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Got my REW reverberation (RT60) graphs. Please comment!

alex-z

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Thanks for your reply. The room is mostly symmetrical and the speakers are similarly placed in terms of distance from the walls. I do have 4 inch absorbers at the first reflection. It might not be perfectly placed.

My subwoofers are 21 inches each in huge 3 x 3 x 3 ported boxes. I forget the model numbers but they should be pretty potent. I will look at my equalization settings and see what’s going on there.

When you say first reflection point, do you mean when the sound from the speaker strikes the opposing wall or behind the speaker and the wall it is near?

The technique I am talking about puts the speakers extremely close to the walls, with only enough distance to sandwich an absorber between.

http://arqen.com/wp-content/gallery/room-setup-speaker-placement/speaker-placed-close-to-wall.jpg - Taken from this article

Diagnosing that 200Hz dip might be simple. 200Hz wavelength is 1.71 metres, so the cancellation is likely caused by a boundary/object which is located approximately .85 metres from the woofer of said speaker.

Subwoofers that size should definitely play below 40Hz, unless they are PA subs with a high port tune. Although I assume that isn't the case.
 
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Snoochers

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When you say first reflection point, do you mean when the sound from the speaker strikes the opposing wall or behind the speaker and the wall it is near?

The technique I am talking about puts the speakers extremely close to the walls, with only enough distance to sandwich an absorber between.

http://arqen.com/wp-content/gallery/room-setup-speaker-placement/speaker-placed-close-to-wall.jpg - Taken from this article

Diagnosing that 200Hz dip might be simple. 200Hz wavelength is 1.71 metres, so the cancellation is likely caused by a boundary/object which is located approximately .85 metres from the woofer of said speaker.

Subwoofers that size should definitely play below 40Hz, unless they are PA subs with a high port tune. Although I assume that isn't the case.
The woofer is the 21SW152-4. I don't know the nature of the enclosure exactly in terms of acoustics but the https://data-bass.com/# testing shows healthy responses in the 20hz range
 

alex-z

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The woofer is the 21SW152-4. I don't know the nature of the enclosure exactly in terms of acoustics but the https://data-bass.com/# testing shows healthy responses in the 20hz range

That one? 15ft with 25Hz port tune?

The on-axis frequency response definitely shows the output rising above 40Hz, which is to be expected, it is a PA orientated driver built for efficiency over deep bass. It can definitely play strongly down to 25Hz, you just need to setup the DSP to flatten things. The CEA-2010 figures are strong, but that represents peak output, not the frequency response linearity.
 
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Snoochers

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That one? 15ft with 25Hz port tune?

The on-axis frequency response definitely shows the output rising above 40Hz, which is to be expected, it is a PA orientated driver built for efficiency over deep bass. It can definitely play strongly down to 25Hz, you just need to setup the DSP to flatten things. The CEA-2010 figures are strong, but that represents peak output, not the frequency response linearity.
Thanks I'm going to play around. What confuses me is that the measurements from the EQ software look good and the curve is flat/high down to 15hz but in REW it looks like you see above. Is it just a difference in software or mics or something? I reckon REW+UMIK is more trustworthy than Anthem ARC mic?
 
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Snoochers

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OK i ran it again this time with a crazy deep bass boost in Anthem ARC. Weird that I had to do that but seems to flatten it a bit in the 20hz-30hz. range.
Screen Shot 2022-07-29 at 1.37.21 PM.png
 

ernestcarl

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@alex-z @ernestcarl You guys are absolute champions. I've read your posts and tried a few things. I ended up landing on a page about my receiver that mentioned a new beta Anthem ARC version that had a comprehensive phase alignment analysis. It took a few minutes to run and that may have solved the issue?? What do you guys think? LCR are the long lines and the top purple one is LFE and the middle one is one of the subs on its own. There's room for improvement (especially for the purple LCR line?) but I think the huge 65hz null has been rectified? How's this looking otherwise?

I'm using 1/3 smoothing. Is that too generous?

View attachment 221091
EDIT: here is 1/6 smoothing
View attachment 221093

You probably are having difficulty creating an isolated measurement sweep sent to the mains and another one just to the (non-LFE sub) with a proper acoustic timing information anchored to one of the mains -- this method also requires a channel remapping capacity which is easy enough to do in software, but I wouldn't know how it's done directly in an AVR. A workaround would be to disconnect/power off the sub while measuring either one of the LCR channels; then, performing another sweep sent to the mains with them disconnected/powered off while the sub is active or turned on -- and just manually apply guestimate time offsets if examining the overlayed IR/phases.

Anyhows -- skipping all that -- and judging merely from what you've got right now (magnitude only curves) in the above graphs, it doesn't look like there's any obvious abnormal phase induced cancellation between the BM sub + mains channels from a non-optimal BM processor setup -- this was speculative on my part since I have no clue on how modern AVRs fair at coping with phase anomalies that could occur during BM, but it's maybe fair to assume some are also smart enough to have some tricks up their sleave to avoid/fix such issues. The dips at 60 and 90 Hz look like they're coming inherently from the room itself as they're common with the sub-only and LFE-only curves. Other than some very minor peaks and dips (which are likely perceptually insignificant, say, if you would apply psychoacoustic smoothing) that could maybe manually "corrected" a tad bit if desired with additonal PEQs, well, I think you're good!
 
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Snoochers

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You probably are having difficulty creating an isolated measurement sweep sent to the mains and another one just to the (non-LFE sub) with a proper acoustic timing information anchored to one of the mains -- this method also requires a channel remapping capacity which is easy enough to do in software, but I wouldn't know how it's done directly in an AVR. A workaround would be to disconnect/power off the sub while measuring either one of the LCR channels; then, performing another sweep sent to the mains with them disconnected/powered off while the sub is active or turned on -- and just manually apply guestimate time offsets if examining the overlayed IR/phases.

Anyhows -- skipping all that -- and judging merely from what you've got right now (magnitude only curves) in the above graphs, it doesn't look like there's any obvious abnormal phase induced cancellation between the BM sub + mains channels from a non-optimal BM processor setup -- this was speculative on my part since I have no clue on how modern AVRs fair at coping with phase anomalies that could occur during BM, but it's maybe fair to assume some are also smart enough to have some tricks up their sleave to avoid/fix such issues. The dips at 60 and 90 Hz look like they're coming inherently from the room itself as they're common with the sub-only and LFE-only curves. Other than some very minor peaks and dips (which are likely perceptually insignificant, say, if you would apply psychoacoustic smoothing) that could maybe manually "corrected" a tad bit if desired with additonal PEQs, well, I think you're good!
Thanks!! I don’t know much about room curves but gave it a shot. Do you think the slope of my lines looks decent?
 

ernestcarl

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Thanks!! I don’t know much about room curves but gave it a shot. Do you think the slope of my lines looks decent?

It's perfectly all right. How exactly "horizontally flat" or shelved the lower and higher ends of the FR to sound "balanced" to the ears is room and speaker dependent. It's also a matter of the source material (the recording) and listening levels. If you often like to blast your speakers at higher levels, you may want a steeper slope or more shelving applied to the higher frequencies. If listening most often from low to moderately low SPL volumes, you may want less of a shelving to the highs. Some AVRs can apply some kind of loudness compensation DSP which automatically applies shelving to the low and highs depending on volume level, but it might not always work well in every situation.
 
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Snoochers

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It's perfectly all right. How exactly "horizontally flat" or shelved the lower and higher ends of the FR to sound "balanced" to the ears is room and speaker dependent. It's also a matter of the source material (the recording) and listening levels. If you often like to blast your speakers at higher levels, you may want a steeper slope or more shelving applied to the higher frequencies. If listening most often from low to moderately low SPL volumes, you may want less of shelving to the highs. Some AVRs can apply some kind of loudness compensation DSP which automatically applied shelving to the low and highs depending on volume level, but it might not always work well in every situation.
Thanks for the reply. I think generally we listen at fairly moderate volume. I haven’t been bothered by highs anyway. I don’t know if I should keep ramping up the base or not
 

alex-z

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Thanks I'm going to play around. What confuses me is that the measurements from the EQ software look good and the curve is flat/high down to 15hz but in REW it looks like you see above. Is it just a difference in software or mics or something? I reckon REW+UMIK is more trustworthy than Anthem ARC mic?

In my experience the UMIK-1 is quite accurate down to 20Hz, but the Anthem ARC mic shouldn't be off by 5dB.

As ernestcarl mentioned, make sure any receiver features such as loudness compensation aka dynamic EQ are disabled when running measurements. Does your subwoofer amp have a soft-limiter/compressor? That could also explain the loss of deep bass. Measuring the subwoofer by itself (not connected to the receiver) could help rule out some things.

If you are happy with the bass response you don't need to chase a fix. It is just my experience that for movies, an elevated 20Hz response is desirable.
 

Gringoaudio1

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I just took delivery of a UMIK-1 and need to download and learn REW.
Does it sound better with your most recent adjustments? Are you happy with where your sound is at?
I just have a Marantz 7005 reciever so any EQ filters will have to be added in JRiver or some other PC - based application. Thanks!
 

thorvat

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Yep. That looks very good!

Well, room decay indeed looks good but.. Baseline slice is not shown but 20ms slice is showing 35dB peak to peak variation in the 20-400Hz range. That is neither looking good nor it would sound good. :D


Screen Shot 2022-07-21 at 10.14.31 AM.png
 

ernestcarl

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Well, room decay indeed looks good but.. Baseline slice is not shown but 20ms slice is showing 35dB peak to peak variation in the 20-400Hz range. That is neither looking good nor it would sound good. :D


View attachment 221243

Yep, it looks like the measurement was done prior any SPL leveling (on the subs?) or EQ. I wasn’t really looking or judging based on the absolute level, but just the overall relative evenness of the decay.

*But, still, the baseline curve should have not been deselected to get a more full picture. I agree with you there.
 
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