Need some direction with REW and EQ APO

[SPOautos]

Okay, I got a umik-1 in and I've been fooling around with REW and EQ APO a lot today. I took measurements of L and R channels and had REW create filters and put it into APO where it is making adjust to each channel individually.

BUT, I was really just testing it out. Id like to redo it all and hopefully with some guidance from you guys that REALLY know what all this is. There's a lot of stuff in REW that even after reading tutorials and watching videos I really don't truly understand it all.

That said.....question 1 is....how so I get all these changes out of EQ APO? I want to put it back to default settings where it's not changing anything so I can start over from scratch.

Question 2 do you guys just take your measurements and just use the filters that REW automatically creates then import them and done? There's so much more info in REW that it makes me think you guys are doing more than just going with the standard automated thing.

By the way, room is very large and I've got the mic at head level in the listening seat and exactly between the speakers (which are a equal distance from the front wall and side wall.

Any guidance is greatly appreciated!

 

[graxxus]

1. Peace is a helpful GUI to use with APO.
2. Yes. There is a lot more that you can do, but start there. Listen. Toggle it on and off, see if you like it. Your room, ears, and preference play a huge role in this whole hobby.

 

[kemmler3D]

That said.....question 1 is....how so I get all these changes out of EQ APO? I want to put it back to default settings where it's not changing anything so I can start over from scratch.

in EQAPO you would have loaded your REW file as TXT.

The way I handle this, instead of having all of my filters in config.txt, I load a "include" filter, which then loads the .txt file from REW, it works as if all the filters were active in config.txt. Then you can turn that whole file on or off easily.

I actually have several different EQ settings (from REW or otherwise) ready to go in config.txt:

In this example, "EQ for SVS and Genelec Door Closed V5" is the file I got from REW after ... 5 tries.

"no sub.txt" contains a graphic EQ that lowers the bass below 60hz considerably so I can listen to my full system at night.

Question 2 do you guys just take your measurements and just use the filters that REW automatically creates then import them and done? There's so much more info in REW that it makes me think you guys are doing more than just going with the standard automated thing.

Kind of. I usually run the EQ optimizer several times until it outputs a curve that looks good to me.

As you can see I also add a few extra filters for various purposes in EQAPO.

REW has a lot of uses and many of them are about analyzing your room for informational purposes, not necessarily generating the EQ curves. If everything is set up properly, generating a useful set of EQ filters doesn't need to be complicated, and the other features of REW are not necessarily relevant to that, so don't worry that you need to use every feature to get good results.

 

[SPOautos]

in EQAPO you would have loaded your REW file as TXT.

The way I handle this, instead of having all of my filters in config.txt, I load a "include" filter, which then loads the .txt file from REW, it works as if all the filters were active in config.txt. Then you can turn that whole file on or off easily.

I actually have several different EQ settings (from REW or otherwise) ready to go in config.txt:

View attachment 506113

In this example, "EQ for SVS and Genelec Door Closed V5" is the file I got from REW after ... 5 tries.

"no sub.txt" contains a graphic EQ that lowers the bass below 60hz considerably so I can listen to my full system at night.



Kind of. I usually run the EQ optimizer several times until it outputs a curve that looks good to me.

As you can see I also add a few extra filters for various purposes in EQAPO.

REW has a lot of uses and many of them are about analyzing your room for informational purposes, not necessarily generating the EQ curves. If everything is set up properly, generating a useful set of EQ filters doesn't need to be complicated, and the other features of REW are not necessarily relevant to that, so don't worry that you need to use every feature to get good results.

Thank you! When I go to import the file into APO I'll try to do it the way you suggested.

 

[SPOautos]

I have a very large room with a crazy shaped ceiling and since its our main living room I can't just put the speakers is the absolute best position. After moving the speakers around and testing each move from the listening position I settled for the best of the worst position hahaha. Anyway this graph is for the right speaker.....on the EQ settings page at the bottom right where it has filter settings, what should I do here to get the best results. I am mostly concerned about the 4 check boxes in the filter around.......I was following a how too but it didn't say anything about that area. Also, is 6db the most I should use for Individual and Overall boost?

 

[kemmler3D]

I have a very large room with a crazy shaped ceiling and since its our main living room I cant just put the speakers is the absolute best position. After moving the speakers around and testing each move from the listening position I settled for the best of the worst hahaha. Anyway.....on the EQ settings page at the bottom right where it has filter settings, what should I do here to get the best results. I am mostly concerned about the 4 check boxes in the filter around.......I was following a how too but it didn't say anything about that area. View attachment 506192

That curve doesn't look too horrible, I think you should be able to get a good result.

Allow Low Shelf and Allow High Shelf refer to filter types, not all DSP units support them, but EQAPO does, so you can leave those checked.

"Allow narrow filters below 200hz" will set limits on the Q of filters below 200hz, because of the way filters work, there are downsides to using really narrow filters, namely that it could cause ringing, so you may want to disable that.

"Vary max Q above 200hz" is similar, I am not totally sure what it does, but it has to do with the width of the filter it will output - generally speaking you only want wide-ish filters above 200hz (or so) but again it will depend on your situation.

I personally set flatness target to 1dB (why not), and individual / overall max boost will be determined by headroom available in your system. If you try to boost a dip by 10dB or more, but your system doesn't have an extra 10dB of juice to give out, you will cause problems. I use a high value here but I happen to know I've got the wiggle room.

 

[SPOautos]

That curve doesn't look too horrible, I think you should be able to get a good result.

Allow Low Shelf and Allow High Shelf refer to filter types, not all DSP units support them, but EQAPO does, so you can leave those checked.

"Allow narrow filters below 200hz" will set limits on the Q of filters below 200hz, because of the way filters work, there are downsides to using really narrow filters, namely that it could cause ringing, so you may want to disable that.

"Vary max Q above 200hz" is similar, I am not totally sure what it does, but it has to do with the width of the filter it will output - generally speaking you only want wide-ish filters above 200hz (or so) but again it will depend on your situation.

I personally set flatness target to 1dB (why not), and individual / overall max boost will be determined by headroom available in your system. If you try to boost a dip by 10dB or more, but your system doesn't have an extra 10dB of juice to give out, you will cause problems. I use a high value here but I happen to know I've got the wiggle room.

Thank You!

With the Low/High shelf are those default settings good or should I adjust them?

I'm turning off the narrow filters below 200hz. When I turned it off, the "Vary max Q above 200hz" automatically grayed out so I guess its not used when you turn off the narrow filters.

I have extra wiggle room with the amp, but I don't want to go overboard, I want to make sure I don't make changes so large that it causes distortions or to sound odd or too thin.

I just realize that there's a whole section I didn't see with "Optimize gains", Optimize gains and Q's" and "Optimize gains", "Q's, and frequencies"......then before that a section called "Modal Analysis" and "Resonances"...........Do you guys do anything with any of those sections?