Did I overkill my room just ordered a pair of SVS PB3000's

[ryanosaur]

Can I play a YOUTUBE sweep and measure from that for now?

There is no calibration for YT vids... you may get a 'hot' signal or a weak one... I would use what's in your AVR if it has a pink noise generator, assuming you are talking about SPL matching.
REW will be able to run sweeps or different pink noises, and when you are up and running can easily do SPL checks from there.

 

[lovinthehd]

FWIW, I wouldn't change the delays (distance) set by Audyssey...

 

[Pogre]

I did however run the Audyssey but before I did I looked at the EQ settings and yes it was pumped up at a few spots and my distance was a bit off with from my last tune.

FWIW, I wouldn't change the delays (distance) set by Audyssey...

Yeah, I was gonna pop in on that too.

I leave the distances alone. Those settings are more about timing so the sounds from all of your speakers arrive at the listening position at the same time. They're not always in line with the actual measured distance, especially for subs. Audyssey will probably push your subs back even further after you hook up the Mini. That allows for the extra time involved for processing.

 

[ryanosaur]

^^ And different Amps may well end up with different processing delay, thus a different distance in your AVR.

 

[Sky1]

Got it,
yes I left them alone but was interesting to see how the distances, crossover points and speaker sizes changed. Distances all are correct now before the subwoofer was off. Was told to set them to small but after checking it appears the Audyssey changed them to large. Not going to worry about it just yet. I am waiting on my USB to HDMI adapter so I can connect REW on my Laptop to the system as I has pulled my PC out to make more room for the second subwoofer. I wish my Denon had presets so I can save multiple settings.
I did do a quick audio sweep test last night just using my phone watching DB levels and noticed that it looks pretty good and will see more when I get REW with my UMIK set up by this weekend.
What are your thoughts on Restorer, Center Wide, and Dynamic Volumes? Someone suggested I should turn all that off.

 

[ryanosaur]

That is one thing the AVR does, IIRC. You need to change your Speakers to Small and likely reset the XO setting to 80 Hz. In general the XO should be about 1 octave above the F3 (-3dB point of your Speaker’s Frequency Range). So for a small center or surround that might only go to 55Hz, I would set XO to 100 or 110.

 

[Eppie]

Restorer is for MP3 playback, but my collection is mostly flac, and the MP3s are mostly 320kbps so restorer is not needed. Center Wide blends the center channel into the mains a bit. Depends upon your center and speaker spacing. You can try it but I don't use it.

"Audyssey Dynamic Volume solves the problem of large variations in volume level between television programs, commercials, and between the soft and loud passages of movies." Might be handy if you're old and hard of hearing. I don't use it either.

Audyssey can enable those feature automatically when it is run. You have to go back and disable them. The most useful feature is Dynamic EQ. It acts like the old loudness controls, boosting lower frequencies at lower volumes when they can be more difficult to discern.

 

[Sky1]

I was testing the restorer last night, on some song like an old Carol King it really helped a lot but some of the ones that were good to start with got a bit overdone. I will leave it on low for now.
We moved things around a bit in the Living Room and now I need to order a new rug. Now have both subwoofers facing the listening position. Will run REW and then retune with Audyssey to see if it really works LOL

 

[Sky1]

Update: I got our new rug placed in the center of the room now time to re-tune
I ran some test tones to isolate door rattle, pictures etc. I used some weather stripping to fix the front door rattle and some Loctite Fun-Tak for the picture frames. I then DB matched sub1 vs sub 2 from listening position then both to see if they cancelled they did not, they added but only a little and the dips were smoothened out. I then ran some sweeps with the subs in Ported vs Standard mode, the curve looked really nice is Sealed mode and with a bump at 20 and dip at 27 in standard mode. Yea, the sealed mode looked really nice.

Ran the Audyssey only to find out my center channel is out of phase. I tried to run it 3 times, then got off my butt to look and sure enough I had them backwards, I think I had reversed them a couple years ago when it told me they were out of phase. So now Red is on Red, black is on Black and ran another test and it calibrated fine. Funny how without the carpet, audyssey never complained or had me wire them out of phase, go figure.
I saved a Music profile with the ports Plugged and a Movie Mode with them unplugged, I also bumped the 27 hz up a bit, looks better but I never noticed it by ear.
Sweeps look pretty good now for both ported and sealed.

I played some music to compare music profile with system ports in sealed mode and ports plugged vs movie mode ports unplugged. Yeah sealed mode was WAY better for music, tested with Will Smith's "Miami". The bass was punchy and full where it was more subdued in Movie mode with ports unplugged, was not expecting that. Still sounded good but not as much kick as there was in sealed mode for sure.

I then put on a movie trailer in both music/sealed vs Movie/Ported. The sealed mode still sounded very good and hit most of the lows and could feel it in the couch. Sounded pretty good but with Movie/Ported mode the floor and walls literally shook, I mean when something crashed, it felt like it hit our living room floor.

Last night playing movies Rampage and Geostorm, the crashes and surprise scenes had my wife scream a couple times. I still have a few nulls but they are above my crossover points. I suppose that I may need to move my towers a bit but not going to worry about it right now.

So far so good, pretty happy with these as long as they are hidden in the corners of the room. When I had them right out front they just drew too much attention for my liking.