Velodyne DD15+ - My experience

Velodyne DD Plus 15 - My experience

System:

• Denon AVR 1910
• Klipsch F-30 Towers
• Klipsch C-30 Center
• Klipsch R-3800 In wall Surround
• cheap RCA cables used for velodyne
• Crossover set at 80 hz in receiver

Room Size:
~20x27' open ceiling, open floor plan.

Disclaimer - I'm new to this, enjoy it, and am very interested, however, I am far from competent in the subject.

I was given the opportunity to borrow/ audition / try-out a Velodyne DD15+ from a friend who recently upgraded to a DD18+ to go along with a pair of Apogees. I delightfully agreed as I was already interested in potentially buying the DD15+ from him.
The outgoing subwoofer(s) was a Sony SAW 3800 15” that was a carry over from my College partying days. Before my wife had objected, I had two of these sitting in the corner. They served their purpose (being loud) but when compared to any higher end woofer, they are terribly distorted and roll off pretty hard at the bottom end.




After listening to the Velo for a day or so I decided to try out the user interface.
Opening the box, you find a nice kit that even includes white gloves.

With the mic setup on a coffee table near my listening area, I hooked the sub to my alienware M11X and ran the software. (with no cd rom on my laptop, I simply transferred the files to a usb drive, later installing them onto the laptop.) My primary laptop is a macbook, howveer, without running windows on the mac the software isn’t compatible.



I began by using running “auto EQ” and found that it works really well. It’s odd as I anticipated that it would have had to add power way down low but it did not. It did add quite a bit of gain in the 100hz area. (perhaps the built in “base” curve provides additional power down low?)
Note that the at ~83 db, the output is nearly flat all the way down to 15hz.


Then I tried using “manual EQ” I had a low spot at 25 hz so I added tons of power in this area but for whatever reason was unable to get rid of the dip at 25hz. I began to question the software or mic at this point as it was VERY obvious that I was adding more output down low, however, the software just wasn’t seeing it. With a scosche SPL1000 meter riding shotgun I confirmed that the db reading on screen was not in line with reality. (adding power easily resulted in an SPL of over 100db.)
Although I was not getting a “fault” indicating that the volume level was too loud, my guess is that the overall ouput from 15hz to 200 hz was for the most part greater than what mic could “read” resulting in an unrealistic reading – OR – the velodyne is simply an awesome sub along with the 4 8” woofers in the F-30s pulling their weight (for the most part)

I continued with trying out the “self EQ” where no test track was playing. This is basically where the subwoofer plays a built in sweep and adjusts through auto EQ accordingly.
The EQ tries to correct an 80-100 roll off, but the outuput just isn’t there. This is not concerning to me..

Again, the output is nearly flat all the way down to 15hz.