Help!? About to EQ my $2,000 Speakers. Avoiding Screw Ups.

[woofersus]

Your personal tastes aside, (which may or may not favor perfect accuracy) I suspect that YPAO is having trouble with reflections in the room and not getting an accurate measurement. Technically it's what the mic picks up, but it's an omnidirectional mic, and your hearing is better at distinguishing sound coming from the speakers from sound reflected off the wall behind you than that mic is. The net result is it's overcompensating for the live room. Also, those measurements are taken at what might be a higher volume than what you listen at, which would affect how much the room interacts with the response.

Aside from the suggestions to add some acoustic treatments to the room, (which is a good idea but I understand is sometimes easier said than done in a living room) you might try a couple of tricks to get YPAO to do what you want. One thing you could do is temporarily cover as much stuff as possible with blankets and other reflection absorbing materials while you run the setup sequence. Another would be to move the measurement mic around a little, rather than just sticking with the exact center of the couch to find a spot with a little less (or just different) room interaction. You can generally compensate for the slight imbalance in the speaker distance settings after the fact pretty easily. Besides, in practice I usually find myself sitting on the left or right side of my couch when watching tv or movies anyway.

Then again, if manually adjusting the treble up a bit sounds good to you, then by all means go with that. It's simple and free!

Interestingly, I have a Yamaha receiver in my living room, and I thought the "Flat" setting jacked the treble up way too much. I ended up preferring the "Natural" setting.

 

[cschang]

I tried the Sierras and ended up with the 340SE's, the Sierras are way to tingly for me, dont get me wrong they sound very clean and clear, but the 340s were sooo warm, cozy, and just as clear {the Sierras enclosures were much better}, I can play the 340's a lot louder than the Sierras... The Sierras to me were tiring, while I can listen to the 340s all day....

Interesting, because the 340SEs are considered more forward than the Sierra-1, or are you referring to the Sierra-1 NrT?

 

[mtrycrafts]

So here is the deal .... when running room correction software with my Yamaha receiver, it makes my sound a bit too dull. It pretty much cuts a lot of high frequencies. So what I did is ... i turned EQ off and just kept setting made my software for the Crossover, range, volume, etc. EQ = OFF.

Now ... here is my issue. With EQ turned ON, sound is too dull, BUT with EQ turned off, sound is a bit too bright for my listening pleasure. Specifically for music. Movies I am OK with.

Tonight I am going to start playing with EQ as it allows me to adjust sound for EACH speaker.

What should I know?

Should I EQ each speaker identically or make center brighter (for better speech) and my L and R more realistic for music?

Which frequency should I adjust to add a little more mids and cut a bit of too squeaky sound in the highs.

Example ... saxophone was just a bit toooo bright. Could be toned down a bit. Voice however sounds very nice. Drum cymbals are sometimes too bright too.

Testing this on MP3 music (mp3 256-320kbps).

Any input will be very helpful. Thanks.

I would try the built in EQ and eq each speaker separately, of course. Each speaker is in a different acoustic space so it needs a different eq.
Check it out after the eq and see how you like it with this approach.
Also, after it was EQed, check the receiver where the settings are and if it is still too dull, manually decrease the settings for the upper frequencies.

 

[PENG]

I doubt any of the room EQ software are perfect or even close to it but to try EQing it myself I know I am not going to do it. It will take too much trial and error even if I own the necessary external EQ hardware. I am happy to make do with Audyssey XT, let it does its thing and I know at least it does a decent job managing the low frequencies/subs.

 

[Ac3d]

Adjust the crossover frequency

Take the equalizer out of the picture for a min. I see you mentioned you changed the crossover... It could actually be the crossover frequency (Hz) you have your speakers set to. If it's set to low, you will be cutting the highs off. Set it too high, and you cut off the lows. If all of the speakers are set incorrectly, it will sound dull, because your not hitting the ranges the speakers were designed for. This is the range that "said" speaker takes over that audio range.

For instance, I have two Klipsch RF-82 II towers, which can handle a full range, so they are set that way. But I have 4 Polk Audio satellite surrounds, which have a higher range, but can't handle the lows. (Little tweeter boxes..) If I set them too low, they sound washed out. If I set them higher (I think around 130-140Hz if I remember correctly) they sing.

The sub I use, Klipsch RW-12D, carries the lower Hz objects with assistance from the RF-82's.

After you do that, you then start to balance your room by adjusting individual speaker output or volume (or EQ), as well as adjust for placement/distance.

If you have the distance settings wrong, your sounds will overlap, enough to muddy the sound, but probably not enough to clearly echo.

It's also a good idea to turn on the tv, find a show where someone is speaking, like the news, and tune your center channel levels to the voices. It won't really be used when listening to most music, but will sound bad when watching tv/ movies if you don't.

I hope that helps.