3db's Great Room Setup

[3dbinCanada]

This system has seen alot of changes from a speaker perspective as I continue to collect PSB's Century line up of speakers. Here's a history starting with PSB 400. The surrounds are in-ceiling..not as good as having them closer to the listener position but its better than not having them at all. The center channel is a PSB 200C with 5" drivers. The PSB 400 comes equipped with 6.5" woofers and the same tweeter found in the entire Century lineup.

The system consists of a Sony X800 4K player, a Yamaha KX-800 Cassette Deck, a Western Digital Media Player, and Western Digital 3TB USB drive for mainly music storage. Powering everything is a Yamaha RX-V1900. The sub sits behind the sofa to the right of the right speaker. YPAO results stored into system memory1.

 

[3dbinCanada]

Next up is the system around PSB 500. These are nice speakers keeping the same wonderful imaging, mids and highs of the 400s but with deeper and stronger bass. Just swapped out the 400 with the 500. Everything else stayed the same and YPAO results stored into system memory2.

 

[3dbinCanada]

The next update to my system was to replace the PSB 500 with the PSB 600.

 

[3dbinCanada]

The final update... PSB 600 to PSB 800.


After giving them their legs back..

 

[3dbinCanada]

The fun started today. I've purchased a second identical PSB Subsonic6 used and cheap, have a miniDSP. This room is so irregular shaped with a gaping that I could not find a sweet spot for a single sub like I did for the basement.

No matter where I placed a single sub, I never got a smooth response like I was able to in the basement.




I started today by placing the subs in the 1/4 and 3/4 position on the long wall and after calibrating the sub gains, I proceeded with the measurements. It turns out that the left LP response was horrendous. I pushed the sub to the corners of the long wall and took measurements, I had a dip in the center or main LP but it was better than the alternative. I went further with the subs in the corners r as I'm waiting for longer sub cables from Amazon to arrive and I still had to try and figure out the rest of the miniDSP REW process.

The first graph is what the individual sub responses looked like along with the combined L+R sub response;


The second graph is the combined sub responses across 3 listener positions.


The third graph shows both the raw and REW eq'd response at the main LP


The last graph is me playing with MiniDSP using input EQ to lessen that notch.

 

[3dbinCanada]

Did another sub placement exercise today. The right corner sub in yesterdays placement was moved to the other end of the couch, still behind it and firing back into the corner of its previous placement. The Left corner sub was moved to the right of the right speaker centered under the window. I will post measurements tomorrow.

This is where I ended up placing the two subs. Its even a smoother response than the one subs in the room corners.. There at opposite ends of the couch but give the best bass response where the white recliners are.


If you notice the media stand is under the TV. I used those 3M velcro strips and velcroed the miniDSP to the back of the stand.


Here are the plots. The first plot is of each sub by itself taken from the center LP and R+L subs from center listening position.


For the EQ, I chose the slope of the bass to be +10db higher between 20 and 30 Hz and be down at 10 db at a 100 Hz based on the Youtube video stating that the lower frequencies (20-30) need to be 10 db louder than at 80 Hz, aka house curve. I took a measurement for each LP.


I've listened to music and some BluRays and I must say that I agree with the slope philosophy, The bass is no longer boomy but the floors are rattling because of the lower bass. I'm actually quite pleased with the results.

Now integrating this with YPAO was a process I had to think about and run a few measurements. What I ended up doing was disabling the two sub outs on the miniDSP and running YPAO. I also ran YPAO for the main or center LP as I did NOT like what its was doing when I ran it across the 3 LPs. I realise that this would set the mains to large so just for shits & giggles (my favourite English expression) I ran a measurement as shown below.


I enabled the sub outputs on the MiniDSP, went into the AVR config menu, set the bass to sub only, set mains to small, and set the cross over to 90 Hz..(I experimented with that and 90 gave me the best result) . I also played with the sub distance and found that 10.5' gave me the best response. I also took a measurement of YPAO set to through which means no YPAO EQ but bass management is still employed.

 

[cursive]

Nice audio journey! Thanks for taking the time to document. I like how you kept getting bigger and bigger mains speakers, but they still somehow fit under that shelf, up until the last one lol, PSB 800 just like an inch or so too tall it looks. I've had a couple sets of PSB speakers over the years, and always liked them.

That's interesting about the bass slope, at first when I saw your latest eq it looked way off as I'm used to seeing much more flat response, but I may have to give that a shot. +10db slope from 100 down, always nice to have that boost when it comes to movies. I have YPAO on my receiver as well, but never done measurements, are you using a separate measurement Mic, or just the YPAO mic?

Either way looks like a nice sounding setup, the room itself looks like such a nice and cozy place for audio.

 

[3dbinCanada]

Nice audio journey! Thanks for taking the time to document. I like how you kept getting bigger and bigger mains speakers, but they still somehow fit under that shelf, up until the last one lol, PSB 800 just like an inch or so too tall it looks. I've had a couple sets of PSB speakers over the years, and always liked them.

That's interesting about the bass slope, at first when I saw your latest eq it looked way off as I'm used to seeing much more flat response, but I may have to give that a shot. +10db slope from 100 down, always nice to have that boost when it comes to movies. I have YPAO on my receiver as well, but never done measurements, are you using a separate measurement Mic, or just the YPAO mic?

Either way looks like a nice sounding setup, the room itself looks like such a nice and cozy place for audio.

Thankyou for the kind words. The mic I used is a UMIK1 which I bought off of Amazon for the REW program. I would not use the YPAO mic because its not a calibrated mic.

 

[gadgetgeek]

Did another sub placement exercise today. The right corner sub in yesterdays placement was moved to the other end of the couch, still behind it and firing back into the corner of its previous placement. The Left corner sub was moved to the right of the right speaker centered under the window. I will post measurements tomorrow.

This is where I ended up placing the two subs. Its even a smoother response than the one subs in the room corners.. There at opposite ends of the couch but give the best bass response where the white recliners are.
View attachment 119565

If you notice the media stand is under the TV. I used those 3M velcro strips and velcroed the miniDSP to the back of the stand.
View attachment 119566

Here are the plots. The first plot is of each sub by itself taken from the center LP and R+L subs from center listening position.
View attachment 119567

For the EQ, I chose the slope of the bass to be +10db higher between 20 and 30 Hz and be down at 10 db at a 100 Hz based on the Youtube video stating that the lower frequencies (20-30) need to be 10 db louder than at 80 Hz, aka house curve. I took a measurement for each LP.
View attachment 119568

I've listened to music and some BluRays and I must say that I agree with the slope philosophy, The bass is no longer boomy but the floors are rattling because of the lower bass. I'm actually quite pleased with the results.

Now integrating this with YPAO was a process I had to think about and run a few measurements. What I ended up doing was disabling the two sub outs on the miniDSP and running YPAO. I also ran YPAO for the main or center LP as I did NOT like what its was doing when I ran it across the 3 LPs. I realise that this would set the mains to large so just for shits & giggles (my favourite English expression) I ran a measurement as shown below.
View attachment 119569

I enabled the sub outputs on the MiniDSP, went into the AVR config menu, set the bass to sub only, set mains to small, and set the cross over to 90 Hz..(I experimented with that and 90 gave me the best result) . I also played with the sub distance and found that 10.5' gave me the best response. I also took a measurement of YPAO set to through which means no YPAO EQ but bass management is still employed.
View attachment 119570

Hello from a fellow Canadian. I owned the PSB 800s for several years. I loved those speakers. Eventually moved to the Stratus Silver i's and most recently the Synchrony One's. I have to admit, I found the bass always boomy on the 800's when I used my Yamaha receiver. I eventually moved to a Rotel RB-1080 and then to Arcam P1 Monoblocks. For whatever reason, the bass always seemed less lumpy and boomy as I added more power to the front channels. Thanks for posting your journey! Much appreciated.

 

[3dbinCanada]

Hello from a fellow Canadian. I owned the PSB 800s for several years. I loved those speakers. Eventually moved to the Stratus Silver i's and most recently the Synchrony One's. I have to admit, I found the bass always boomy on the 800's when I used my Yamaha receiver. I eventually moved to a Rotel RB-1080 and then to Arcam P1 Monoblocks. For whatever reason, the bass always seemed less lumpy and boomy as I added more power to the front channels. Thanks for posting your journey! Much appreciated.

Boominess with the 800s was never an issue with me in this room. Its a huge room acoustically speaking and IHO, is the reason why they don't boom. The Yamaha driving them is 2nd from the top from that model year and has power to spare to drive these speakers into ear bleeding territory without effort.

 

[3dbinCanada]

I decided to swap in the PSB500 and swap out the PSB600. I found some stands for the 500s and the tweeters are now at ear level.


Here are the measured responses;

Subs Only measured across all 3 LP


Mains set to large subs turned off at CLP


YPAO set to flat across all 3 LP


YPAO Off, Mains Set to small across all 3 LP

 

[3dbinCanada]

I finally dialed in the 3rd sub into the Greatroom. The bass is much more even now when walking around. Still not perfect but I'm not going to invest into another sub. Here are the pics.. The last sub added is the sub on the left. The other two subs I had in their present location since March of this year. The 3rd sub is holding up the lamp.



Here is the bass response.. each response at a different listening position, NON EQ verses EQ (miniDSP). The LLP is closet to the hallway and the RLP is closted to the backwall. The couch is not considered a listening position.



Here are the full frequency sweeps across the listener positions (LP). First graph is with YPAO set to flat, second graph is YPAO turned off but using bass management, and the third graph is Pure Direct