need help!! extreme bass!!

[Rickroll]

I have a 16'x16' living room (approximate) with eight foot ceiling. I run an Onkyo rz820 receiver running 5.2.2 setup. The issue is that I also have 2 Klipsch r120sw 12" subs up front. they are very loud and deep a will shake the whole house. I ran the room calibration and was better but the subs are still very loud when prompted. The gain is set at a little under half and the receiver setting is at -1db for the sub. My question is should I use the gain to tame these beasts or should I just set the subwoofer db lower in receiver. If I turn the dbs to around -5 or -6 it sounds a lot smoother and more linear. My seating position is close to back wall. I was told that I shouldn't really mess with the gain but use the receiver for subwoofer volume. What do you guys think? I am a huge movie junky and love the huge sound at home. Just don't want it to over power normal watching. Thank you guys in advance.

 

[Pogre]

Yes, use the receiver to adjust your levels. I don't mess with gain settings after level matching.

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

Always use the AVR for trimming. Also, being up against a wall is really bad for bass since those really long bass waves tend to collect there. Can you move the couch off the wall?

 

[Rickroll]

Always use the AVR for trimming. Also, being up against a wall is really bad for bass since those really long bass waves tend to collect there. Can you move the couch off the wall?

I did but only about 8 inches. Other things will not allow me to move it any more. This may be a stupid question but will lowering my dbs for the sub hurt anything long term.

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

I did but only about 8 inches. Other things will not allow me to move it any more. This may be a stupid question but will lowering my dbs for the sub hurt anything long term.

No. Won’t hurt anything.

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

Another thing could be placement. That’s the first rule of subs is placement first, then you can deal with things like treatments and EQ. Guessing you don’t have much for placement options.

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

Did you run audyssey after adding the second one?

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

IMO the 120’s don’t go deep enough
(29hz per crutchfield) for real HT, but I think it’s possible you could benefit from a umik-1 and a minidsp. Square rooms are hard to deal with acoustically and my hunch is you have some serious peaks that audyssey isn’t pulling down for whatever reason. If you can get the peaks to come down, the bass will be overall smoother and in many cases you can actually turn it up, and it still won’t be obnoxious.

 

[KEW]

To William's point:
Use this calculator to see what you room modes are!

amroc - THE Room Mode Calculator

HTML5 room mode calculator. Read and hear the tune of axial, tangential and oblique modes. Scientific sources included.

amcoustics.com

If it is square or close to square, that means the same (or close) frequency could be resonating in both the length and width dimension which means you might have a rater extreme resonance that exceeds Audyssey's capabilities!
As a quick (free) check, you can run the 10Hz - 200Hz test sweep at this link through your system:

The Ultimate Bass Test | Ultra Low Frequency Range Test

A frequency sweep from 10 Hz up to 200 Hz.

www.audiocheck.net

Turn the volume low as you don't want to send really strong, really low frequencies through your system at high volume. Listen to see if tone at or near the pitches identified by the mode calculator (or any tones, for that matter) are obviously louder than the other pitches. If so, you are probably experiencing what William suggested and it would be money well spent to get the miniDSP and a umik-1 with REW software so you can tune your system.

Edit - it wouldn't hurt to do the Sub Crawl to see if that resolves the issue before buying the miniDSP!

 

[Rickroll]

IMO the 120’s don’t go deep enough
(29hz per crutchfield) for real HT, but I think it’s possible you could benefit from a umik-1 and a minidsp. Square rooms are hard to deal with acoustically and my hunch is you have some serious peaks that audyssey isn’t pulling down for whatever reason. If you can get the peaks to come down, the bass will be overall smoother and in many cases you can actually turn it up, and it still won’t be obnoxious.

I did run room correction after second one. I don't have much as far as placement but the sub crawl does show best at the front as far as bass is concerned. It looks like it's just going to be a matter of trial and error. It does sound much more even after the second one was installed. The nulls are much less.

 

[Rickroll]

To William's point:
Use this calculator to see what you room modes are!

amroc - THE Room Mode Calculator

HTML5 room mode calculator. Read and hear the tune of axial, tangential and oblique modes. Scientific sources included.

amcoustics.com

If it is square or close to square, that means the same (or close) frequency could be resonating in both the length and width dimension which means you might have a rater extreme resonance that exceeds Audyssey's capabilities!
As a quick (free) check, you can run the 10Hz - 200Hz test sweep at this link through your system:

The Ultimate Bass Test | Ultra Low Frequency Range Test

A frequency sweep from 10 Hz up to 200 Hz.

www.audiocheck.net

Turn the volume low as you don't want to send really strong, really low frequencies through your system at high volume. Listen to see if tone at or near the pitches identified by the mode calculator (or any tones, for that matter) are obviously louder than the other pitches. If so, you are probably experiencing what William suggested and it would be money well spent to get the miniDSP and a umik-1 with REW software so you can tune your system.

Edit - it wouldn't hurt to do the Sub Crawl to see if that resolves the issue before buying the miniDSP!

Thank you. I will run a sweep and check to see if it is pitchy. Is it a good idea to try to use the subwoofer eq built into the receiver? I can maybe pull down certain frequencies. Right now the subwoofer is set flat.

 

[Pogre]

To William's point:
Use this calculator to see what you room modes are!

amroc - THE Room Mode Calculator

HTML5 room mode calculator. Read and hear the tune of axial, tangential and oblique modes. Scientific sources included.

amcoustics.com

If it is square or close to square, that means the same (or close) frequency could be resonating in both the length and width dimension which means you might have a rater extreme resonance that exceeds Audyssey's capabilities!
As a quick (free) check, you can run the 10Hz - 200Hz test sweep at this link through your system:

The Ultimate Bass Test | Ultra Low Frequency Range Test

A frequency sweep from 10 Hz up to 200 Hz.

www.audiocheck.net

Turn the volume low as you don't want to send really strong, really low frequencies through your system at high volume. Listen to see if tone at or near the pitches identified by the mode calculator (or any tones, for that matter) are obviously louder than the other pitches. If so, you are probably experiencing what William suggested and it would be money well spent to get the miniDSP and a umik-1 with REW software so you can tune your system.

Edit - it wouldn't hurt to do the Sub Crawl to see if that resolves the issue before buying the miniDSP!

I want to use that room mode calculator but have no idea how to punch in my room dimensions with a hallway, an open room to the right and vaulted ceilings.

 

[Rickroll]

A lot to know for sure. I've been in this hobby for awhile now and tend to keep upgrading through time. The wife isn't always happy. LOL! I wish I had a separate theater room. That is a dream of mine for sure. For now, I will work with this. It is fun for me for sure. A real addiction!!

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

I want to use that room mode calculator but have no idea how to punch in my room dimensions with a hallway, an open room to the right and vaulted ceilings.

Get out the tape homes!!!

 

[KEW]

Thank you. I will run a sweep and check to see if it is pitchy. Is it a good idea to try to use the subwoofer eq built into the receiver? I can maybe pull down certain frequencies. Right now the subwoofer is set flat.

I don't know how well Onkyo's AccuEQ works with room modes. Audyssey XT 32 does a pretty good job.
It definitely won't hurt to manual EQ the bass, however often you don't have great control over the specific frequencies you are tuning the way XT 32 does.
But it can't hurt and you can always undo it, so it is definitely worth the effort and you might further learn something about what you need to do in the process!

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

A lot to know for sure. I've been in this hobby for awhile now and tend to keep upgrading through time. The wife isn't always happy. LOL! I wish I had a separate theater room. That is a dream of mine for sure. For now, I will work with this. It is fun for me for sure. A real addiction!!

Addiction is right for sure.

 

[Pogre]

Get out the tape home!!!

*Slaps Bill*




It's an inside joke, lol.

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

I don't know how well Onkyo's AccuEQ works with room modes. Audyssey XT 32 does a pretty good job.
It definitely won't hurt to manual EQ the bass, however often you don't have great control over the specific frequencies you are tuning the way XT 32 does.
But it can't hurt and you can always undo it, so it is definitely worth the effort and you might further learn something about what you need to do in the process!

Agreed.
Should also add that you need to know exactly what frequencies you’re dealing with, and by how much. SPL meter is a bare minimum for the toolbox.

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

*Slaps Bill*




It's an inside joke, lol.

Lmao!!!! I’m laughing so hard right now......

 

[KEW]

I want to use that room mode calculator but have no idea how to punch in my room dimensions with a hallway, an open room to the right and vaulted ceilings.

That is the problem with these calculators - they are generally limited to unrealistically (for many of us) simple boxes.
You can do thing like do the calculation of all permutations (IOW, if your room is 16 feet wide, but has a 6 foot wide opening to the dining room which adds 12 more feet of width, you can run it with widths of 16 then 28, but depending how many such situations you have, it gets unwieldy! And I cannot think of an approach to address the vaulted ceiling!