Sanity check: Bad Sub ? (REW Sweep results)

[everettT]

I was aware of the scale, I thought he was saying twice as loud (which I interpreted as 3db) was 10 times the power. But you are calling twice as loud 10db (which perceptually sounds about right). So... got it.

Depends on the music you listen to and the format if you need outboard amps, glad a new can of worms opened for you, lol.

Stay the course and keep dailing in your system, then we'll give your credit card another ringing....

 

[lovinthehd]

For you that is way too polite!

LOL as if you're polite when preaching....

 

[Linwood]

Sigh... I now realized when I got the first SVS sub I had dialed in three different rather extreme EQ settings trying to balance it manually in place with the location and the old Klipsch sub, and left them there. Only in the left side. So all that Dirac had those strong curves there, which no longer applied and probably made its starting point worse.

There are too many places to screw things up for the uninitiated. (Probably for the initiated as well, they just declare "I like it better that way". )

Off to rerun Audyssey and ART again with clean settings.

 

[Linwood]

For those curious here is what Audyssey (default, no app modifications, yellow) and Art (about 6db boost in base, blue) and pure direct (orange) gives. This is with no smoothing measured at the prime location, with Art run with "focused" because I was too lazy to take enough measurements for really wide.

I think it shows that my impression that Audyssey had more "boomy" base is merited (the yellow).

Here's the left speaker (smoothed with the psychoacoustic). I think this is also going to be kind of loud base, as the lower audyssey level in the mid range will head one to up the volume.

I tried to make sense of some of the decay measurements without any success, it looked like pure direct was dramatically better than either, but maybe I am reading them wrongly.

Now to go listen for a while.

 

[TLS Guy]

Sigh... I now realized when I got the first SVS sub I had dialed in three different rather extreme EQ settings trying to balance it manually in place with the location and the old Klipsch sub, and left them there. Only in the left side. So all that Dirac had those strong curves there, which no longer applied and probably made its starting point worse.

There are too many places to screw things up for the uninitiated. (Probably for the initiated as well, they just declare "I like it better that way". )

Off to rerun Audyssey and ART again with clean settings.

That was one of the reasons I advised to do the initial set up be ear and engage those programs later.

 

[Linwood]

That was one of the reasons I advised to do the initial set up be ear and engage those programs later.

I trust my ability to run software and technology better than my ears.

When I was doing this I was lamenting how much less ... tangible (?) differences in sound are than say photographs or light. We can put two photographs in view at the same time, and compare. Comparing what you are hearing now, with what you heard 3 minutes ago, is just so much more subjective.

Even now I can tell that the Audyssey bass is less clear than the ART bass, but I also have a subjective reaction that being louder it is better (I'm also surprised, given I bumped the LFE up 6db, that Audyssey must have done even more).

 

[Linwood]

I want to elaborate on this a bit ... not so much the recommendation but the issues with using these programs.

One aspect is that to the novice (maybe anyone) it's not obvious what things are taken over by Audyssey or worse Dirac ART and so have no bearing if you do use these programs.

Boundary interference and phase was mentioned earlier. That seems relatively straightforward to understand in concept, and some of the tools like phase angle clearly are tools to address it. But... let's say I did so, and then run Dirac ART -- does it just override whatever I have set up, whether by actual phase angle (e.g. the subs have it) or by delay changes?

And does order matter -- if I override delay (distance) for example, I am pretty sure ART overrides it, and fairly sure Audyssey does, but they are still exposed but are they functional afterwards (at least for Audyssey, ART locks them down as it does levels). But phase angle in the sub it can't lock down -- but it can override by signal processing inserted delay if it didn't like what it saw when it measured.

I actually like what ART does with the 3800 -- things like delay and levels get locked down when a filter is active. But that only addresses the after-the-fact -- did things like bypass and LFE distribution affect the measurements, or does it turn those off during the measurement?

I wish these programs (and their associated menu screens) had a much more delineated list of ownership -- what is completely taking over by the tool, which uses your setup (e.g. bypass) as a starting point, and what is completely on the user.

I also desperately wish that people who did not have something new and original to say would not make "me too watch me talk" videos. Far too much of the useful information in this hobby is the spoken word on videos, and there are FAR too many pointlessly redundant (or just rambling) words.