The ears are well broken in, I've lost the perma-grin and I'm up to date on my movies.
Its time to play!
Over the last couple of months I have been doing a lot of reading on the 2nd most important influence on the quality of sound: the room. I have become convinced that there are reasonable things one can do to significantly improve the sound quality of
any audio system.
The starting point is of course, figuring out exactly what your speakers are putting out. For the last few days I have been playing with a program from the folks at hometheatershack.com called Room Equalization Wizard (REW). I gotta say this is a pretty slick program! These days everyone has a computer, and for the cost of a few extra cables and an spl meter (which we all have anyway right?) this program is a no-brainer.
Here is what I have so far.
The layout:
The surrounds are now where the two Xs are. With the FR speaker being blocked by the couch this channel is boosted by about 2-3db to compensate.
The Sub:
The good news is that I am getting extension down to 22Hz. Not bad considering the posted specs list the -3db point as 28Hz and the sub is not corner loaded. The bad news is the huge dips around 40 and 70Hz. Yuck.
By the way, I had never level matched the sub until two days ago. It seems I was running the sub a little hot. I turned it down from about 1:00 to around 10:00, about 15 'clicks' on the dial!
Sub waterfall:
Everyone probably already knows this, but the waterfall plot shows how fast each frequency decays. The Z axis on the graph it time, so wherever you see a ridge extending out for any significant time, that frequency is being reflected around the room.
For fun I also plotted the sub + mains:
I did not db match during pre-sweep level checks, so the dbs for each trace are different, but you get the idea.
What surprised me here was the big boost at 37Hz. I know the M80s reach low, but with the high-pass roll off I didn't think the mains would contribute much this low. I bet there is a room mode at play as well, but still...
It’s interesting how some frequencies are boosted and some seem tamed. The 52Hz area does not look quite as bad with the mains in, but yowzers! Look at 80Hz.
I didn't upload the waterfall for the sub+mains sweep, but it looks like I get my boom from 37, 52 and 80Hz. I'm also missing a lot between 38 and 70Hz or so. Maybe thats why I wanted to turn the sub so high.
Once REW is set up, measurements are a snap. Set up the spl meter, check to make sure the meter is calibrated to REW test signals, check levels for the chosen location and measure. I spent more time waiting for my fridge to turn off than making measurements.
