Question Help needed . Marty sub crossover settings No punch out of sub just low bass

Higibuilder

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Hi all
Mini Marty subwoofer up and running with inuke 3000dsp and it certainly shakes the house on very very low frequencies but im getting zero slam . No punch at all esp scenes like the opening scene of blade .

here are my settings as they stand

what do I need to change

many thanks
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Hi Unreel

amp is on 80% volume and the inuke is on full gain
Amp set to -8 on my avr settings after calibration from the denon avr only

I don’t have a stand alone mic .

Don’t get me wrong when watching at high volume the low end is incredible but there is no kick you in the back bass just low end vibration of the room it’s so low sometimes you don’t think it’s working well until you leave the room and the rest of the house is vibrating

something must be wrong as I removed a Rel stadium and this is its replacement so was expecting more .

new to
All this
 
It sounds like a time alignment issue but there is no simple way to identify this without a calibrated mic and learning how to use Room EQ Wizrd (REW) I'd suggest. At least then you will be able to see exactly what is going on.


 
Thanks for reply

funds are tight with new house move at the moment but yes I do need these .
Can anyone look at my settings please just to see if there’s any changes I can do today to play with as ordered gravity diamond edition in atmos so would like to test that at the weekend if possible . Like a kid with this
 
Without seeing the REW sweeps it's impossible to say.

I would guess you have a null somewhere in the 30-50 range which is where that chest kick comes from. What happens if you walk around the room, does it change?

I'm definitely no expert but why have a -3 gain on the NX amp and then a +3 on the AV amp? Don't those cancel each other out? Not really relevant to the question I don't think but I didn't understand why (but it's more than likely my lack of knowledge)

Your phase is down as 180 degrees. Again why is that? It's set to 0 on my amp but I am absolutely no expert so it might very well be mine that's wrong (or it might not be relevant at all but it's just different to mine)

G
 
Thanks for all the help guys really appreciate it .
gling to try again tonight . Played gravity briefly yesterday and even at low volume it rattles the doors round the house so something not right . Will try suggested changes and let you know how I get on . If I was after house shaking low end bass I would be happy but I want an all rounder .
 
Thanks for all the help guys really appreciate it .
gling to try again tonight . Played gravity briefly yesterday and even at low volume it rattles the doors round the house so something not right . Will try suggested changes and let you know how I get on . If I was after house shaking low end bass I would be happy but I want an all rounder .
Its most likely response issues. Chest slam is arguably in the 50-100hz range so when you can get REW running look there. Although some on AVS have reported a lack of the chest slam bass from the UM18s due to them not excelling at midbass!
 
Can you share the driver details (or WINISD file), and the cabinet details?
 
Its most likely response issues. Chest slam is arguably in the 50-100hz range so when you can get REW running look there. Although some on AVS have reported a lack of the chest slam bass from the UM18s due to them not excelling at midbass!

It's interesting. Reading into it in more detail bass slam is reported at anything from 20 to 250Hz depending on what you read and who is answering so I'm not completely sure what is right. Some say 30-50, some 50-100, some 150-250 and any combination you care to think of and all are 100% sure so who know who's right.

I am curious about your "not excelling in midbass" claim though. I've never seen that anywhere. All the measurements I've seen for the UM18's are almost pencil flat from 200Hz down. It all varies based on cabinet, amp power and most importantly room response of course but my two don't seem to suffer mid bass if REW and my UMIC are to be believed. How would I measure the problem?

G
 
My thoughts are something around the crossover region with the mains - maybe a partial or full phase shift - or just lumpy response around 80Hz or so.

Try adding a peak in the response around 80Hz on the sub and see if that helps. Try 6db and play with the Q to avoid boominess but giving impact.
 
I am curious about your "not excelling in midbass" claim though. I've never seen that anywhere. All the measurements I've seen for the UM18's are almost pencil flat from 200Hz down.
Don't rely on an REW graph for everything. All it really gives you is a picture of the frequency vs amplitude at the listening position with no real insight into the character of a subwoofers sound. For example, 2 sealed subs with wildly varying system Q values could both be measured and give a flat 20-200Hz response at 85db at the mlp after eq, but they would be entirely different sounding subwoofers. Remember, REW is measuring the rooms influence, and most of what it does is focused on measuring the room rather than the subwoofer itself. Think of it as more like using the subwoofer to help measure your room.
 
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Don't rely on an REW graph for everything. All it really gives you is a picture of the frequency vs amplitude at the listening position with no real insight into the character of a subwoofers sound. For example, 2 sealed subs with wildly varying system Q values could both be measured and give a flat 20-200Hz response at 85db at the mlp after eq, but they would be entirely different sounding subwoofers. Remember, REW is measuring the rooms influence, and most of what it does is focused on measuring the room rather than the subwoofer itself. Think of it as more like using the subwoofer to help measure your room.

Explain as I genuinely want to understand.

What do you mean by "character"? Unless you EQ the sound you hear to change it, the goal for most is to have a flat response as that will supposedly give you a "true" representation of that the original producer/engineer intended. If it's flat at the mlp and your phasing and so on is good then what else are you measuring? Sound is a mechanical quantity once it's left the speaker which is very well understood and is trivially measured in every single respect so what is this "character" you're talking about? More importantly how would I measure it?

Q values, from what I understand (and I'm still learning!) describe the efficiency of the speaker (or dampening if you prefer). This drives (or dictates) the size of enclosure you use and ultimately will change the absolute SPL and indeed the shape of the response you get. If your Q is low and your box is too big it's not going to sound too good. If you Q is high and your box too small then this will go the other way. So your effective Q value changes depending on the enclosure size (simplistically the smaller the box the higher the effective Q value). Ideally you're trying hit a Q of about 0.7 to give you the flattest curve (as that's your goal). That's why speakers have ideal enclosure sizes to get you near that 0.7 ideal.

Now if you're claiming that 2 identical enclosures with 2 different speakers with different Q values will sound different I will absolutely agree as the enclosure is going to be affecting your effective response curves. But that's not the point. You wouldn't build 2 identical enclosures for 2 speakers with different Q values.

If you're claiming that 2 speakers that are flat in their response in the same range with the same material and volume matched will sound significantly different then I'd start to struggle to agree based on what I understand.

I don't subscribe to the "magic" part of sound that some people claim (not suggesting you do I hasten to add). I'm not at all suggesting that different speakers sound the same but likewise I'm saying that differences you hear can be measured or they don't exist. Interestingly subwoofers are actually one area where there is quite a lot of variance as once you get below 30Hz there's a vast variance in performance and response that is clearly measurable.

As I said I'm genuinely still learning and open minded so more than happy to be educated :)

G
 
It's interesting. Reading into it in more detail bass slam is reported at anything from 20 to 250Hz depending on what you read and who is answering so I'm not completely sure what is right. Some say 30-50, some 50-100, some 150-250 and any combination you care to think of and all are 100% sure so who know who's right.

I am curious about your "not excelling in midbass" claim though. I've never seen that anywhere. All the measurements I've seen for the UM18's are almost pencil flat from 200Hz down. It all varies based on cabinet, amp power and most importantly room response of course but my two don't seem to suffer mid bass if REW and my UMIC are to be believed. How would I measure the problem?

G
Yeah I suppose chest slam could be different for different people but 20hz wouldn't ever be described as chest slam, more pressure. The UM18's are low power handling, high MMS, high excursion drivers so will not excell at midbass. They may be ruler flat but you won't get the same midbass feel as a high sensitivity, high power handling pro driver. Countless times on AVS people report upgrading or adding midbass drivers to a UM18 set-up and experiencing much more chest slam. Its not necessarily a lack of midbass spl just how the driver gets there. The B&C21s that I use have a much much stronger motor and higher powerhandling so are able to stop and start the cone with greater accuracy which I think lends to a cleaner presentation in the midbass. I recently sold a set of B&C 21 subs that I built to a guy on here who had SVS PB16s, and he reported that the B&C's sounded much cleaner and more visceral!
 
Yeah I suppose chest slam could be different for different people but 20hz wouldn't ever be described as chest slam, more pressure. The UM18's are low power handling, high MMS, high excursion drivers so will not excell at midbass. They may be ruler flat but you won't get the same midbass feel as a high sensitivity, high power handling pro driver. Countless times on AVS people report upgrading or adding midbass drivers to a UM18 set-up and experiencing much more chest slam. Its not necessarily a lack of midbass spl just how the driver gets there. The B&C21s that I use have a much much stronger motor and higher powerhandling so are able to stop and start the cone with greater accuracy which I think lends to a cleaner presentation in the midbass. I recently sold a set of B&C 21 subs that I built to a guy on here who had SVS PB16s, and he reported that the B&C's sounded much cleaner and more visceral!

First time I've ever seen the UM18-22's referred to as "Low power handling" but you live and learn.

I'm not going to disagree with you (well ok I am a bit! ;)) but care to explain as I don't understand.

What does "..may be ruler flat but you won't get the same midbass feel as a high sensitivity, high power handling pro driver" actually mean? What is "feel"? What you "feel" is what you either hear which are sound waves exciting your ear or "feel" as the physical sound waves resonate or vibrate your body in some way. That can be measured, trivially and as far as I'm aware is a combination of SPL, frequency and amplitude. Of course it all works together and I get that if you're feeding low sensitivity speakers with an underpowered amp you're going to suffer lacklustre results. But from a pure "feel" perspective the more SPL the more you'll "feel" it but that's common sense too. Are you suggesting that there is something else that can't be measured at play? If so what is it?

Ultimately there is supposed to be a 1 to 1 relationship between the input and the output. Input X and you get Y. In a perfect system X = Y in the sense that if the input signal is set to generate 85dB at 20Hz your output will produce a 20Hz sound at 85dB at the MLP. That is exactly what you're measuring (and aiming for) with REW. REW produces a sweep and then measures the in room response to that sweep and to be honest that's all that matters as that's what we actually hear. The goal being that across as much of the range as you can you try and get that exact 1 to 1 response so that the output you hear is exactly what your input intends. Ultimately you don't get that only from the speakers as room resonance and room response greatly affects what you hear. You are also at the mercy of psychoacoustic and biological effects (humans perceive low frequencies as quieter than they actually are so you apply a house curve to boost them) so this may drive both placement and any EQ you apply to artificially change the speakers response at any one desired range. Objectively though, concepts such as "slam" are measurable unless you can tell me why not.

Now accuracy is an interesting one. Explain the physical theory to me because you talk of magnets makes little sense to me as far as modern speaker design and material goes. The strength or size of magnet is not the deciding factor as to the quality or ability of a speaker. Magnet strength is one of a number of different properties which dictate the quality of a speaker and it's usually not the most important one. Indeed too strong a magnet can actually cause problems in subwoofer speakers and there is absolutely no rule that says bigger/stronger is better. If it was then everyone would have maxed that out a long time ago. It's a very complex area and almost everything in speaker (and cabinet) design is a compromise so you simply can't make a blanket statement that stronger = better. That's not to say those speakers are not superb but it having a stronger magnet likely means they've had to make compromises elsewhere.

But as I said, I'm an armchair pundit not a speaker designer so I'm sure I'm grossly simplifying it all to the point where I'm talking cobblers. Happy to learn though.

G
 
Hi guys so sorry I have had no notifications bar the last one . Thank you all so much for your advice . Being new to all this and watching several YouTube videos of REW in use it’s very very hard to get my head around but im
Hoping I can buy a mic and try get to grips with REW . Now am
I right in saying if I manage to finger REW out and Dave file do I then upload into the inuke from pc file or do I manually type in new settings on control app

many thanks guys you blow my mind with your knowledge 😮👍
 
Explain as I genuinely want to understand.

What do you mean by "character"? Unless you EQ the sound you hear to change it, the goal for most is to have a flat response as that will supposedly give you a "true" representation of that the original producer/engineer intended. If it's flat at the mlp and your phasing and so on is good then what else are you measuring? Sound is a mechanical quantity once it's left the speaker which is very well understood and is trivially measured in every single respect so what is this "character" you're talking about? More importantly how would I measure it?

Q values, from what I understand (and I'm still learning!) describe the efficiency of the speaker (or dampening if you prefer). This drives (or dictates) the size of enclosure you use and ultimately will change the absolute SPL and indeed the shape of the response you get. If your Q is low and your box is too big it's not going to sound too good. If you Q is high and your box too small then this will go the other way. So your effective Q value changes depending on the enclosure size (simplistically the smaller the box the higher the effective Q value). Ideally you're trying hit a Q of about 0.7 to give you the flattest curve (as that's your goal). That's why speakers have ideal enclosure sizes to get you near that 0.7 ideal.

Now if you're claiming that 2 identical enclosures with 2 different speakers with different Q values will sound different I will absolutely agree as the enclosure is going to be affecting your effective response curves. But that's not the point. You wouldn't build 2 identical enclosures for 2 speakers with different Q values.

If you're claiming that 2 speakers that are flat in their response in the same range with the same material and volume matched will sound significantly different then I'd start to struggle to agree based on what I understand.

I don't subscribe to the "magic" part of sound that some people claim (not suggesting you do I hasten to add). I'm not at all suggesting that different speakers sound the same but likewise I'm saying that differences you hear can be measured or they don't exist. Interestingly subwoofers are actually one area where there is quite a lot of variance as once you get below 30Hz there's a vast variance in performance and response that is clearly measurable.

As I said I'm genuinely still learning and open minded so more than happy to be educated :)

G
Honestly, the best thing you can do is test this for yourself with a practical experiment. If you can build, then take a driver, put it in a small cab and put it in a system. Eq it flat to a target frequency and listen to it. Then take the same driver, put it in a very large cabinet and do the same thing, then use that subwoofer for a week. You will notice a difference even though both subwoofers have been eq'd in room to give the same in room response.
 
First time I've ever seen the UM18-22's referred to as "Low power handling" but you live and learn.

I'm not going to disagree with you (well ok I am a bit! ;)) but care to explain as I don't understand.

What does "..may be ruler flat but you won't get the same midbass feel as a high sensitivity, high power handling pro driver" actually mean? What is "feel"? What you "feel" is what you either hear which are sound waves exciting your ear or "feel" as the physical sound waves resonate or vibrate your body in some way. That can be measured, trivially and as far as I'm aware is a combination of SPL, frequency and amplitude. Of course it all works together and I get that if you're feeding low sensitivity speakers with an underpowered amp you're going to suffer lacklustre results. But from a pure "feel" perspective the more SPL the more you'll "feel" it but that's common sense too. Are you suggesting that there is something else that can't be measured at play? If so what is it?

Ultimately there is supposed to be a 1 to 1 relationship between the input and the output. Input X and you get Y. In a perfect system X = Y in the sense that if the input signal is set to generate 85dB at 20Hz your output will produce a 20Hz sound at 85dB at the MLP. That is exactly what you're measuring (and aiming for) with REW. REW produces a sweep and then measures the in room response to that sweep and to be honest that's all that matters as that's what we actually hear. The goal being that across as much of the range as you can you try and get that exact 1 to 1 response so that the output you hear is exactly what your input intends. Ultimately you don't get that only from the speakers as room resonance and room response greatly affects what you hear. You are also at the mercy of psychoacoustic and biological effects (humans perceive low frequencies as quieter than they actually are so you apply a house curve to boost them) so this may drive both placement and any EQ you apply to artificially change the speakers response at any one desired range. Objectively though, concepts such as "slam" are measurable unless you can tell me why not.

Now accuracy is an interesting one. Explain the physical theory to me because you talk of magnets makes little sense to me as far as modern speaker design and material goes. The strength or size of magnet is not the deciding factor as to the quality or ability of a speaker. Magnet strength is one of a number of different properties which dictate the quality of a speaker and it's usually not the most important one. Indeed too strong a magnet can actually cause problems in subwoofer speakers and there is absolutely no rule that says bigger/stronger is better. If it was then everyone would have maxed that out a long time ago. It's a very complex area and almost everything in speaker (and cabinet) design is a compromise so you simply can't make a blanket statement that stronger = better. That's not to say those speakers are not superb but it having a stronger magnet likely means they've had to make compromises elsewhere.

But as I said, I'm an armchair pundit not a speaker designer so I'm sure I'm grossly simplifying it all to the point where I'm talking cobblers. Happy to learn though.

G

Sorry, I didn't mean to describe the UM18 as low power handling as that is not true, what I meant to say is compared to the pro drivers it is only able to handle almost half the power. If you played dubstep through a UM18 and a B&C 21 at say 120db the UM18 is sure to give up a lot sooner than th B&C, although this is a moot point as this should be obvious with the different power handlings etc. I've done a lot of reading on this subject, namely drivers like the UM18 and pro drivers like the B&C and people generally fall into the two categories we have here. I would tend to agree that if both responses are flat then they both should sound the same, however this is generally not the case. I've compared my setup against a friend who has UM18's and we both agreed that the pro drivers just sound cleaner, both with movies and with music. I'm not sure on the pyhsics side of things, but the UM18 has a higher mass cone to move with a weaker motor than the B&C, which maybe translates to a different tactile feel, as the B&C is able to control the cone more smoothly, again this is just my theory and I could be completely wrong, but having heard both setups, (which were EQ'd very similarly) the B&Cs sounded better in the midbass, granted the UM18s had a warmer feel which some may like. Its hard to comment on this if they both measure the same, so all I can suggest is listen to a system with pro drivers if you get a chance then compare!
 
I'm not sure on the pyhsics side of things, but the UM18 has a higher mass cone to move with a weaker motor than the B&C, which maybe translates to a different tactile feel, as the B&C is able to control the cone more smoothly, again this is just my theory and I could be completely wrong, but having heard both setups, (which were EQ'd very similarly) the B&Cs sounded better in the midbass, granted the UM18s had a warmer feel which some may like. Its hard to comment on this if they both measure the same, so all I can suggest is listen to a system with pro drivers if you get a chance then compare!

There is currently a lot of discussion on the AVSForum PSA thread about their introduction of the LT TV range of subs. This company has just moved from Eminence drivers to the B&C pro range of drivers including IPAL variants and they comment on exactly the same characteristics. :smashin:

This is an example FWIW

 
There is currently a lot of discussion on the AVSForum PSA thread about their introduction of the LT TV range of subs. This company has just moved from Eminence drivers to the B&C pro range of drivers including IPAL variants and they comment on exactly the same characteristics. :smashin:

This is an example FWIW

Yeah, this is what I and many others have experienced going from drivers like the UM 18 to pro drivers like the B&C 21s.
 
FWIW I wonder that you can achieve the experience you see using a sub, since it will also give out other low-ish frequencies, thereby weakening the effect at the bottom of the audio.
Have you considered using a shaker ( sub-£20 )- a low impedance device you incorporate in the sofa/seating and this actually shakes you . . . any higher frequencies will not be noticed because the sofa+body shouldn't be moving . . . so in theory ( as I understand), you only get to "feel the Lowest" frequencies. Of course you'll need a dedicated 100w amp per shaker, but it need not be true hi-fi - a decent Class-D will do . . . preferably with a LP filter to save the shaker having to deal with higher frequencies ( which will only heat it up ). A cutoff above 20Hz is quite high enough IMHO.... any higher and the sound could appear to be coming from the sofa - Not a good idea.
You'll need to be able to delve into the sofa's construction; so the cushions don't remove all the fun. Just don't let any changes show!
+ Just a thought - Let's know if you try this route.

Cheers.
 
Ok guys not a clue what I’m doing but what does this look like . All measures from the main listening positions .
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