Dear all,
I've tried to design a calibration process to cleanly integrate my Subwoofer into my system while tweaking the Emotiva UMC-1 EmoQ (automatic EQ) settings (which are somewhat unstable from calibration calibration and are consistently unreliable in terms of speaker distances). Haven't had a chance to implement it yet (still waiting for the calibration discs and tripod clamp), but wanted to see if there was anything I should be planning to do differently. Would very much appreciate any critiques / insights.
Best,
AP
Equipment:
L/R: Salk SongTower QWT
Center: Salk SongCenter
Subwoofer: SongSub with 12" Rythimk driver and Rythimk A370-PEQ plate amp
Receiver; Emotiva UMC-1
Amplifier: Emotiva XPA-3
Media player: PS3 Slim (set to bitstream output)
SPL meter: American Recorder SPL-8810
Calibration disc 1: Avia II (for level calibration through pink noise test tones)
Calibration disc 2: Rives Audio Test CD 2 (for frequency calibration through single-frequency tones at 1/3 octave intervals)
Proposed calibration procedure:
1) Set Sub crossover setting (manual adjustment on plate amp) to highest setting possible to avoid Sub / UMC-1 crossover overlap
2) Set Sub setting to LFE (manual adjustment on plate amp) to extend linear Subwoofer response to 200 Hz
3) Restore UMC-1 settings to factory defaults
4) Set Sub phase: Run 80Hz test tones, invert polarity of connections, manually adjust phase to minimize SPL reading at listening position, restore connections
5) Run EmoQ
6) Manually measure distances to listening position, update speaker distance settings
7) Run Avia test tones with UMC-1 volume at 50.5, calibrate each speaker individually to 75db SPL reading at listening position
8) Run test tones between 20Hz and 20kHz in 1/3 octave increments:
8.1) For frequencies between 20Hz and subwoofer crossover, adjust EQ for Subwoofer to flatten response
8.2) For frequencies between subwoofer and speaker crossovers, adjust EQ for Subwoofer and speakers by same amount to flatten response
8.3) For frequencies between speaker crossover and 20kHz, adjust EQ for speakers by same amount to flatten response
