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RE: Using REW with Maggies

Posted by Barry (A) on October 10, 2015 at 13:03:33

In Reply to: Using REW with Maggies posted by computerman on October 10, 2015 at 09:00:13:

Depends on how complicated your system is, what you're trying to do and how much time you're willing to spend. Measuring and listening should give you a better result.

To interpret measurements this might be helpful: Acoustical Measurement Standards for Two Channel Listening Rooms http://www.acousticfrontiers.com/room-acoustic-measurements-101/

Speaker Placement (mains) - I did not use REW (or Magnepan's instructions) for placement of my 3.6s. I did use it to adjust and confirm speaker toe-in to get the proper high frequency roll-off. Warning. Slight changes in microphone placement yield wildly different responses at high frequencies due to their small wavelengths. Room impulse response measurements aren't that enlightening. RT60 times have more validity in auditoriums than small home listening rooms.

Speaker Placement (subs) - I have 2 passive subwoofer towers (5 x 10") and 1 active powered sub (Rythmik 15"). REW confirmed the extra sub provides useful frequency smoothing of response below 250 Hz even though all the subs crossover at 88Hz and a slope of 24dB/octave (see DSP). Good thing too as I had already bought them.

Powered Sub Adjustments - (gain, PEQ, delay, etc) - The Rythmik HP15 has enough options to make your head explode. REW's useful to fine tune a powered sub for fixing 2-3 dB room anomalies that can be very difficult to hear.

Setting Active Crossover Gain, Slopes & Qs - REW's indispensible for this. My system's active 3 way (Pass Labs). Changing slope changes frequency and phase. Although I emulate the Magnepan 3.6 passive XO, just adjusting gain for mains and subs, I get much better results measuring than by ear and it takes far less time. No I'm not deaf....

Room Treatments - While you can see frequency and decay (waterfall) results change with every addition and removal of a bass trap, you don't really need REW for this. If you're really lucky, like me, you can get good measurements that sound bad.

Room EQ with DSP - The REW "EQ" program goes through an iterative analysis that results in filters to add to your DSP unit to get a flat response and/or mirror your house curve, as well as optimize decay times. There is nothing intuitive here. Manually setting DSP filters can give strange results. REW can recommended combinations of boosts and cuts around a single frequency. Set REW for no finer than 1/6 octave or you'll end up with a LOT of filters. Although it would seem to make sense, I have found it is NOT productive to adjust each L&R speaker's response curve separately. One reason - you can't increase gain for FQ dips!

It took a lot of work, but here's where I ended up before I boosted the bass 2 dB more. Note that this is 1/6 Octave smoothing not 1/3rd!

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