Calibration irregularities

MRDcanadian

MRDcanadian

Enthusiast
Can anyone explain why my last Audyssey calibration turned like this?

I just received my UMK1 mic and have started playing around REW and found that my base was atrocious, so naturally I started moving my subwoofers around (2x Klipsch SW110) to find them a better location. After putting one of my subs on my middle seat (3 seater couch) I found that a good response was recorded in REW when the mic was in the opposing corner location of the room so, I move the subwoofers to these location and initiated the audyssey calibration. When running the audyssey calibrations, I level matched them to 75 DB and ran the calibration (did a 6 point cal with XT32 started at the mid seat head location and moved them 2 feet on each side and then repeated at the same location but 2 feet forward. . once done, I open REW and set my UMK1 as close as possible to the mid seat head location (minimal variance aka not more than 1-2 inch off in height ( amazon lost my mic stand parcel but another one is on the way) did a sub pink noise set to 75DB to find my volume in the receiver to run the REW calibration, loaded the 90DEG cal, set the receiver to direct mode. When I ran the test, I and found my subs and main where a 20 DB off each other (that was not comfortable to hears at all being in that room when the main started playing the test tone). not only that my subs used to go down to the 20hz reasonably well and now they do not.

1617645152287.png


So I tried to level match my subs and main (see picture below) but, I am now at the max output of my subs volume nob, everything sounds boomy, still have no low extension and their is way too much bass everywhere when I use a movie scene (transformer dark side of the moon, act 18) that I am very familiar with and usually use to check my calibrations. I am not sure what happen but, my room was as silent as I can make it when I run the calibration.

1617646145271.png
 

Attachments

MRDcanadian

MRDcanadian

Enthusiast
to add my room is nothing normal. I have the landing + half stairs height in the back right corner of the room.

L 199" x W 179"
stairs cutout L 49" 1/2 W 38" 1/2
+ did not measure the angle / measurement of the stairs incline from the flat wall (facing my main) going to ceiling

and a counter top + sink in the front right of the room (hoping to remove it soon, but since i recently bought a house built in the 70's, I have other priorities that need to be taken care of before I have time to deal with this.
 
MalVeauX

MalVeauX

Senior Audioholic
Hi,

Measure your main(s) without the subs and without A.XT32 calibration enabled to see what your room is doing. Leave the subs off. Calibrate without the subs. Measure the results and compare. Now, with your pink noise sweep and your mains enabled and hitting 75db with SPL meter in REW, leave your volume knob there, and now disable your mains (unplug maybe) and now enable (plug in) your first sub and do the same pink noise and get it up to 75db at listening position as well. Measure the results with your mains and the single sub and mains.

Post the results. Then let's go from there.

Very best,
 
MRDcanadian

MRDcanadian

Enthusiast
Sorry about the delay, life events made it that I was not able to do measurements. here is the gear I am using

7.2 System
AVR - Marrantz 7009
Rotel RB-1582 MK2 (Front L+R)

Speakers - All Klipsch reference series (V1)
RF-82
RC-52
RS-42
RB-61
SW-110 (x2)

Below is the "near" field measurement (ported so measurement was done 3.4 feet of distance)
These measurements are all with MultiEQ XT32 Off, the mode selected was Direct and all crossover were defeated.
90 degree Mic position/Cal
Red= Left
Green= Right


Psychoacoustic smoothing ON


Near field.jpg
 
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MRDcanadian

MRDcanadian

Enthusiast
Measurements at the middle seat
These measurements are all with MultiEQ XT32 Off, the mode selected was Direct and all crossover were defeated.

Blue= R speaker
Orange= L Speaker
Green= L+R speakers

Psychoacoustic smoothing ON
Mid seat.jpg
 
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MRDcanadian

MRDcanadian

Enthusiast
Measurements at the middle seat
These measurements are all with MultiEQ XT32 Off, the mode selected was Direct and all crossover were defeated.

Blue= Front right corner sub only
Brown= Back Left Corner sub only
Green= Both subs

No smoothing
Subs.jpg
 
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P

PENG

Audioholic Slumlord
Unless I missed something, you did not seem to have followed Audyssey, or Marantz instruction so I suggest you re-run Audyssey but this time follow instructions to the letter. I am sure if you do, you will be much flatter response. That is not to say flat = good, but it is a good starting point.

You can just follow the Marantz's onscreen instructions, or the one in the link:

Audyssey Setup Guide.pdf (willowville.net)
 
Pogre

Pogre

Audioholic Slumlord
I don't understand the purpose of nearfield measuring, or a lot of the extraneous measuring and level matching you seem to be doing. I agree with Peng. Run Audyssey again, follow the directions and pattern closely, then do a sweep with both your main speakers and subs from your listening position and see where you're at. I wouldn't worry about level matching each individual speaker or change any of the distance settings either. Just do a normal sweep from your mlp and go from there. I think you're getting too caught up in the minutiae and missing the big picture.
 
MRDcanadian

MRDcanadian

Enthusiast
These measurements are all with MultiEQ XT32 Off, the mode selected was Direct and all crossover were defeated. With 2 kids and two other adults living in our home, windows of opportunities to run test are limited for me and unfortunately this was all I could accomplish today.

i'll edit the previous post
 
MRDcanadian

MRDcanadian

Enthusiast
I don't understand the purpose of nearfield measuring, or a lot of the extraneous measuring and level matching you seem to be doing. I agree with Peng. Run Audyssey again, follow the directions and pattern closely, then do a sweep with both your main speakers and subs from your listening position and see where you're at. I wouldn't worry about level matching each individual speaker or change any of the distance settings either. Just do a normal sweep from your mlp and go from there. I think you're getting too caught up in the minutiae and missing the big picture.
I did the near field measurements based on the recommendation in the video "Get the Best Bass for Your Home Theater P3: Wrapping it Up" from Audioholics's youtube channel.

What I have learned from these measurement is how poor my RF-82's do in the sub 100hz range. I was surprised to the point I double check the polarity on my cables, I though they would have had better output all the way down in the 60hz range but alas

I somehow think I did something wrong and didn't defeat the cross over, though was sure I set the front speakers to large when I ran these test, even in the 2 channel section. :S
 
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MRDcanadian

MRDcanadian

Enthusiast
I just ordered the miniDSP 2x4 HD yesterday, I will attempt to make a few measurements on my other 2 seats (3 seat total) before I run a Audyssey calibration without my subwoofers, and then integrate the subwoofers using the mini dsp. Hopefully this will yield me some good results doing it this way.

I may need to rethink my sub locations, I seems to remember them measuring better all the way down to 30hz (when on both side of the center channel). right now they are in opposite corner with a elevation of about 2inch using old table legs made of solid wood.

Unfortunately, the mid side walls is not an option for me, and the mid front and back wall neither due to my tv stand
 
MRDcanadian

MRDcanadian

Enthusiast
So I just re-ran my Audyssey calibration, 8 mic location as per the X32 procedure. Once complete, I go in the level section of the manual calibration, set the SPL meter to slow A weighted, do minor tweaks to correct for volume (nothing more than 1.5DB adjustments. Then I set my SPL to C Weighted, go to the sub (down/up), I find out I need to increase my subs from -10db range up to the +1db range to match the rest of the speakers. I am very confused, either I am doing something wrong or the audyssey calibration is off. the kids are gone to bed and the one laptop I have is being used by my wife so I cannot run REW measurements but.... I never had this issues before, it only started at the beginning of this month. it even sounds more balanced when I put music on (at low volumes)
 
Pogre

Pogre

Audioholic Slumlord
So what did it look like when you did a sweep immediately after running Audyssey and before you went in and changed stuff?
 
P

PENG

Audioholic Slumlord
I just ordered the miniDSP 2x4 HD yesterday, I will attempt to make a few measurements on my other 2 seats (3 seat total) before I run a Audyssey calibration without my subwoofers, and then integrate the subwoofers using the mini dsp. Hopefully this will yield me some good results doing it this way.

I may need to rethink my sub locations, I seems to remember them measuring better all the way down to 30hz (when on both side of the center channel). right now they are in opposite corner with a elevation of about 2inch using old table legs made of solid wood.

Unfortunately, the mid side walls is not an option for me, and the mid front and back wall neither due to my tv stand
If XT32 subEQ HT cannot solve your problem in the 20-200 Hz, the minidsp has no chance doing it at all. I have my minidsp 2XHD back in the box after spending many hours trying make it work better with and without XT32's help and found it was no possible. The mini can be useful, but in my experience, not when you have just two subs and already have XT32, even more so if you have the Editor App.

Now if you intend to use the mini with Dirac Live, then yes it can potentially do a better job, though it is hard to say.., like what is better? Both can flatten the response, not just on axis, but within the listening window/bubble, in my trail, Dirac did seem to do a slightly "better" job on the impulse response based on my REW plots.

To use the mini with Dirac it would cost another $200, approximately, and only for two channels.
 
Pogre

Pogre

Audioholic Slumlord
If XT32 subEQ HT cannot solve your problem in the 20-200 Hz, the minidsp has no chance doing it at all. I have my minidsp 2XHD back in the box after spending many hours trying make it work better with and without XT32's help and found it was no possible. The mini can be useful, but in my experience, not when you have just two subs and already have XT32, even more so if you have the Editor App.
I just wanna see a sweep after he runs Audyssey, but he keeps going in, changing levels and messing with other settings. I might have missed it, but do we even have a sweep with mains and subs from the seating position post Audyssey and before messing with things?
 
P

PENG

Audioholic Slumlord
I just wanna see a sweep after he runs Audyssey, but he keeps going in, changing levels and messing with other settings. I might have missed it, but do we even have a sweep with mains and subs from the seating position post Audyssey and before messing with things?
He said he was going to edit his post, that may help clear things up. I am curious to know which AH video he watched and followed, I hope it's not Matthew's as I think Matthew would know better lol..
 
MRDcanadian

MRDcanadian

Enthusiast
If XT32 subEQ HT cannot solve your problem in the 20-200 Hz, the minidsp has no chance doing it at all. I have my minidsp 2XHD back in the box after spending many hours trying make it work better with and without XT32's help and found it was no possible. The mini can be useful, but in my experience, not when you have just two subs and already have XT32, even more so if you have the Editor App.

Now if you intend to use the mini with Dirac Live, then yes it can potentially do a better job, though it is hard to say.., like what is better? Both can flatten the response, not just on axis, but within the listening window/bubble, in my trail, Dirac did seem to do a slightly "better" job on the impulse response based on my REW plots.

To use the mini with Dirac it would cost another $200, approximately, and only for two channels.
While from my limited understanding, you are correct that MiniDSP cannot fix some of the bigger issues cause by my room, the miniDSP should give me access to tools that I do not have without it

such as manual phase adjustments (my subs only have 0 and 180 switch)
manual PEQ/ custom curves as the Marrantz 7009 is not compatible with the editor app

Since I saved my audyssey settings, I can revert back to what the calibration did and run a measurement with REW. hopefully I will have time to do that today and will report back with the measurements
 
Pogre

Pogre

Audioholic Slumlord
While from my limited understanding, you are correct that MiniDSP cannot fix some of the bigger issues cause by my room, the miniDSP should give me access to tools that I do not have without it

such as manual phase adjustments (my subs only have 0 and 180 switch)
manual PEQ/ custom curves as the Marrantz 7009 is not compatible with the editor app

Since I saved my audyssey settings, I can revert back to what the calibration did and run a measurement with REW. hopefully I will have time to do that today and will report back with the measurements
Do you have Audyssey XT32 and app editor compatibility? If so, there isn't a whole lot more you can do wth the mini you can't with the app editor.

That said, we still have no clue what a straight up sweep looks like after you run a calibration, without messing with any of it. Run a clean calibration, set speakers to small, 80 hz crossover and do a sweep with mains and subs together from your main seat.
 
P

PENG

Audioholic Slumlord
While from my limited understanding, you are correct that MiniDSP cannot fix some of the bigger issues cause by my room, the miniDSP should give me access to tools that I do not have without it

such as manual phase adjustments (my subs only have 0 and 180 switch)
manual PEQ/ custom curves as the Marrantz 7009 is not compatible with the editor app

Since I saved my audyssey settings, I can revert back to what the calibration did and run a measurement with REW. hopefully I will have time to do that today and will report back with the measurements
Audyssey will take care of the phase, it works mainly in the time domain anyway. In fact, if you follow instructions you would just set you sub's phase knob, or selector to 0. Do you not trust Denon/Marantz/Audyssey's instructions? Even very experienced users follow instructions to get it done, then the manual adjustment begin if necessary and would be best guided by REW in doing so.

The way you first post described, it is very hard to follow what you were trying to achieve. As Pogre suggested, start from the basic, then do the "clean sweep" he referred to, then we should be able to help if there are in fact deficiencies or just room for improvements.
 
MRDcanadian

MRDcanadian

Enthusiast
Audyssey will take care of the phase, it works mainly in the time domain anyway. In fact, if you follow instructions you would just set you sub's phase knob, or selector to 0. Do you not trust Denon/Marantz/Audyssey's instructions? Even very experienced users follow instructions to get it done, then the manual adjustment begin if necessary and would be best guided by REW in doing so.

The way you first post described, it is very hard to follow what you were trying to achieve. As Pogre suggested, start from the basic, then do the "clean sweep" he referred to, then we should be able to help, hopefully.
the first post was a measurement done after the Audyssey calibration was completed, 20DB difference from LFE vs main
 
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