Bass "rising" to ceiling

Murphy's Law says, a sound null (void) will always be the main listening position. The easiest fix is to park the subwoofer next to your sitting position. From there, it's all about placement and judicious use of your parametric settings; crossover setting, gain control, room placement, use of available EQ programs, phase control (noise cancellation), et cetera.

The addition of a second or third sub will also help but now we're talking about the Benjamins.

The least expensive is to acquire room analyzing capabilities so you can take measurements of your room and physically see what's what with what.

If I overstated the obvious, my apologies.

The least costly fix is placing the sub in your chair and with sound meter in hand, crawl around the room, watching the volume level (dB) and the location with the highest reading, is where to place the sub. As I'm sure you know, this is known as the sub crawl.

Hope the above helps.

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Edited by BeeMan458 - 2/7/13 at 2:02pm

Unfortunately, a rug would need to be a few feet thick to "catch" the relevant frequencies for a sub. Although you experience an improvement when you stand up, let me ask a question. Is your listening position about in the middle of the room? That's a hot spot so to speak for nulls created by te reflection of the sound from the back wall meeting the direct sound. You might try moving the listening position if it's dead center in the fore-and-aft dimension.

This is an obvious case where the sub crawl is in order. Search it.

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No, no. no... When you do the sub crawl, you don't look for the "loudest" point. The loudest point would be where the most room-mode-induced peaks pile up. Placing the sub there would likely sound the boomiest. What you look for when doing the sub crawl is the spot with the "smoothest" response. It should sound even and all notes should have the same weight and volume. If you're taking measurements, you want to look for the spot with the LEAST and shallowest peaks and nulls. That is where you place the sub. Then adjust the volume with the gain control to the correctly calibrated level.

If you only have an SPL meter, then use the receiver's internal subwoofer test tone, and look for the spot where the needle jumps around the LEAST. Whatever you do, don't look for the "loudest" spot.

Craig

LOL!

I want points for trying.

No, we don't want boomy and yes we want smoothness but is the novice's ear experienced enough to make these complex evaluative decisions?

(You really have forgotten what it's like to be the total novice.)


What ever he said.

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You get lots of points for trying. You also get lots of points for recommending measurements as the single BEST way to integrate subs. I've seen you do that in multiple threads. I could not agree more. There are lots of folks on these fora who don't believe in measurements, or minimize their usefulness. IMO, the measurements tell the whole story. If you get the measurements right, the sound quality will follow.

More importantly, it is far harder to use our ears to optimize the sound in our rooms. Few of us can hear and identify the frequency of a a peak. None of us can "hear" a null. Only measurements can identify those details for us.

I have heard a number of high end systems that had anything but flat or smooth frequency response, and they have invariably sounded like CRAP! I would take a "modest" system that has been carefully optimized in a room with measurements over ANY high-dollar, high end system that has just been placed in a room and "optimized" with expensive cables and other goofy tweaks.

Your expanding experience with REW and measurements is definitely a step in the right direction. Next, you ned to move beyond an SPL meter as your mic. You should step up to a real, calibrated mic. It doesn't have to be expensive, just accurate and calibrated. Have you seen this thread: http://www.avsforum.com/t/1449924/simplified-rew-setup-and-use-usb-mic-hdmi-connection-including-measurement-techniques-and-how-to-interpret-graphs/270#post_22823228
I don't think I've forgotten what it is to be a newbie. In fact, I try to tailor my advice to the knowledge level of the poster. In this case, I suggested he use the receiver's test tones and an SPL meter to figure this out. The key is I told him HOW to do it... look for the placements with the least variability of the SPL on the meter.

Craig
Edited by craig john - 2/7/13 at 4:52pm

You have no idea how far you've come nor how much you've forgotten.

Trying to keep up with what you've forgotten is like trying to forget about skinned knees and crushed personal parts while learning to ride a bicycle.


Working with you, been there, done that, long already there.

It comes with it's very own personalized calibration file that's already been loaded into REW. As a form of encouragement, I've never used a sound meter as anything more than a calibration device but there's no bringing back misinformation but yes, a sound meter is very important to the EQ process or the EQ process can't happen.

Currently in possession of three sound meters, a sound meter calibrator, one Dayton, EMM-6 measuring microphone, an ART, stereo, phantom power supply, a way cool microphone stand and over a hundred feet of recording cables. It's a Quixotic journey, not a destiny.

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Edited by BeeMan458 - 2/7/13 at 6:20pm

I always have this problem when I run the subwoofer channel hot.*














*Think about it before replying that this is not possible

Just mount your sofa on a 4' riser. Problem solved...

I've found there to be a measured, complex interaction when parametric settings are changed and simply changing volume on one of two subwoofers will create nulls or like an axis, shift the frequency curve in a sort of quid pro quo axis. A small parametric change can cause sections of a graph to shift three, six or more dB. When the gain setting is increased, one end of the graph goes up and the other end goes down. Simply changing the time domain at the phase level can cure a null but correspondingly, another null, way over on the other end of the bass frequency graph (non-corresponding harmonics), is created. Then there are these naturally occurring standing waves that exist in a room when the AVR is turned off and when turned on, the subwoofer output reinforces these naturally occurring standing waves by turning the subwoofer's gain up three dB. A change in the distance setting in the AVR can raise or lower the graph ten or fifteen dB in the mid-bass section; 60Hz to 100Hz. The point, without an up and running room analyzing program, nobody is going be able to see this complex sonic interaction regarding the simple act of changing one's subwoofer gain.

Just saying.

This is just the sort of long, technical, and likely accurate response I was trying to avoid with my disclaimer.

Heat rises!

Sorry, went totally over my head. D'oh! All I saw was the fine print.

That's OK, I'm kinda used to my humor whizzing by people at this point in my life.

Apparently I'm smart enough to think up cryptic jokes but not smart enough to stop doing so.

Now that you've revealed the secret to your humor, I'll be better prepared. (Yup!)

We now have a new meaning for; "That's one hot momma."