Does You Subwoofer Settings ??


Do most find that subwoofer settings are not perfect for every song you play ??

Last year went to a SVS SB16 Sub and 95 percent of songs it sounds beautiful.

But other songs has boomy sound and I have tinnitus and guess at times think it may be my hearing ...

But at times would like to get a professional in that understands all the adjustments the SVS has that I do not understand..

Do others have this issue or is it that Subs can not be adjusted for every song that is played and the way it was recorded causes this at times ???

Tried to correct title  Your Subwoofer Settings !!!

128x128harleyujoe

IMO, you have already received good advice on this thread. In my case, with two large Aerial SW-12 subs, I would invoke the 80/20 rule and say that they sound just about optimum on about 80 percent of tracks that I listen to. However, I have them dialed in at just barely above the roll-off frequency of my mains, and at just about the minimum acceptable loudness, so that on many of the tracks where they are not optimal, the errors are omission (slightly less than optimal bass loudness) rather than commission (i.e., boominess). Even though my room is moderately large, I had the boominess issue with about 40/50 percent of the music I played with my former large, bass reflex speakers. Moving to more moderate sized acoustic suspension speakers (two 9-inch woofers in a sealed box) and adding the two subs allowed me to dial in a much more impactful and less intrusive bass response from my system.

Positioning and settings are certainly important, as pointed out by @soix, and moving to a slightly higher roll-in frequency and slightly lower output loudness can help (mostly) optimize the bass response over a wider range of your music collection. I am fortunate that Aerial chose to offer remote control operation of the SW-12s, since most of the time a problem can be solved by slightly increasing or decreasing the output level. In addition, I find that bumping the output up a notch or two when playing music at low volumes, or bumping the output down slightly when playing music really loud, can also help optimize the sound. In addition to the output level, the SW-12 remote also has toggles/settings (that I never use) for mute, EQ, and damping.

One last thing, look up the Audiokinesis Swarm Subwoofer System, which is a bass array using four subs. You don’t specifically need the swarm system but adding another pair of subs, or even just a third sub run in mono, may help equalize the bass response in your room.

You've already gotten some good advice but I'd try lowering my crossover frequency.

Yes I agree on all the information I have received...And with my Tinnitus I do not play music over 75 db .. I was playing even lower but with bigger Raven Audio Reflection I realized how much detail I was missing ... So I do regulate my volume some with my hearing issues ..And playing at lower volume I was not getting the boom as when playing higher db...I will keep all this information at hand to refer back for reference as I thank You all again for your time ..

Mastering and recording practices vary widely among recordings; thus, no one subwoofer setting will work for all recordings. Add in room effects, as mentioned previously, and Fletcher-Munson (changes in our hearing with volume), and I'm glad my preamp has an easily accessible sub-level control. That said, I leave it at the same spot most of the time. I think Mitch2 said 80%, and my experience aligns with that.

Do most find that subwoofer settings are not perfect for every song you play ??

Yes

Last year went to a SVS SB16 Sub and 95 percent of songs it sounds beautiful. But other songs has boomy sound

Boomy bass is a room acoustics issue. Your room will have standing waves, aka nodes, the frequency of which will be dictated by the distance between parallel surfaces in your room. What ever that frequency is, some recordings will have more energy at that frequency than others, which is why the issue can be inconsistent.

Room treatments, multiple subs and e.q. can all be effective tools in the battle. In my personal experience, I have found out that if I notch out the offending frequency with PEQ in the worst offending songs, that the songs that weren’t plagued by the issue have not been affected. Probably because that frequency wasn’t in those songs with enough energy to have been noticeable in the first place.