TacT, Lyngdorf, Audyssey Pre/Pro, PARC?

Okay this is enormously helfupl. Kal and all, thanks for all your time.

--dan

BTW, I have not heard the Denon prepro but, on paper, it also fills the bill.

Kal

Just one more observation:

The Velo SMS has an auto-correct option as well as the ability to output the "in-room" response (below 200hz) to a video monitor for manual adjustment.

In my room, I first:

Viewed respose on the monitor without any correction. It was pretty awful, as might be expected.

I then used auto-correct and viewed those results. They were much better, but hardly great.

I then corrected manually. In 15 minutes, I had vastly superior results with my Ohm 100s and Velo subs. Similar improvement was possible with Maggies and subs, but it took almost 2 hours. In every case I tried, manual tweaking made a huge -and hugely audible- improvement over auto--correction.

This may be peculiar to Velodyne's auto correct system. I'm sure that part of the explanation is due to the particular concern of room correcting for sub/mains versus mains alone. In the former case, you must first get it right through the crossover region (not easy), then get it right overall. For a "subwooferless" system, priorities differ.

Moral of my story:

Buy a system which allows you to view results an tweak manually, particularly if you'll be using subs.

Marty

The real reason that the auto-correction with the SMS-1 is inferior to the manual correction has very little to do with your analysis, although the choice of crossover does complicate the issue and the Velodyne has some limitations in that regard.

The biggest reason is that, with auto-mode, the SMS-1 will not vary frequency or Q of the 8 filters it has. Thus, in automode, the SMS-1 is little more than a bass-band graphic EQ.

See: http://www.stereophile.com/musicintheround/1105mitr/index.html

OTOH, the bass only Anti-Mode 8033 does a dandy auto EQ without any display or tweaking.

Kal

Kal,

I saw that the Velo's auto mode didn't utilize the capabilities of the PEq, hence my first comment that my results might be due to issues peculiar to the Velo's auto correct system. However, I'd love to find any auto system that can optimize all of the crossover settings - points (which may be asymmetrical), slopes (which may be asymmetrical), phase, and polarity (not the same). After that, it must adjust for smoothest response through the crosssover point, so that the transition from mains to woofer is seamless. After optimizing this critical transition, it can then determine which trade offs between ideal response through the crossover versus smoothest overall response are optimal. The latter is tricky because the smoothest transition may occur around a crossover point that is either too high or too low to provide natural octave to octave balance throughout the overall bandwidth of the combined system. If this is the case, it must try again.

BTW, if you reverse the process and try to optimize overall bandwidth balance first, there's a good chance you'll try hari-kiri before you get the subs integrated in a satisfying manner.

Such a system may exist - I'm not remotely familiar with what's out there. I'd just personally prefer the option of tweaking manually - especially if separate subs are involved - just in case the auto system comes up short.