I need help from the true experts here regarding balancing a subwoofer's output against two different sources.
This may be an impossible problem and a waste of bandwidth, but I'm curious for other's opinions. Here's the deal. I recently upgraded from a POS Kenwood sub to a pretty decent SVS PCi+ 20-39. I *really* like the new sub and have no complaints about it. I suspect I would have the same problem with an EP500/600. Equipment : Pioneer Elite VSX-43TX receiver, Denon DVD-1930CI DVD/CD/SACD/DVD-A player, Axiom M22's and VP150 speakers.
It has to do with calibrating the sub. With the Kenwood, this was pretty much a hopeless battle as I could never get things calibrated consistently and so I gave up until purchasing a better sub. This SVS is perfectly consistent as I'm calibrating, so I'm trying to get things dialed as perfectly as possible. I'm having some difficulty getting my sub output balanced between my receiver and my SACD player. Calibrating at 75db for my speakers, perhaps @78db for the sub with its gain set at perhaps 40%, the sub balance is set to -3.5db on the receiver. That creates a nice and balanced soundstage for the bulk of my listening from sources processed by my receiver. However, I do occasionally enjoy SACD's, and usually run those through the multi-channel input in which my receiver does no processing. So I have to calibrate that through the DVD/SACD player. Here's where the problem comes in. The DVD player's sub output seems significantly lower than that from my receiver. Compounding the problem is that it only has negative adjustments. So to get things balanced I have to really crank down all of the other channels, perhaps -10 or -11db, and leave the sub at 0db. That just barely brings everything in line (never mind the 2-3db bump that I like on the sub), but obviously at a lower volume level. This produces the fun effect of blowing out my eardrums if I forget to lower the volume when switching from the multi-channel input back to digital inputs, since the m/c level is considerably lower.
So I tried going the other way - bumping the sub gain up to perhaps 60% and calibrating on the SACD player. That then works great for the multi-channel sound, but then the receiver has to be calibrated with like -12db of sub output to balance out the sub channel for everything else that it processes. Woe to the person that accidentally hits the 'Direct Output' button and bypasses the receiver calibration - as they might blow out the windows in my den.
So can anyone offer any advice? I imagine the best course of action will be to just split the difference between the two sources. Perhaps set the sub gain in the middle, 50%, and balance the receiver down a bit and the DVD up a bit?
