REW first measurements, please advise

[nck045]

Finally got some time to learn the basics of REW and got my first measurements in. Red is measurement at listening position (var smoothing) and blue is the Harman target.
Overall I feel the sound is great but I at times the bass can get a little boomy. Need help with a few newbie questions:

1. What frequencies should I try to EQ? Just the bass area or the whole 20-20,000 Hz range?
2. Can I let REW make the filters to reduce the boomy bass? I tried messing around with the EQ but the big dips below 200Hz are not getting fixed?

Any suggestions would be appreciated thanks in advance!

 

[terryforsythe]

The big dip around 67 Hz is a room mode. EQ won't fix that.

 

[ernestcarl]

It looks like you don’t need to bother with full-range EQ. Start with just the bass. Flattening that low-mid peak ~370Hz might not be necessary — or just cutting it by half could be adequate.

 

[ppataki]

You can try two approaches:
1. Keep the target and optimize 20-500Hz with 0dB boost
2. Try setting the target to 85dB and run a full optimization 20-20 000Hz again with 0dB boost

 

[HDavidson]

First, try calculating filters 20-500 at this level (91-92db) in REW. Most likely this will be enough for correction.

 

[ozzy9832001]

I wouldn't build the filters with VAR smoothing either. It will over compensate and make it sound worse, IMO.

I'd try with 1/6 at first, and see how it sounds.

 

[radix]

In general, you do not want to try to boost the EQ to fix a dip, but rather cut the peaks, like @HDavidson suggested. Dips below 200 Hz are usually due to reflections (the sound bouncing off your walls or furniture). Boosting them does not fix the reflections.

The 63 Hz drop will only get fixed by moving the speakers or MLP around or getting a sub that can fill it in from a different position. Cutting the peaks will make that dip less noticeable.

 

[LevityProject]

You can use the Automatic EQ in REW.

Use a house curve like the one attached and load it into the target settings. Set the range to "full range speaker" unless you are measuring just a sub. Set the cut off to a little below the lowest frequency your speakers can reproduce. For example, I have a set of speakers that can reproduce 45hz, although it's quite quiet there. So I set the cut off to 30hz to give the EQ some room to play.

Then hit "Calculate target level from Response". this will bring the target curve in line with your measurements.

Next, go to the Filter Tasks side tab, make sure the range is 20-20000, set the max boosts to the highest values, then hit "Match response to Target". It performs some magic, and will get you close. You can then play around with the filters by pressing the EQ button above the graphs.

When you're done, you can "export the filter settings as text" to use in SoundSource, or upload the text file to a hangouts.audio EQ (doens't matter which headphione model you choose - we're using it just for the ability to convert parametric to graphic EQ), clear the target and adjustment settings, and download the graphic EQ settings for wavelet if you need to use the speakers with your phone via bluetooth

 

[LevityProject]

I've been messing around with doing measurements and aiming for 86dB SPL max. I am finding that the response graphs are a bit cleaner that way, esp in the low end, though I'm not sure exactly what's going on that they would be. I can only guess that the lower SPL levels are creating less low end room interference and less amplitude in other reflections.