Seaton Sound SubMersive1 - Page 185

Of course it has room for improvements. So does a well running Chevy - it's called a Cadillac. Try to get that Chevy running even better at your peril.

Boring golf trips is an oxymoron!

GaryJ is right... and totally irrelevant.

He's right that Audyssey doesn't know "how to automatically adjust the delay when I manually set the distance, such that all the signals from all speakers arrive in perfect time,.." He's right that, once you override any of the Audyssey settings, it doesn't have any ability to automatically compensate for your changes. It's actually not a very "smart" system in this respect.

However, that is totally irrelevant. I'm not suggesting anyone should change the Distance settings on any of the speakers. I'm only suggesting one *optimize* the Distance setting of the subwoofer. The speakers and the subwoofer only share frequencies at and around the crossover point. Therefore, this adjustment only affects the response at and around the crossover point. If the speakers and sub(s) are not perfectly in phase with each other at the crossover point, there will be cancellations. Therefore, optimization of the Distance setting can corrct these cancellations.

I have posted this graph before, but it is the perfect representation of this problem:



The blue trace is with the Audyssey set Distance of 10.4 ft. The green trace is my optimized Distance setting of 13.8 ft. The elimination of the 20+ dB cancellation results in a DRAMATIC improvement in the sound at ALL seats in my room.

It should be remembered that GaryJ only has a single Submersive. Therefore, it is highly likely that Audyssey has set an appropriate subwoofer Distance in his room and system. Audyssey is less likely to get the subwoofer Distance setting right in multi-sub systems. In fact, every multi-sub system I've measured has benefited from some optimization of the subwoofer Distance setting. (The only exception has been pepar's system, but he uses Audyssey Pro, which seems to do a better job of integrating multiple subs.)

I've also had multiple other members PM me with their comments that this adjustment has been useful in their systems. I can only conclude that, in spite of GaryJ's dismissal, this works for the vast majority of multi-sub systems using Audyssey.

In all fairness, Mark Seaton deserves full credit for this benefit. He was the one who suggested I try it and he explained to me how it worked. In fact, most of what I know about subwoofer optimization I've learned from Mark. He not only makes GREAT subs, but he knows more about how to integrate them and get the most out of them than ANYONE I know.



While this would be a terrific advance, I don't expect it to happen any time soon. It would require a complete re-write of the software that would allow pinging the subwoofer and speakers *together* and analyzing the result. Currently, Audyssey can only ping and analyze each speaker and sub in isolation. It can't integrate the responses of multiple speakers at the same time. It would require massive increases in processing power to be able to perform this analysis.

Don't hold your breath.

Craig

Mark,

Gary must have had a "senior moment." It seems he just forgot the entire previous discussion.

Craig

I placed my order with Mark on Tuesday and it arrived this afternoon. I must say the shipping box is very nice, it had a few nics during shipping but nothing worth talking about really.

The box is pretty big and there was no way my wife and I could man-handled it upstairs so I went to U-Haul, on my wife's suggestion, and bought the two person lifting straps. Wow, her and I easily carried this upstairs, a worthy purchase.

I'm not a audiophile by any stretch but here is my initial impression after playing with the sub for around four hours. I was using a Paradigm DSP 3200 btw.

On to the good stuff. OK, my room is massive at @8500 cubic feet, sub is corner loaded and I sit @12 feet from the sub. I set the amp gain on the sub to 12 and ran Audessy, which set the the receiver sub gain to -8.5. I set the volume to -15 and started playing TRON at the point where he enters "The Grid".

Wow, when that laser gun kicked in I seriously thought someone was kicking the couch behind me and quickly turned around to see who it was. Well, noone was there, lol, this HP is doing that I thought. When the ship came down to capture the dude, the floor and couch started vibrating and a big grin came on the face at that time. I've never felt and heard anything like that before so now I truly know what a sub woofer should do. Now my old sub had moments were it sounded good on some scenes but this one scene was night and day difference. After just a few minutes I was hearing and feeling bass I didn't know existed, wow this sub is amazing.

I called up my wife to check out the same scenes and her first words were, "if you get another one your going to shake down the house" , heehee.

I replayed the scene again and this time used my Radio Shack analog SPL meter at the same volume. I was averaging @100db with spikes up to 105db sitting on the couch, wow that's impressive. K, time to listen to a bit of music.

I played some techno stuff, nice and tight and clean. So far so good, jazz sounded really awesome as well. I didn't push the volume past -10 and I could tell there was still lots of room. Metal sounded punchy which I like. The sub really blends well as I cannot tell where the low freq are originating and it really digs down low when needed, again I'm hearing and feeling bass I didn't know existed in the low stuff.

I do believe the amp has an issue though, the PGM SEL button is stuck out and the MUTE button is stuck in, when I press both buttons they both stay in the same spot. Any ideas?

Ok back to playing with this beast, here's a few pics.

Bravo! can you take some videos of the Tron scene (entering the grid)? are you running dual subs now? btw, that beast really looks sexy

I don't have dual HP's and I don't think I need two I put the Paradigm in storage, yeah the HP looks real nice.

are you using full HD projector? I believe with a FHD pj, you will be totally immerse yourself in movies especially those LFE scenes

Nope, still using my trusty Pioneer Plasma, but my wife wants a true anamorphic projector setup. We seen a high end projector setup at a HiFi shop and were both blown away with the picture. The screen was around 140 inches across and it was simply amazing.

Great stuff and congrats Shocker!

I also love your choice in TV stand and Plasma!

Shocker - congrats on the new sub! I got mine about 3 months ago and I love it. I will say the one thing that really helped my sub come alive was doing some EQ. I bought the Antimode 8033 (a automatic plug-n-play) option. An now my sub is fantastic!

Just an idea. Have fun

Thank you for the pics shocker, and very good to hear you are enjoying your SubMersive HP.

The buttons are likely fine, but they are intended to sit close to flush or even recessed when pushed in, but the exact depth of the buttons does vary unit to unit. Please try the end of a pen, small screwdriver, or other blunt tip to depress the buttons. The MUTE button you want to leave "IN". The PGM button you can try both ways, but in your large room and listening levels I suspect the "OUT" position will be preferred. The buttons latch to either position, so if you don't quite push them in far enough they won't change positions. Do remember that for either PGM SEL position to take effect you have to turn the power off and back on again (watch for the green LED to go out), as the program is only loaded when the amp is powered up. Give me a call or e-mail if you are still having issues, although I suspect you have no need to change from the current setting.

Enjoy!

Great stuff Shocker. That is quite a large room and it's cool to hear that the HP is a good fit for it. TRON is one bad ass movie for the sub. Now go and enjoy some more movies.
Nice system BTW. In my small room I have the program sel switch "in". It works great like that for me. But in your large room "out" may be the way to go. But that is what's so great. You can play around and see which one you like the best.
Enjoy

Thanks Mark, that did the trick.

Did a freq response test just now using a test tone generator on my laptop, outputted through HDMI to receiver. Speakers were set to small with cross over set at 120 and that was my starting point. I set the receiver volume to -40 and that was outputting 80 db at 120hz ( dunno where to start it) Results were calculated at main listening position. See the pic but it only goes down to 20hz and those values are corrected automatically in the spreadsheet.

I than wanted to see how low this sub would go and I was amazed at the results. The below values are what it said on my SPL meter and not corrected.

Freq DB

19 87
18 89
17 90
16 92
15 96
14 88
13 94
12 88
11 88
10 87
9 86
8 82
7 80
6 79
5 69
4 72
3 58
2 did not register as meter only goes to 50

I'm guessing those measurements were taking with the SubMersive HP in PGM2 mode (button out). I'm not sure how accurate those test tones are or what SPL meter you are using and if you are using C weighted but will say that if they are even somewhat close to accurate, other than the dip around 55hz to 65hz, that is Very Impressive. The uncorrected numbers to single digits are almost unreal for a room that size and just using a single SubMersive HP.

Again Very Impressive stuff! Hope you are having a great weekend with your new toy.

Yeah, the PGM SEL button is out and I,m using a analog Radio Shack Meter, model 33-2050. It was set to C weighting and slow. I'm pretty sure the meter is accurate as I tested my old Paradigm 3200 in the same spot with the same program and at 22hz it didn't register on the meter, plus it had the same dip from 55hz-65hz.

I used the program at this link http://www.esseraudio.com/en/test-to...st-factor.html. I was using a sine wave as signal type.

Hey are you still thinking about creating subs with dual 18 woofers?

Check out this link as well

http://www.seaton-sound-forum.com/po...ricing-3366417

Ahah!

Mark has posted a new design on his site
fun stuff

that looks pretty cool...

I'm not finding it. Could somebody either post or PM the link?

http://www.seaton-sound-forum.com/po...ent...-5509423

Ah! Thanks. There were so many stickies at the top of that forum that I couldn't find it!

Hi Mike,

Thanks for reminding me to pull out the stickies from the main forum to make it easier to read.

I will be sending some dimensions and drawings on to Keith Yates's team some time this week, as projects like your own and others done by Keith Yates and Dennis Erskine came to mind in working out this alternate package.

As the thread title says on my own forum... it's the same, but different.

Great! I think the original form factor is going to work best in my space, but this looks like a nice alternative for somebody who has more width/height than depth.

That is a great idea Mark for the new form of the sub. It looks cool as well.

Hi,
how long does is usually take for mark to answer e-mails? I sent him a mail and pm couple of days ago. I'm in urgent need of two submersives

A phone call has always worked better for me.

Hi Riddick,

You will see a response this afternoon. I should have sent a quick e-mail earlier confirming we were working on some options for what we can offer you being in Germany. I just confirmed some of the required details this morning and will be e-mailing you today.