I'm about to order a BFD, but look at this...

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

On the side while we’re waiting for TJ to get back to us – Stephen, that graph of yours looks a little too pretty. You didn’t use every last one of those BFD filters, did you?

Regards,
Wayne

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

TJHUB wrote:

My Emotiva pre/pro has an XLR sub output. Should I purchase an XLR cable to feed into the BFD? Might as well, right?

Just make sure the cable you get has either Neutrik or Switchcraft connectors. There are a lot of cheap mic cables with cheesy XLRs on the market...

Regards,
Wayne

[lalakersfan34]

Wayne A. Pflughaupt wrote:

On the side while we’re waiting for TJ to get back to us – Stephen, that graph of yours looks a little too pretty. You didn’t use every last one of those BFD filters, did you?

Regards,
Wayne

Nope, I didn't use them all - but I'm curious, is it bad to use more than 3-4 filters? I figured if I'm not boosting frequencies it's not too big a deal, but let me know and I'll redo things...

[TJHUB]

Wayne A. Pflughaupt wrote:

Just make sure the cable you get has either Neutrik or Switchcraft connectors. There are a lot of cheap mic cables with cheesy XLRs on the market...

Regards,
Wayne

I was planning to just order a Dayton XLR (3ft.) from PE when I order my 1124P. It has a 5-year warranty.

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

lalakersfan34 wrote:

Nope, I didn't use them all - but I'm curious, is it bad to use more than 3-4 filters? I figured if I'm not boosting frequencies it's not too big a deal, but let me know and I'll redo things...

Hee hee – just ribbin’ ya, Stephen. Sure, it’s fine to use more than 3-4 filters if you need them. Often people come into this and see they can pile on filter after filter to get response as perfect-looking as possible, not knowing any better – i.e., using way more than they really need, 11 or 12 of them and occasionally asking of they can hook the two channels together to get another 12, no kidding! If you were able to get that curve of yours with only a few filters, then you’re really fortunate! Mine doesn’t look nearly as good, although it does sound good.

Regards,
Wayne

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

TJHUB wrote:

I was planning to just order a Dayton XLR (3ft.) from PE when I order my 1124P. It has a 5-year warranty.

Those are Neutrik connectors – you’re good to go.

Regards,
Wayne

[TJHUB]

Wayne A. Pflughaupt wrote:

Those are Neutrik connectors – you’re good to go.

Regards,
Wayne

That's good to know because I had no idea what you were talking about and I was wondering if it was the right cable.

Also, everything is ordered. I'll be back Wednesday with results from REW. I'm not sure when I'll get the BFD for sure.

This is going to be fun. I LOVE this stuff.

[TJHUB]

Just a small update:

My USB sound card and BFD (1124P) will be in my hands tomorrow. I'm all set to get everything running. I hope I won't need to post anything in the REW forum (as problems).

I can't wait, but I plan to be patient and get everything just right.

[lalakersfan34]

Sounds good, TJ. Keep us posted - I'm interested to know how things end up. Hopefully you won't have any fiascos like I did .

[TJHUB]

Ok guys... I barely got through this and I'm not certain everything is good. I'll redo everything tomorrow to see if the results are similar or not.

Anyway, here are my results:

REW before:



REW after:



The "after" is with 7 filters. The first 4 just wasn't good enough for me, so I re-ran REW and added 3 more filters. I don't know if this is good or not, but you saw the graphs.

I really can't do any real listening because the kids are in bed, but I am sitting here listening at low volume and I hear very balanced, very clean bass. I'm playing Fourplay which has caused the most issues for me because their music has some very deep bass that was sounding a little bloated. Midbass sounds solid at low volume. This is one thing I thought was weak. I can't wait until tomorrow to really give this a listen.

Additional good news: the 1124P has NO HUM! I was worried, but it seems I got lucky.

That's all I have for now...

[lalakersfan34]

Looking good, TJ! Those 15dB peaks were huge. Looking at the before and after, everything below 60hz was far too bloated prior to your use of EQ. Your bass looks like it's much more accurate and articulate now. If you find the bass is a bit too "lean" down low, you can always run a house curve. I decided to try a modest house curve after running my EQ flat, and I like it very much. It's not nearly enough to be bloated, but the bottom octave is "fuller" now. Anyway, looking forward to finding out how things turn out and what you think of your bass response when you're done. But just from looking at your two charts, things look far better already. Great job .

[TJHUB]

I got about 15 minutes to listen to some music this morning before work. The change in sound is not in your face obvious, but it is definitely better. For me, the bass is finally punchy like it should be. The overall bass response is very smooth and balanced sounding. The sub seems to blend better with my B&W 805S's now. It wasn't bad before, but you can really be fooled into thinking the bass is coming from my small bookshelf speakers and not that 40" tall black tube on the side.

I can't believe I've been wanting to do this for about the past 5 years and never did until now. What was I thinking?

My only problem right now is I'm just not sure how I got through everything last night with REW. I had a few problems here and there, but between the guide and my application of my general computer genius, I got through it and everything seems to work. I had a hard time understanding exactly what was or needed to happen in some of the steps. I'm going to run through the guide and start over again tonight. If I get similar or exactly the same results, good. If things get better, great! I'd really like to understand REW better to better use the great tool it seems to be.

I will also be experimenting with a house curve of some kind over the next couple of days or even the weekend. That should prove interesting for the home theater side of my setup.

Thanks again for your help guys. REW was definitely the way to go. I can't believe I was thinking I'd do this manually.

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

TJHUB wrote:

Thanks again for your help guys. REW was definitely the way to go. I can't believe I was thinking I'd do this manually.

We used to do it all the time! Take sine wave readings across the sub band, try to figure out from the manual graph you plotted what filters needed to be set up (that’s what totally befuddled most people), apply a filter, take new sine wave readings and plot a new graph and see what the change was. And on and on. It could take days to accomplish. Late-comers to sub equalizing have no clue how much they owe John for giving back to them a huge chunk of their lives.

TJHUB wrote:

Anyway, here are my results:

REW before:



REW after:



The "after" is with 7 filters. The first 4 just wasn't good enough for me, so I re-ran REW and added 3 more filters. I don't know if this is good or not, but you saw the graphs.

I take it you can see now that eliminating that big 22 Hz area was what was needed.

Seven filters between ~20-50 Hz – that’s an awful lot. I’m guessing you were going for the “picture-perfect” line? That seems to be a natural tendency for first-timers (no dig there, I did it too!).

The 4 filters were probably plenty, given that the area of adjustment has rather broad and smooth deviations, rather than sharp, ragged ones like you see at your upper bass frequencies. If the 4 filters were ones that REW recommended, you can probably get the effect of the other 3 by manually modifying the former – i.e., tweaking their bandwidth, frequency center and gain.

Normally I don’t like to see such drastic cutting taking place (15 dB between the peaks and the Target) and prefer to move the Target between the peaks and lows before equalizing. But in your case it was probably the right thing to do, since the area from 60-90 Hz was pretty well where it needed to be going in. It would have required 2-3 filters minimal to do a wholesale “raise” of that area, in addition to whatever was needed below 60 Hz.

Regards,
Wayne

[TJHUB]

Wayne:

I know you're correct, but you have to let me go through my noob stage. I can assure you that two of the 3 additional filters were very minor and most likely not even needed or effective.

As I've already stated, I really need to go back through the process and understand things better. Once I do, I'll start playing with the recommended filters a little. It certainly is nice that it takes about 15 seconds to run REW to see what your changes affected. Just awesome!

[TJHUB]

I just completed starting all over with REW and my results are extremely similar. The resultant sound sounds VERY similar, so I'll just say that I did good the first time and the second run through I'm only using 4 filters instead of 7.

My sub never sounded this sweet before! The 1124P is great!

I'm planning to explore house curves this weekend. For now I'll just enjoy my new tuning with music and a couple of movies Friday and Saturday night.

[TJHUB]

Just a quick comment:

I ran my REW setup at a friends house this past Monday and showed him that he *needed* a BFD (he knew his sub wasn't sounding "right"). He immediately ordered an 1124P and we tuned it yesterday. Needless to say, he's a very happy guy now.

Again, I'll just say that it's amazing how blended the sub gets with the main speakers after EQ'ing.

[lalakersfan34]

Awesome, TJHUB! It really does make a huge difference.

BTW I'll give Wayne some peace of mind as well. I originally had a lot of filters on my REW, but I've run it again (after adding a couple of bass traps to my room ) and I'm down to five filters.

And I realize I haven't taken the time to personally thank John for REW. The program is incredible, and though it's a little intimidating at first, once you get the hang of it, like TJHUB said, "I can't believe I was thinking I'd do it manually!" I measured my bass response the manual way before, and it took MUCH longer and, in my opinion, the measurements didn't come out as accurately as with REW either. THANK YOU JOHN!!!

[JohnM]

You are very welcome

[TJHUB]

JohnM wrote:

You are very welcome

You know, honestly I am extremely thankful for your software. I can't imagine doing it the manual way over REW. I wanted to do it manually, but I'm VERY happy that I was convinced to use REW.

So...thank you very much sir!

[95RCode]

Wayne A. Pflughaupt wrote:

Normally I don’t like to see such drastic cutting taking place (15 dB between the peaks and the Target) and prefer to move the Target between the peaks and lows before equalizing. But in your case it was probably the right thing to do, since the area from 60-90 Hz was pretty well where it needed to be going in. It would have required 2-3 filters minimal to do a wholesale “raise” of that area, in addition to whatever was needed below 60 Hz.

Regards,
Wayne

Wayne,

Could you explain the process of doing a wholesale raise.

Take care,
James

[brucek]

Could you explain the process of doing a wholesale raise

The use of wide bandwidth filters to act as a level control, rather than narrow filters to remove a peak (or dip).

brucek