Well, if you EQ above the shroeder frequency of the room (typically around 150-250 Hz depending on room size), you’re changing the tonality and direct sound of your speaker. However, if there are issues with the response of the speaker and directivity is consistent, higher frequency EQ can work well.
In general, the different “hosue curves” listed are based on some research about preferences. The in-room response of speakers unless they’re an omni or very wide coverage, tiles down at around 1 dB per octave in-room and people prefer and extra 3-10 dB below ~150 Hz. The so-called harman curve is this. Again, this matches most speaker’s natural response (more low end because they have omni coverage at those frequencies).
Steamer (Rose RS130)-> Dac (MKII) → Pre (ARC) → JL CR-1 which is set to xover at 33Hz and I believe the slope is set to 12 (I am not home and cannot look at all settings but I can post).
The Focus Fidelity Software creates a Convolution Filter for Roon done in digital before DAC obviously. So to do that I hook up PC (only time I use PC) via a DDC to DAC directly with the Mic in the other usb. Plays the test tones via the first program and saves the readings from 9 reads around seat. Then the second program reads those and applies the settings to create the filter for Roon to use. It works well. But wondering if I am missing something.
What you said about Trained listener makes sense, I am very sensitive to bloaty bass. Not a bass head by any means. I like to feel it when it hits, but not during the whole piece. if that makes sense.
I want to say about 2 years ago they suggested something like setting a point at 27Hz and slope down for some reason. It worked well. I lost that conversion. I will try and dig it up.
Found it
“I have set the Low Frequency Roll Off Slope to 12, I have also adjusted the left most vertical marker to 27Hz, I’ve done this so that the target curve in purple matches the natural low frequency limit of your system. This means that the correction filter won’t try to push the base extension further than what the speakers/sub are capable of.
I also set the Target Slope (left most box to 0).
You might find that increasing the target slope a little bit so that it is downwards sloping is preferable, most people find a flat target too bright sounding.
On the filter magnitude page I set it to full bandwidth correction up to 20kHz.”
While you don’t want to feed more extreme LF into your sopra 2, you have a giant sub with 2 X 15" woofers and should be getting below 27 Hz. Boost your sub more down there with the subwoofer Q setting (increase the Q) on the sub amp or boost with the parametric EQ on the amp. Then in your software DSP, it doesn’t need to boost (and can cut a little, if needed), so you’re not sending extra 20 Hz to your Focals but are getting deeper extension.
The CR-1 will cut off anything the software or Roon tries to send to Mains. The software just makes it more flat or to whatever curve you put in the software.
The sub is fed by LFE so when I put bypass in the CR1 and Preamp, the Home Theater processor then takes over with its room correction. So the sub is dual purpose. Which is why I try and not touch the settings on it.
But I get the 27hz comment. I was not sure why they had me do that. My initial thoughts are just leave flat or try the Harmon curve.
Ahh, I missed the part about the CR-1. Yes, then just have the DSP EQ things and you don’t necessarily have to do it on the sub’s rear panel.
That being said, I would make sure that the rumble filter is off and you can adust the LF cutoff of the sub with the “extention filter”. Decreasing the damping makes (setting it to medium of low) will boost the LF around the low frequency corner that you set so I’d switch it to 18 Hz and medium or low to get more output around 20 Hz.
Have you ever A/Bed the system without the CR-1? If you had some bookshelf speakers, I could see how having in there would be critical but with the speakers that you have, boosting your sub up a bit, then having the DSP cut things down (including to the sopras) would probably sound a good deal better.
Interesting, I have not. I do love how it sounds. I have tried the Sopras w/o sub, but not tuned w/o sub. The pre has a bypass so I can still share the fronts with the AVM that way too. I may try that. What makes you think it would be better w/o sub/cr1? are you not a fan of the CR1?
It changes the shape of the knee at the filter freqeuncy.
A Q of 0.5 is critically damped and is -6 dB at the cutoff frequency. A Q of 0.707 is maximally flat (without any peaking) and is -3 dB at the crossover frequency and a Q of 1 has a small amount of peaking (1.25 dB) just above the cutoff frequency
Attached is a graph showing the three options. I’m assuming that these are about the values he has on that switch (between low, medium and high)
It’s not that I’m not a fan of the CR-1. There aren’t many products like it on the market and i love that they made it. However, it sounds worse on a high end system then not having it in there as far as imaging and transparency.
There is also a time domain aspect the Q but that isn’t critical to this discussion. Basically, there is ringing/overshoot to the waveform as the Q gets higher but in the case of subwoofers in-room response dominates this.
