Quote:
Originally Posted by
Snowmanick 
Calibrating two subs, especially ones with such different capabilities is a pain. Ed would be/is the man, so his advice should of course be front and center. I would advise not to adjust gain(s) on the sub(s) without re-re-rerunning Audyssey though. I know, that sucks.
How do you have your subs placed in the room? One thing I'd try, if possible and if you haven't already, is try the PCI near field and the Ultra far field. This may help to minimize the difference in their respective outputs.
Also, are you level matching or gain matching the subs? If the PCI is level matched to the sub per SPL at the main listening position, that may be why you are running out of steam.
Again, a near-field/far-field arrangement may help this. Or you could try gain matching.
Also, what gain settings are you using in your AVR for the subs? Are you clipping the channel? Try lowering the AVR's gain and upping the subs gains a touch if you are greater than 0DB on the sub out and see if that helps.
Finally, and probably this should have been first, have you measured your room to see if you have any large nulls/peaks? If you are sitting in a null, unless you move the subs and/or listening position, you could be over taxing the sub by trying to combat the null with more output, causing the subs to go into distress.
Hopefully some of this helps. I'd keep talking with SVS, Ed and Jack are great guys with a ton of knowledge.
My subs are in front corners of the room. I placed my SPL meter / audyssey mic equadistant at the main listening area.
Here are the steps I took.
1. W/ SPL - 1 sub at a time, I calibrated each sub to 75db so the starting points were the same.
2. Then hooked up audyssey mic and ran audyssey and first step there says to calibrate sub to 75db (but audyssey is running at around 80 db on screen where my spl just said 75). So, I remembered ed's advice on running the ultra higher so I turned off the pci and lowered gain so this read 78 db, then turned off ultra and turned on pci, and adjusted gain so that read 75 db)
3. Ran audyssey fully measuring 8 locations all around the main listening point 1.
My settings were as follows
Fronts -6 / -5
Center -7
Rears -4 / - 3
Sub +1 (My gain on my PCi is at 9 O'clock and my volume on the Ultra is at -14).
4. I then pulled out my SPL to see if I was at 75db each, and each speaker was a good 4db lower, so at first I adjusted the speakers upward to read 75 on my spl. And My sub was QUITE lower, so I adjusted that to +8.
(am I "suppose" to do this, or just leave where Audyssey set the limits?)
But then I started listening to movies / scenes I am familiar with and it sounded BOOMY, so I lowered the settings down to where Audyssey set them and it sounded better.
Then I pulled out Superman Returns and the ONE scene I described earlier that ALWAYS gave my PCi fits, still made it bottom out.
SO, that led me here on how to proceed. Am I being to picky w/ that ONE scene making me nuts? I guess logic would tell me to lower the gain on the PCi and up the volume on the Ultra to compensate. But if I lower the gain to much on the PCi, what's the point of even having it run w/ the Ultra?
Can u tell me what you mean by gain or level matching?
