Shouldn't This Sound Boomy?

Good for you! If you move around the room with the Mic you will notice the bass response changing. The peak at 25 Hz will move around. The lumpiness below 100 Hz is due to room interaction. Actually, you are not too bad. Where was the Mic positioned? You should take all measurements from the listening position. 

Next you need to run curves on each speaker individually. Ideally their response should be exactly the same. Post the results and we can talk about it. 

You need to decrease the vertical scale, so of course it looks flat. 🤣

So if I ignore that and look up at the waterfall plot, you have a peak around 40-50Hz I’d try to clip with an EQ and possibly raise everything below 100 up 4 dB or so because the system is looking too flat to be fun. :)  See the discussions around the Harman curves.

The duration of the bass nodes is long, but it’s also rather smooth. Besides that 40-50Hz peak you don’t have any outstanding nodes. An EQ would clean that up immediately.

Here is the same plot with dB re-scaled and smoothing changed to 1/24 for @erik_squires 😁. I have thought about an equalizer to tame that peak. I don't understand why my bass sounds as good as it does when this looks bad down low. Am I missing something when I read the waterfall? You mentioned that the duration is long but smooth. Can you explain that?

@mijostyn the graphs above were from the listening position. The mic was in the same place my head would be in.  I did run a sweep on each speaker individually at the same distance and height and volume. Here was the resulting graph, they look pretty close until you get below 20Hz. The red line is the right speaker which has no side wall. The green line is the left and it is two feet from a side wall. They are equal distant from the front wall.

What speaker is this and what size of room?

@sunshdw the room is 15' 2" wide x 13' 9" deep with a 9' 8" ceiling. Right side of room is open to kitchen. Left side has a wall.

The speakers are Tyler Acoustics Highland H3.5

That's pretty impressive if you ask me. You could add some form of room correction but largely it looks good

@sunshdw I have been impressed by how much better the speakers sound in comparison to my Focal Aria 936s. I was really surprised by the bass results on the waterfall graph. I don’t hear anything objectionable. That’s why I posted this, to see if I’m missing something when interpreting the chart or if I’m just not good at hearing problems in my system. Maybe someone will have an explanation of why the graph can look this way and I am still loving the sound. The bass from bass guitars sounds really nice. The only time I get anything resembling objectionable is when I listen to Welcome to the Machine by Pink Floyd or Russia on Ice by Porcupine Tree. Those songs rumble the house and all of the glasses in the china cabinet.

I don't think I can do anything more with the room, because my wife won't have it. She has allowed GIK panels already and I'll have to be happy with what I have. I may try to equalize in the future, but for now I'm happy with the sound I'm getting.

By smooth I mean that your bass decays more or less evenly.  You don't have some bass notes finish quickly and some late. 

Looking again at the overall response you really need an EQ or Roon.  Clip that 45Hz peak.  Use one shelving filter to flatten from 20 to 60 and another to boost everything below 100 Hz to about 4 dB above the rest. 

I don't see a really bad peak in the bass region. 

@hilde45

Please check the dB scale. A reminder that 10 dB = 10x more power in the room. Compared to the other frequencies, that’s a lot. If he clips that it’s then he is only 1 filter away from dialed in.

It's the wall v. no wall on the bass, but if you're happy with it.....well left alone.

An eq would allow for leveling the bottom out, matching the response to one or the other. That could bring in the 'boom' that you don't seem to be missing though.

Personally, I like flat response, so the rest looks great to me....

Enjoy away, J

"Boomy" would normally show a peak in the 70-80Hz area, which you don't have.

The graphs are a waste of time, if you're happy with what you hear.

I use REW and take responses from 4 different points in a 5 ft spread , sometimes just moving the-speakers a few inches can make for  better imaging ,and first off 

the speakers need to be exactly the same distance from the wall behind them and try to get the same toe in ,this alone can take hours after remeasuring after each adjustment.

@erik_squires Misjudged the graph. Thanks.

Re:

The graphs are a waste of time, if you're happy with what you hear.

This was true for me until I used the graphs to improve the response. Then, I was MORE pleased with what I heard.

In other words, graphs are useful if you want to improve the sound. If you prefer to not bother, then graphs are a waste of time.

@baclagg , This looks more like I would expect. By 28 Hz your bass is down 15dB. To give you the feel of a live performance you want you bass up 5 to 10 dB between 20 and 30 Hz. This is what subwoofers are for. At 200 Hz there is a 7 dB variation between channels. This is probably the wall. Middle C is 254 H. This will mess up your image a bit. Otherwise the speakers track each other very nicely. So the image is not going to be bad at all but it could be better. The overall curve is downsloping to 2200 hz which is down 15 dB from baseline. This will lead to a darker more forward presentation. Easy to listen to but not entirely accurate. You can play around above 10 kHz and below 100 Hz without changing the staging but between 100 Hz and 10 kHz you want absolutely flat in both channels. 

Now that you are measuring you have to gain the ability to do something about it. That something would be digital signal processing and the ability to EQ each channel individually. Digital preamp/processors like the DEQX, Anthem, Trinnov and MiniDSP units give you that capability. After you listen to a flat system for a while you can get a feel for what any system is doing just by listening. You also learn what your preferences are and how to make any system sound the way you like. I boost bass by 3dB/oct below 100 Hz. It gives you the feel of a live concert at more reasonable levels. I ramp the treble up 6 dB/oct above 12 kHz to make up for my older hearing. A younger person may not like this. 

@baclagg 

Other than that one peak in the 40+ range, yout graphs look pretty good. Question, are your speakers rear ported? My KEF’s have 2 rear ports and a couple of different “Tuned” inserts to change the bass characteristics. Back in history, I used small sponges and placed them at different spots in the ports to adjust the bass.

Either way, a MiniDSP should help a lot.

All the best. 

I may have missed something, but describe your sound system.  There are so many knowledgeable people in this discussion group.

@mijostyn 

In response to:

To give you the feel of a live performance you want you bass up 5 to 10 dB between 20 and 30 Hz.

IMHO, most live performances, especially in rock, electronica and related genres, do not deploy sound engineers that present a realistic sound balance these days. Bass is overweight, often not tight, and consequently the overall sound is poor, sometimes  atrocious. General audiences seem to like the "thump in your chest" bass sound/feeling. However, for home listening it can be very tiresome and disappointing after the initial wow moment has passed.

Thank you,

BP

Had a second look at the graphs and was looking to see if the output is dB(A) weighted? Doesn't look like it. Maybe you can confirm and if not, run the same methodology using the A weighted algorithm. I would be interested to see what these graphs look like.

Kind regards,

BP

@bobpyle , you need to attend smaller venues like the Blue Note in NYC and The Regata Bar in Boston. Rock concerts are Mono PA sound are worthless for evaluating home system. Fortunately, most live recordings are taken off the sound board and mixed like any other recording.

Lifelike sounding bass is lifelike whether you like it or not. If you don't like it you do not belong here. I suggest you visit a Bose Forum actually that is not fair to Bose. You should find a forum that talks about computer speakers. Those do not have much bass. Just your speed.

@mijostyn 

Thank you for your considered advice.

Actually, I only need to travel to The Sage, Hall Two for lifelike bass and, to my listening room when my Magico Q5's and my upstream audio system is tuned to my perception.

Kind regards,

BP

Try moving your chair - you may be sitting on a nodal point in the room.

However, this is a classic case of trusting your ears rather than your eyes. If the bass sounds clean and tight, then why worry about what the graph looks like...

The kind of music you listen to in relevant too. A lot of music doesn't have that much energy around the 40hz region - which is the low E on a bass guitar.

I couldn't find any measurements on the Tyler speakers website, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that 40hz is the port tuning frequency. You could always block the ports with foam and remeasure to see if this is the case.

@bobpyle ,the Q5s are a great speaker. Magico is perhaps my favorite dynamic speaker manufacturer. The Q series subwoofers are the best commercial subwoofers available sonically just way too big for my situation. They need to design smaller versions for use in multiples. 

Tuning a system to the taste of the individual is the final step in setting up a system.  Measuring the system like @baclagg has done is the first step. Getting the system flat and balanced with room treatment and digital signal processing is the middle step. Because I handle it this way I can tell you exactly what I want to hear and why. You may want to hear something different. OK, what? Can anyone here draw me the amplitude response of a system tuned to their taste? How many here know exactly what their system is doing? Most people just make assumptions. They do not measure. Consequently there is no way they can optimize the performance of their systems. Many add silly "tweaks" in a vain attempt at improving performance wasting the money they could have spent on a good measurement microphone and computer program.  

When I look at that graph, boomy does not come to mind but I wonder if over time you will start to feel like the sound lacks life or sounds a bit muffled. It looks like there is a big difference between the bass decay and the mid/high decay even though the response curve is pretty smooth.

If you do start feeling that way then maybe some bass traps would help, and otherwise, just enjoy it!

@mijostyn 

Thank you for the further information, in which you introduce how you tune a system from a measurement perspective.

I tune my system and everything that influences the sound that I have control of, from a listening experience perspective. 

You and I approach the subject using different methods and, if it works for either, both (all) of us, then who is to say which method is right or wrong, or more right / more wrong? But, we should be careful when advising forum posters what to do. Our advice may not be appropriate for their needs. At best, we can only generalise.

I have spent almost 50 years getting my audio replay to sound in a way that I believe delivers a palpable, entertaining sound, with presence. I have found that measuring the audible spectrum, cannot help me with the all important spatial information, nor can it help with the individual listener's perception of sound. I have also found that there is an inextricable trade off between dynamics and musicality. The best we can hope for here is a compromise. These subjectives are some of the issues that make our hobby such fun, can result in frustration, and do help to keep the hifi industry alive. This, or any other forum, is unable to allow us to debate the subject without introducing misunderstanding of each other's thinking via. the narrative. So, I respect your opinion and, I trust you will understand mine. More of my thoughts can be found  (if you can obtain a copy) in HIFI Critic Vol 12 / No1 on p42-44 in an article called Tuned To Perception. Perhaps you will find it interesting?   

Kind regards,

BP

When looking at response, 5dB/division please.

Bass looks okay. I would tame that one peak.

The dropout at 2K is a far bigger problem. It’s 10db. That is very audible. I would prefer more slope at high frequencies.

You said you had panels. You may have too many of them may work over a narrow frequency band. Fully carpeted?

@larry5729 the system is a Hegel H390 integrated amp and an Audiolabs 6000 CDT Transport using the Hegel's internal DAC. The speakers are Tyler Acoustics Highland H3.5s rear ported three way speakers. The room is treated with 4" diffuser panels on wall behind the listening position and a 2' x 4' x 4" bass absorber behind each speaker and a 2' x 4' x 4" diffuser panel on each side of the speakers. I have a stack of rockwool panels centered behind the listening position at the floor.

@theaudioamp the room has an area rug covering the entire floor. I have a tv and stand between the speakers and I cover them with dense foam to keep reflections from them to a minimum. I am going to run a test with no treatments and then add one treatment at a time and see what I get. I agree, the 2k dropout is a problem. I hear sounds clearly in my car that I can barely hear on my home system and I believe the sounds I’m talking about are in this range.

@bobpyle , unfortunately Bob, your ears do not a reference point make. You can not tell someone how to make their system sound like you want to hear. What is it that you want to hear? Well perhaps you like your system a little brighter. What does that mean. You can not say. 

None of this, except the way I tune my system to my taste is an opinion of mine. It is an approach that all serious professionals use. And you always start from a reference point and that reference point is a flat amplitude response across the entire audio spectrum. The technology to manage audio systems was not available to us back in the day. I got my first record player in 1958 and it had a tonearm that looked like a cobra and even had eyes painted on it!  Getting anything to sound right was a hit or miss proposition. People still behave as if this is still the case. It is not. With the right tools one can make almost any system (includes the room) sound good, maybe not great but in many instances surprisingly good. There are some rooms and situations that are totally hopeless but they are relatively few. The situations that are fantastic are also relatively rare, I am talking about rooms that were specifically designed for audio reproduction with speakers like your if you are a point source kind of guy or mine if you are into line source dipoles. 

You can never trust anyone's ears. People tend to like what they are use to listening to. To a person whose system is falsely bright a system that is correct will sound dull. If a person tells me he likes his treble advanced 3 dB/oct from 10kHz I know exactly what he means and can even imagine it. I can make almost any system sound the way I like without ever playing any music. If I analyzed your system I could tell you exactly what you are listening to, not my opinion of what you are listening to. 

@baclagg -- Good plan!  From your description, you may have too many things absorbing sound and one in particular that is taking out the 2KHz!  You can fix that with an equalizer. You can also replace your side absorber panels with a diffuser panel. You have all the tools you need at least.  Once you fix the 2KHz drop, you may find the system a bit bright. Most people prefer the output to slope down as the frequency increases.

@mijostyn 

"unfortunately Bob, your ears do not a reference point make. You can not tell someone how to make their system sound like you want to hear."

But you did just that...

"@baclagg , This looks more like I would expect. By 28 Hz your bass is down 15dB. To give you the feel of a live performance you want you bass up 5 to 10 dB between 20 and 30 Hz"

Go figure.

@bobpyle, not all Bob. I referenced baclagg's frequency response curve. I know what my preferences are relative to a flat response curve because I have the capability of making my system perfectly flat or whatever I want it to be. My ears are not the reference but I know what ear likes to hear and the rest of me wants feel. I can replicate what I want to hear without ever listening to music just by measuring frequency sweeps an making adjustments according to what I hear but what I see.

Thanks for the chat.

Kind regards,

BP

The dip around 2.4kHz is a common feature among several speakers and a known tweak. It gives an enhanced sense of imaging. You can find it in several previous generation Wilsons, among others.

It is also a good crossover point between the tweeter and midrange, so it's relatively easy to make this dip happen in the crossover by spreading out the filter points a little more than you would use for a completely neutral speaker.

I doubt that’s from the room.

Personally I’m with Floyd Toole that EQ should be used sparingly and mostly in  the bass, otherwise what is the point of picking out speakers you like the sound of?

@erik_squires I will be holding off trying to EQ to improve. I am going to try a few things with room treatment as soon as I can find some time. But, for now, I’m just going to enjoy the music!

Thank you everyone for your input!

baclagg

are you gonna believe your graph or your “lyin ears”?

you described your current system thusly: 

“I hear nice tight bass when I play music. I hear a big improvement over my previous speakers. The mid range and treble sound great and again the bass sounds articulate and tight”

lol

@johnlnyc I choose to believe my ears for now. I may work on placement of speakers and room treatments sometime, to see what I get. What I hear will always take precedence over the graph. But, having said that, I have a tool to record how changes affect sound now. I may end up exactly where I started. Who knows?

I hear you.

This is what a lot of audiophiles suffer. 
pursuit of the holy grail, that unicorn of perfection.

I can’t tell you how many of the greatest recording engineers, mixers, mastering engineers and producers, agree on one thing. Rely on your ears not the gear.

I recall a reviewer explaining that for optimum isolation, seat your turntable on a concrete pillar not touching any part of your home and driven into the ground.

At some point, we have to just find a system we like, tweak it within reason and spend our time listening to music! 

@johnlnyc I'll second that, thank you!

I would also add that our hearing perception does get in the way from time to time and, to keep music sounding fresh, we need new sounds, presented in new ways, to challenge us. This can be new music programme, an audio sabbatical, some changes to our system set up, or a multitude of other things, including personal wellbeing.

As an example, I sometimes by-pass my pre amp and plug the XLR output of my DAC directly into my power amp. Providing DAC's have a very good volume control, this works well and only takes a couple of minutes to execute. The sound then becomes a little more "clinical" with slightly more dynamics, but the trade-off is a small loss in musical engagement. However, the "new" sound gets my attention. After a couple of days (maybe 4-6 hours of listening time) switching back to including the pre amp in my system, immediately delivers a more entertaining sound and my hearing perception is refreshed again. Even wetting my industrial scale grounding mat does the trick, sometimes. It is an advantage to all music lovers, to understand the perception of hearing and to consider that maybe our system is not a fault, but we may have become a little complacent with the sound and presentation it is producing. 

Only this morning did I have a wonderfully emotional listening experience, playing some music that I had not heard for maybe a year of more. I was astonished by how engaging and entertaining that 2 hour listening session was and, how different music production styles affected my enjoyment of the music to some degree.

Kind regards,

BP

This turned up in my in box this morning. 
Well worth considering..

@johnlnyc 

Yes, that begins to highlight the issues.

I also had an article published in HiFi Critic Vol 12 No1 (pages 42-44) in 2018, where I started to scratch the surface of my layman's understanding of hearing perception and how it affected my ability to enjoy music reproduced through my system. Sorry that the article is copyrighted and cannot be publicly shared, but I have added a link, if anyone is minded to purchase. https://www.hificritic.com/store/p137/hificritic-vol12-no-1.html

Maybe someone has a copy they can share with anyone interested?