[thm655321]

First as a newbie to all this let me say that this forum is a goldmine and the posts together with the REW help files answered most of my questions.

I have a combined home theater and audio system. My main focus is audio with movies/TV second. My main speakers are the Apogee Mini-Grand system which consists of Apogee Stage ribbon speakers each sitting on a dual driver ported sub in a bi-amped arrangement. I also have a Velodyne HGS-12, so in effect I have three subs in the system. The Apogee subs go fairly deep, but not with the same weight/authority as the HGS-12. The subs are set up as follows: Each L/R channel of my preamp is fed to a Paradigm X-30 crossover which then feed the Apogee Stages with a high pass 80Hz signal. The Apogee subs are fed the L/R subwoofer signal from the X-30s low pass crossed at 80Hz. The Velodyne is also fed the same L/R signals from the X-30s that are sent to the Apogee subs (each X-30 has two sub outputs). I bought the FBQ 2496 to EQ the Velodyne in an effort to better bass frequency response for audio (any improvement to home theater would be strictly a bonus).

In setting it up, I plugged the FBQ between the X-30s and the Velodyne such that the FBQ is being fed both the left sub and right sub stereo signals. I used AVIA to set the levels of all three subs (I think) correctly. I did this for each speaker by first matching the sub output of the Apogee sub to the speaker, then matching the output of the Velodyne to the Apogee sub, and then with the Velodyne and Apogee sub playing together matching the combined output of the subs with the Apogee speaker by using the sub volume control on the X-30 (which attenuates both subs at the same time in this arrangement).

Using REW, I did a room response for each speaker and the Velodyne together (i.e., I did the frequency tests using the right speaker/sub+Velodyne on their own and then using the left speaker/sub+Velodyne on their own). My aim was to get the flattest frequency response possible for each channel, not to generate a house curve or anything fancy. I got the response as flat as I could and ended up with 5 filters on the left channel and 3 on the right channel. I fed the filters to the FBQ using REW over the MIDI connection.

The result? Bass/LFE for movies is still very good, if not better. For music the soundstage appears to have opened up and the bass is more clearly defined. For instance, when I press the FBQ's bypass button the bass is not as defined, however I would not call it a dramatic difference.

A few questions for the experts:

1) Does the way I did my set up of the subs and FBQ make sense or is there a better way? For instance, should I have done the sweeps with both speakers playing at the same time to adjust for a combined frequency response?

2) I did not adjust the input level of the FBQ at all. When playing movies with lots of LFE/bass I only get about 4 lights max to show up on either L/R LED output meter. Should I adjust the input level? If so, at what stage should it be adjusted (e.g., prior to doing the AVIA calibration)?

Any advice would be appreciated, thanks.

THM