Minimal EQ And Hard Knee House Curve Success!

[TJHUB]

I wanted to share some recent success with REW and my BFD (1124P). I don't want to get into great detail, but I've been unhappy with my sub's sound and thank goodness I found this forum. I purchased my BFD a few weeks ago and I've been very happy with the way my sub's sound has improved.

Over the last few days I've been reading the REW forum stickies and learning. I've read Wayne's "Minimal EQ..." thread about 10 times trying to understand (outstanding writeup Wayne!!). Luckily I think I understand what Wayne and the others have figured out.

I got home tonight after work set out to re-EQ my sub with as few filters as possible and try a "hard-knee" house curve. Things went VERY well!

This is one of my first tries at EQing my sub. This is a noob 7-filter curve:



Here is my 6th try at EQing my sub for a flat response. This one is from tonight and uses just 2 filters (I included my predicted to prove there are only 2 filters):



And the final graph for my flat response with 2 filters:



I then set out to try EQing a "hard-knee" house curve because my sub's movie performance was completely lack luster. I never had issues before upgrading almost all of my equipment, but since the upgrade, movies had no feel to the bass.

Here is my "hard-knee" house curve and once again I did it with 2 filters!



And the final "hard-knee" house curve graph:



Initial impressions are VERY GOOD!! I played my music that always sounded bloated in the low bass region prior to owning my BFD. Things sound "right". The hard-knee house curve hasn't bloated the low bass at all, but it did tone the midbass down a bit. It really sounds better than my flat curve for music. This was good.

I then played a few scenes from my DVD's that I use for testing low bass output (Star Wars II, Monsters Inc., and Ratatouille). WOW, the bass certainly has FEEL now! Star Wars II when the ship lands and explodes in the opening scenes is spectacular again. I finally had my floor shaking bass back for this scene. Monsters Inc. was the same. The sock explosion punches hard. Ratatouille's gun shots punch you in the chest and shake the floor. My 7 year old daughter said she didn't like it because it was scary...AWESOME! My 9 year son thought it was great.

I then compared my 7 filter flat curve to my 2 filter flat curve with music and I really couldn't hear a difference. I'll just call it a success.

This is all of course preliminary, but so far so good. I didn't hear anything I didn't like tonight. I want to give my house curve a lot more listening time to really know if it'll work for me or not. Movies are certainly good, I just need to listen to a large variety of music over the next week or so.

[atledreier]

I know!

I thought I'd do the same one night, only in reverse. I've been using 3 filters since forever, and thought I'd go for a ruler flat response just to see what it'd sound like. Well, after much fiddling and measuring and remeasuring and re-fiddling I ended up with 9 filters. Still a little ripple, but not too bad, I though. Sounded okay, but not spectacular. Then I brought up my original curve, and overlaid the new curve. They were almost identical. the small ripples were in different places and such, but the overall curve was very similar. And the 3-filter setup sounded better too. Maybe just to my ears, but still. Placebo-effect is still effect.. Needless to say I kept the 3-filter setup.

[Stretch]

Nice job, and thanks for laying it out so clearly. Very helpful as I'm about to try the same thing myself.

[TJHUB]

Thanks guys. The nice thing is that I'm understanding the how's of getting more out of REW and my BFD. Now I just need to experiment more.