Good Evening All,
Well, I managed to pick up an ECM8000 and a Xenyx802 at a Boxing Day sale, and thought it was the perfect time to start my calibration journey!
A bit of background on my setup:
Dedicated HT:
12ft 6 in wide
19 feet long
90 in high
Speakers are Paradigm Monitor 7 mains, Paradigm CC270 Centre, Paradigm ADP-170 surrounds with a Paradigm PS-1000 Sub, located in the front left corner of the stage/proscenium (yes, bad, bad, bad...). The entire front stage (minus the screen) is filled with mineral wool for bass-trapping, plus I have 2" OC703 panels at all first reflection points on walls and ceiling. A Sony STR-DE945 AVR drives the speakers with the xo at 90hz, and a Sony STR-345 driving 4 Aura bass shakers in the sofas. Both the Sub and the Shakers are through a BFD.
My mission is to use REW / BFD and anything else I can get my hands on to tweak and improve the audio! Looking at Wayne's hard-knee house curve and/or variants as well. I am planning on taking measurements for all 6 seating locations, and setting up the filters on the BFD according to which seats are occupied (Setting 2 = seats 1&2 occupied, setting 4 is four people, etc.). I will be using the left engine to PEQ the sub, and the right will be used as a 40hz low-pass for the shakers on all of the settings....
I've setup REW, calibrated the Soundblaster Live External SC, used the ECM8000 cal file from the site, set levels and taken some baseline measurements (no BFD) of all six positions in the room
Here's a pic of the room layout, so the seating 'numbers' make sense:
And what follows are my very firstest measurements
Seat 1
Seat 2
Seat 3
Seat 4
Seat 5
Seat 6
It appears to me that 4 and 5 are not too terrible to start with, but seat 3 is the worst of the bunch
Methinks that once I start to apply the filters, Seat 3 is going to lose no matter what! What I've observed is, that guests generally fill seats 3 & 6 last - usually the first seat they head to is #5 and they're scared to sit in #1
Now, to begin designing filters to address multiple locations, am I better off to use the 'average' function in REW for different combinations (ie - if seats 4&5, 1& 2 are used, then 'average' those readings and filter for the average)?
I'll also have a ton of questions in regards to integrating the mains (once I get a feel for setting up the sub), and am also looking at taking full range measurements down the road.
Any suggestions or advice that could help me towards auditory nirvana is greatly appreciated!
Thanks in Advance,