Full range vs crossover proof thanks to REW

[Rambo4]

I have been playing with REW for a while, and have been less than impressed with my graphs as a result of the auto EQ feature on my AVR635. I did a firmware upgrade today through the RS232 port and now I have a sweet balanced machine as the following graphs should show.

Apart from that obvious bonus, I have also experimented with a question that dogged me for a while, which is whether to run speakers as full range or cross them over at 80hz. I am not one to base my answer on reviews and speculation of others as everyone's system is different, but I wanted to see a basic rule of thumb for an average midsized theater room, so I have gone ahead and done some tests to show the difference, and it will be plain to see that the 80 Hz low pass crossover is by far the best setup when dealing with acoustics in my room.

I hope this is of some help to others, like me who were looking for some data proof of how to EQ the Harman, or whether to use crossovers.

Receiver: HK AVR635
Speakers: Athena AS-B2's
Subwoofer: Velodyne DLS-5000R (EQ set to Jazz)
SPL meter: RS 33-2055
EQ: Harman's EZset/EQ on Auto at -35db for setup
REW no smoothing except first graph.

Results from a vanilla automated EZset/EQ (speakers determined to be Large)

Subwoofer smoothed to 1/3

may28_ezseteqsmoothing.jpg

Left Speaker full range no smoothing

left speaker full.jpg

Right Speaker full range no smoothing

right speaker full.jpg

The result of these waves together in the room

all together full.jpg



Now I went into the manual settings and set the crossovers on the speakers to 80Hz and you can see the result.

Subwoofer

subwoofer 80.jpg

Left Speaker 80Hz crossover

left speaker 80.jpg

Right Speaker 80 Hz crossover

right speaker 80.jpg

The end result of the response in the room

all together crossed over.jpg


As far as I can tell it looks like the crossovers did the trick, and kept alot of waves from canceling out, just as many of the helpful people here on the boards have pointed out. It is nice though to see the result for myself, and wanted to share this find with everyone who is interested in this sort of thing. My bass may be a bit low yet, but thankfully the sub has a movie setting that ups the bass a bit for movies. Sounds great with music though.

[thewire]

A full range speaker is a humongous speaker with lots of large sized woofers that is flat to about 20Hz. Since you have a sub-woofer and you are testing how they are set to large, use bass limited similar like this. Set the target to 30Hz or 40Hz in the settings to see how it tracks your response. I think this to be correct but I could be wrong.





Sorry for the non standard graphs. Not perfect I know.