[aimia1991]

I've been following Brad's "Home Theater Gamer" 5 part mini dsp guide on YouTube and I'm facing a big issue.

I followed the steps in the video and after applying the house curve and playing with EQ (I used all 10 spots in the EQ) I got this result:

It being my first attempt at mini dsp, I'm not sure if it's a good result (at least the low frequency part) but I was fine with this as there is usually a huge dip at around 50Hz. My 5.2.4 setup is:

SVS PB3000 - Left corner
SVS PB2000 pro - Right corner
Denon 3600H
Mini DSP 2x4 HD
KEF R300 Front left and right
KEF R200c Center
KEF Q350 Surrounds
KEF Ci200RR Ceiling Atmos

My room is mostly not treated

I reached the step where I needed to apply Auddyssy room calibration, purchased the paid app and did the calibration through the app, disabled room correction for the subs, and uploaded the file to the AVR. I noticed after uploading the file that certain settings had changed and had to be changed back like:

• front speakers were set to Large
• crossovers for all my speakers were set 40 Hz
• dynamic EQ was on
• subwoofer distance was set (should I change it?)

so, I set the speakers to small, dynamic EQ to off, crossovers to 90Hz and kept the Sub distance as it is (around 5.19)

and did a measurement and got this:

this is really bad, at least before it was ok. so, I'm puzzled, how to make it look like my initial house curve and what did i do wrong. Please Help

 

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

For starters, there is no way your sub needed 10 filters. Look for the article on minimal EQ in my signature (click the "down" arrow in the right corner).

Aside from that, it looks like Audyssey is messing with the subs despite your disabling it for the subs. Not sure how that can be fixed.

Regards,
Wayne

 

[HomTolman]

I've been following Brad's "Home Theater Gamer" 5 part mini dsp guide on YouTube and I'm facing a big issue.

I followed the steps in the video and after applying the house curve and playing with EQ (I used all 10 spots in the EQ) I got this result:

It’s ALL bad. Because you’re under the delusion that you can “EQ a Room”.

YOU CAN’T EQ A ROOM. PERIOD.

You need a heavy dose of Dr Floyd Toole. Read about how acoustics REALLY works and stop adding colorations and non-linearity to your speakers.

 

[tnargs]

You can certainly EQ a room, but, as Toole points out, you can’t auto-EQ a room to great effect (in fact you will often make it worse), and you can‘t perfectly EQ a room.

From looking at your post:

- if you had a huge dip around 50 Hz, you should consider leaving it. EQ was not meant to fix that sort of room mode cancellation, and trying to do so will invite acoustic, mechanical and electronic issues. Look for other frequencies with similar issues, and leave them too.

- why did you disable room correction for the subs in Audy? What were you trying to do with Audy?

- put some smoothing on your REW graphs. Menu/Graphs/Smoothing. The Help says to use Var Smoothing for applying EQ filters, i.e. manually, but try Psy Smoothing to see what the response will actually sound like.

- not sure if you are using moving mic method (MMM) for the low frequency measurements? Make sure you are. Some of the variations between your two graphs could be small differences in measurement position.

- Audy is not my area, but I’m sure the XT32 app allows you to tailor the target with Custom Target? The Audy default curve has no bass lift, so that is why it flattened out your carefully achieved bass lift! You can tailor your target curve quite extensively in the app, and if you like, get your bass lift back.

- but first, I would re-do your MiniDSP EQ with a few changes to the approach. Take multiple measurements and average — even if you only care about one seat, take them 150mm apart. Use MMM when measuring the bass frequencies. Do not try to correct big hollows (you will probably notice they are less when measured this way, anyway). Use Psy Smoothing to decide how good it should sound, then use Var Smoothing to examine the detail of what EQ to add. Don’t use more EQ than the minimum needed.

- then run Audy but restrict its range to under 500 Hz. You don’t want to respond to the room above that: ’fixing the room’ above 500 Hz will most likely make the direct sound from the speakers worse, and that’s actually more important. And use a custom curve that tracks your MiniDSP result (or improves on it) below 150 Hz, and does not try to correct big hollows.

Good luck. Oh, BTW: your MiniDSP has a latent delay of 1.2 msec, so, if Audyssey says your sub is 40cm further away than you measure, it is actually correct.

 

[aimia1991]

You can certainly EQ a room, but, as Toole points out, you can’t auto-EQ a room to great effect (in fact you will often make it worse), and you can‘t perfectly EQ a room.

From looking at your post:

- if you had a huge dip around 50 Hz, you should consider leaving it. EQ was not meant to fix that sort of room mode cancellation, and trying to do so will invite acoustic, mechanical and electronic issues. Look for other frequencies with similar issues, and leave them too.

- why did you disable room correction for the subs in Audy? What were you trying to do with Audy?

- put some smoothing on your REW graphs. Menu/Graphs/Smoothing. The Help says to use Var Smoothing for applying EQ filters, i.e. manually, but try Psy Smoothing to see what the response will actually sound like.

- not sure if you are using moving mic method (MMM) for the low frequency measurements? Make sure you are. Some of the variations between your two graphs could be small differences in measurement position.

- Audy is not my area, but I’m sure the XT32 app allows you to tailor the target with Custom Target? The Audy default curve has no bass lift, so that is why it flattened out your carefully achieved bass lift! You can tailor your target curve quite extensively in the app, and if you like, get your bass lift back.

- but first, I would re-do your MiniDSP EQ with a few changes to the approach. Take multiple measurements and average — even if you only care about one seat, take them 150mm apart. Use MMM when measuring the bass frequencies. Do not try to correct big hollows (you will probably notice they are less when measured this way, anyway). Use Psy Smoothing to decide how good it should sound, then use Var Smoothing to examine the detail of what EQ to add. Don’t use more EQ than the minimum needed.

- then run Audy but restrict its range to under 500 Hz. You don’t want to respond to the room above that: ’fixing the room’ above 500 Hz will most likely make the direct sound from the speakers worse, and that’s actually more important. And use a custom curve that tracks your MiniDSP result (or improves on it) below 150 Hz, and does not try to correct big hollows.

Good luck. Oh, BTW: your MiniDSP has a latent delay of 1.2 msec, so, if Audyssey says your sub is 40cm further away than you measure, it is actually correct.

Dear tnargs, thank you for your detailed reply and explanation. To address your points:

- I understand now that room modes like the one I have at 50hz cannot be corrected using EQ, and should be left alone

- I use Audy as I'm using Denon AVR and its room correction app is better than no room correction. I did disable room correction for the subs in Audy because it messed up my initial EQ on the mini dsp as I had shown in the pictures above.

- Isn't smoothing only used to make the graph look nicer in REW ? How will it have any effect on the performance ?

- I haven't used MMM, I kept the at one position as I consider myself a beginner at this and didn't want to complicate things

- Interesting input about Audy bass lift, If I turned OFF the Low Frequency EQ on Audy App why is it interfering and changing what I had done with the miniDSP ?

- If I only care about the one seat location, how many measurements should I take using MMM ? Psy Smoothing and Var Smoothing are new to me so I have to look them and learn how use them properly. I mainly used the 10 available EQ slots in miniDSP to correct small dips and peaks, not sure if it is the right way to go about it though.

- Finally, I actually found out what was the main problem! when I did Audy calibration, I had done 4 locations, one at each seating position (I have two) and one at each seating position with the seat reclined. I thought since those the only positions that will be used. Later on I followed a guide suggesting to use all 8 positions in Audy, I focused on the main seat position and the 7 remaining at max 20 inch around the main position, turned off the LF correction in Audy and ended up with this after some final tweaking with miniDSP EQ.

I'm not sure If this is better than my first post Audy graph, but it sounds better, maybe its actually not and I feel its better because of personal preference. I am clueless beyond this.

anyway, looking forward to more comments and guides to learn and improve.

Thanks everyone.

 

[tnargs]

- Isn't smoothing only used to make the graph look nicer in REW ? How will it have any effect on the performance ?

Hi, if you have a look here in the REW help file, EQ Window , you see there is a Filter Adjust window where you select the amount of smoothing. So it DOES have an effect on the Auto EQ function in REW (which would change the EQ settings you load into miniDSP, although not Audyssey). If you use No Smoothing, REW will probably need a lot more filters than your miniDSP accepts, to achieve the target curve. Which means it will probably 'run out of filter slots' and not achieve the target curve. But if you had used the recommended Var Smoothing, it can get close to target with less filters and do a better job of efficiently using the available number of filter slots in your miniDSP. Then perform a visual check with Psy Smoothing to see how it should 'sound' to your ear.

I mainly used the 10 available EQ slots in miniDSP to correct small dips and peaks, not sure if it is the right way to go about it though.

Try the Auto EQ function in REW, as I described above. Read the help file on how to best use it.

- If I only care about the one seat location, how many measurements should I take using MMM ?

For measurements near the listening position, I would use MMM every time.

I did disable room correction for the subs in Audy because it messed up my initial EQ on the mini dsp as I had shown in the pictures above.

You are in the uncommon situation of using MiniDSP for the bass EQ and wanting to use Audy for EQ of the mids and highs. I would have done it the other way around! As I said earlier, ’fixing the room’ above 500 Hz will most likely make the direct sound from the speakers worse, and that’s actually more important.