase settings. I haven't been inspired enough to go thru the hassle of graphing the room, but I know there's a problem, especially since a friend of mine has an older Yami 'tower' style sub in his place (maybe 80-100 watts), and although not as powerful as my sub, his bass response seems quicker and fuller than mine! All he had to do was plop the thing down next to his right speaker and it sounds very nice. It's his room, I know...

Yes, I also know that room treatments should be my 1st consideration, but there are issues. Firstly, my HT room is also my living room, foyer, and my most used room. I live in a small 3/2 home, and my front door is about 5 feet from my right speaker. The left side of the listening area opens to the dining room and kitchen. The listening area is 15W X 12L (equipment on 12' side), with a fairly large rug and full size couch and love seat for some absorption. The house has tile floors, which makes the listening area pretty live.

Secondly, I'm really not interested in going thru the treatment route, other than perhaps adding something absorbant and decorative to the front and back walls (which are bare now). I don't want to get into corner treatments if I don't have to because of aesthetics / hassle issues involved.

I fully understand that the SMS-1 will not be a magic bullet in my situation... there will likely be nulls / peaks I can't fully fix without treatments or placement changes.. but do any of you in the know think that trying the SMS-1 would give significant *enuf* improvement?

I'm also interested in the SMS-1. However, I fully intend to do proper treatment and see what I can do with placement when I've moved my system into the basement. Since I'm not as dedicated as many of you, I may feel the need to get outside help. First off, how do I find someone competent to help with my room acoustics/calibration, and second, would it be better to have something like the SMS-1 before I even look into a consultation? I'd like to go as far as I can with the acoustics once I have my system in its final space, wherever that ends up being, but I'm not really sure what my first steps should be. Sorry if I'm hijacking the thread. It's just that I'm also interested in the SMS-1.

I've had an sms-1 for about a year, and admit to not spending nearly enough time tweaking with it. To my mind, the ability to monitor the effects of changes- not just eq but also sub placement, phase, x-over, moving of giant peices of furniture ,etc, in real time, is just as if not more useful than the eq itself. My sub is an entry level def-tech (an ep400 is in my future) so I suspect i'm not fully utilising the sms. It did make setting the sub level easy, I don't know if it's right but it was easy.
If you're not gonna graph your room manualy I think the sms should be your first step. That way you know what you've got before you start and every step along the way.

I don't want to insinuate that you don't have a problem however I do want to tell you about my experience and maybe you can draw from that.

For years, I used a Sony 12", 150W sub that I picked up for next to nothing. I got a nice BOOM BOOM going during music and BOOOOOOM going during movies and I couldn't be happier.

Enter my EP600 and a different (bigger) room configuration. After spending untold hours to optimize the sub's location, there was no doubt in my mind that my LFE, in St. Anselm's words, was "such that no greater could ever be conceived". But music seemed to be lacking. I started feeling that I had demons steering musical bass away from the EP600 .

So I connected the Sony and I heard the familiar BOOM BOOM during music even though it was smaller, cheaper and less powerful. But the LFE was a total joke compared to the EP600. I was really flabbergasted and was convinced there was a "music rejection filter" inside the Axiom .

Then I gave it another chance and decided to listen more critically. What I discovered was that my Sony wasn't musical at all! I couldn't pick individual notes out...just BOOM. With the 600 however, I could follow the music in the bass. And if there was enough bass in the source material, the 600 had no trouble pumping it out. My Sony wasn't faithfully reproducing the bass in the source material but rather exagerrating it!

Since then I've further tweaked the settings leading to even more satisfaction. So the question you may want to ask yourself is "Do I really hear music on my buddy's sub?".

Good luck and have fun tweaking.

I have the EP-500 and the SMS-1. It allows adjustments in every conceivable parameter, including low pass, high pass, slopes, phase, EQ level, frequency, Q, and so on. You can do self-EQ (listens to subwoofer alone), auto-EQ (listens to subwoofer along with your mains), or manual EQ. I thought the self or auto-EQ were not that great. Manual EQ is painstaking as you sit for hours listening, looking at the graph, and tweaking the response. However, at the end of all that hard work with manual tweaking, once you achieve a flat response at the reference SPL, you will never have to touch it again if all else remains the same. Before the SMS-1, my EP-500 sounded great after careful placement, calibration, and EQ adjustment (full, half, flat). After I added the SMS-1, the FR response was even better and soundtracks had noticeably more articulate and satisfying bass.

I looked into RealTraps and GIK Acoustics bass traps. Ethan at RealTraps is the co-owner and was very helpful. You can e-mail him pictures and dimensions of your HT room and he can provide you with advise. Their site also has a free program with test tones and graph to plot your response manually. Their traps are excellent but not cheap. GIK Acoustics (I think his name is Glenn) never replied to my two e-mails. They seem to have decent and somewhat cheaper traps. I think BrotherBob uses theirs in a modified way. In either case, buying several traps quickly stacks up the cost, and WAF becomes a real issue. Of course, you can always go the DIY approach. In my case, I decided to spend much less and bought the SMS-1 with excellent results. Both jakeman (John) and dllewel (Dave) have the SMS-1 as well, and I actually used their valuable feedback when deciding to buy mine and also when setting it up. Outlaw Audio has an excellent manual for the SMS-1 that is also far more detailed and helpful than the original manual by Velodyne. I hope this helps.

John

So where is the cheapest place to purchase an SMS-1? Once in awhile you will see one go fast on Audiogon.

Randy

Owtlaw sells em for 599, That was the going rate a year ago. I've been thinking for a while that you need one Randy.

Thx for your thoughts Mojo, duckman & ihifi... my bud's sub is about 2' tall and about 8" wide, with what must be two 6" vertically stacked drivers.. the grill portion must be permanently attached... I haven't ever been able to get it off without fear of damaging it. Anyway the thing is over 12 yrs old. The bass seems more uniform over a wider range, and seems 'faster'. He uses that system for 95% movies.

My listening area is definitely more live than his... too live... which I think accounts for the 'quickness' I'm hearing at his place. I have bare walls right now behind the equipment and a couple feet behind the listening couch. On the right side is my picture window with vertical blinds (plastic, not cloth lined). I'm sure if I could figure out something to hang on the walls that would be both decorative and absorbant, it would help, but would it be enough? Again, I know corner treatments will give best results, but I can only apply them to 2 corners, and aesthetically it would disrupt the symmetrical look of the room... plus I ain't that handy.

So.. I'm not sure what to do. I've seen the SMS-1 on EBAY, there are 2 or 3 on there right now... but for the 100 bucks or so savings it might worth it to just buy from Outlaw, because I believe the 30-day return policy applies to SMS-1 as well (I've emailed them to verify). I've seen the SMS-1 guide on their site and it appears excellent and easy to follow.

Ah the joys of audio...

You may want to try temporarily stacking some absorbent material in the corners (blankets, pillows, rolls of carpet, etc) and hanging cloth on the walls just to get a sense of whether or not you can hear improvement like I did. When I did this, my frequency response became smoother and I got a 2dB boost from about 30Hz to 90Hz. Now I need to figure out how to make this permanent while respecting my wife's wishes . Maybe an SMS is the way to go.

Thx Mojo.. that's something to consider..I may take pics of my setup later to show you all what I'm dealing with. Doing that temporarily shouldn't be a problem, since I dont have a WAF to deal with!

By the way ihifi.. I do have the Real Traps test tone file, and while I didn't graph it, I did take a listen to the sweep.. I think it was about a year ago. The area around 20hz was strong.. and it slowly got softer from 25hz on to about 50 or so.. then got louder again. This was with the sub placed where I feel it sounds best... so I know I do have some 'issues'.