How to think about room correction settings like frequency range and gain?

[Musician]

Interesting to read. I was a bit hesitant about using room correction with these speakers at first. Given their orthoacoustic design, I was concerned that applying correction might actually work against their intended purpose.

That said, I did end up trying it, and in my case, I found that room correction made a positive difference. I stuck with the default setting, which applies correction up to 4000 Hz, and that worked well for me—helping to clean up room interactions while still preserving the speakers’ natural character.

Out of curiosity, I also experimented with limiting the correction to just 400 Hz just now after reading your post, but unfortunately, that was a disaster in my setup. The treble became almost unbearable—harsh and piercing to the point where it was really uncomfortable to listen to. So for me, the broader correction up to 4000 Hz turned out to be the better approach. Did you change any other settings like Gain and Max Q. I am still struggling to understand all this.

Would love to hear your thoughts and experiences on this! Have you tested different correction and limits yourself and compared? How did the default setting sound?

Try upper limit to 10 KHz, max Q=6 , gain=10, smoothing 1/6, Harman target, one single sweep for both speakers from listening position, -it might sound even better.

You also need some boosting below 100 Hz to not sound unnatural. I first do the room correction, then go in manually and use shelving set at 60 Hz , +3 dB , Q=1. Apparently this boost is in line with Tooles/Harman research. ( see graph )

Its easy to compare the sound with or without correction.
Carlson did his research at -70 so Im sure he would have been delighted to have room correction dsp at that time.

 

[kjell.bjornfors]

Interesting to read. I was a bit hesitant about using room correction with these speakers at first. Given their orthoacoustic design, I was concerned that applying correction might actually work against their intended purpose.

That said, I did end up trying it, and in my case, I found that room correction made a positive difference. I stuck with the default setting, which applies correction up to 4000 Hz, and that worked well for me—helping to clean up room interactions while still preserving the speakers’ natural character.

Out of curiosity, I also experimented with limiting the correction to just 400 Hz just now after reading your post, but unfortunately, that was a disaster in my setup. The treble became almost unbearable—harsh and piercing to the point where it was really uncomfortable to listen to. So for me, the broader correction up to 4000 Hz turned out to be the better approach. Did you change any other settings like Gain and Max Q. I am still struggling to understand all this.

Would love to hear your thoughts and experiences on this! Have you tested different correction and limits yourself and compared? How did the default setting sound?

We're going to rearrange the furniture a bit in the living room where I have the Wiim Ultra, so I thought I'd redo the measurements after that. Unfortunately, it is the case that the room node problem will become greater after that, but it is not always that the practical goes hand in hand with the technical. Also thinking about lifting up my Yamaha AVR from the cinema room in the basement and testing it, but it feels difficult to disconnect all the cabling and then put it back again.
The microphone I use belongs to the XTZ Room Analyzer Pro and it gives much better results than the iPhone or iPad mic. In addition, I will also make measurements with REW.
I have experimented a little with the settings and what has suited me best so far is max gain=3dB and max Q=5. Then I screwed it up a bit afterwards until I thought it sounded good. But I have a phase problem between the OA2212 and my XTZ Sub. That's why I want to try the Yamaha AVR, because I used the OA2212 as a front speaker in the bio system before with a similar Sub and then there were no phase problems.

 

[Musician]

We're going to rearrange the furniture a bit in the living room where I have the Wiim Ultra, so I thought I'd redo the measurements after that. Unfortunately, it is the case that the room node problem will become greater after that, but it is not always that the practical goes hand in hand with the technical. Also thinking about lifting up my Yamaha AVR from the cinema room in the basement and testing it, but it feels difficult to disconnect all the cabling and then put it back again.
The microphone I use belongs to the XTZ Room Analyzer Pro and it gives much better results than the iPhone or iPad mic. In addition, I will also make measurements with REW.
I have experimented a little with the settings and what has suited me best so far is max gain=3dB and max Q=5. Then I screwed it up a bit afterwards until I thought it sounded good. But I have a phase problem between the OA2212 and my XTZ Sub. That's why I want to try the Yamaha AVR, because I used the OA2212 as a front speaker in the bio system before with a similar Sub and then there were no phase problems.

Try plugging the port on your OA2212. If you use the crossovers for HP and LP inside the WiiM ultra, you must bypass the inbuilt crossover in the XTZ sub.

Perfect integration is not easy to do, regardless of what people say . Its always the acoustical slopes that matters ( not the electrical ) , and a closed box and ported speaker behaves very different below tuning point, i.e. they have different rolloff orders. Its very uncommon a 24/24 HP/LP electrical filter gives a perfect integration in the acoustical domain.

 

[Fralle]

Try upper limit to 10 KHz, max Q=6 , gain=10, smoothing 1/6, Harman target, one single sweep for both speakers from listening position, -it might sound even better.

You also need some boosting below 100 Hz to not sound unnatural. I first do the room correction, then go in manually and use shelving set at 60 Hz , +3 dB , Q=1. Apparently this boost is in line with Tooles/Harman research. ( see graph )

Its easy to compare the sound with or without correction.
Carlson did his research at -70 so Im sure he would have been delighted to have room correction dsp at that time.

View attachment 19045

Just for fun I tried to get ChatGPT to help me with room correction settings and it came up with something very different, see picture.

so 10 000 hertz you think would be better? I see a lot of recommendations to set av lower value like 300 or 400. You don't think that is a good idea?

 

[Musician]

Just for fun I tried to get ChatGPT to help me with room correction settings and it came up with something very different, see picture.

so 10 000 hertz you think would be better? I see a lot of recommendations to set av lower value like 300 or 400. You don't think that is a good idea?

I often recommend 300 Hz from listening position. But it all depends how they have done the correction program .

In my case the sound got better with 10 kHz , to my surprise . I have a symmetrical loudspeaker setup by the way .

The max value of Q =2,5 and smoothing = 1/3 is not accurate enough , the AI is wrong .

 

[kjell.bjornfors]

Just for fun I tried to get ChatGPT to help me with room correction settings and it came up with something very different, see picture.

so 10 000 hertz you think would be better? I see a lot of recommendations to set av lower value like 300 or 400. You don't think that is a good idea?

I think it is pointless to guess what settings you should have for room correction. If you have a lot of experience and regularly take measurements in different environments, it may be possible, but it all depends on what the map looks like. Size of the room, furniture, carpets, window curtains, paintings, walls and ceilings, size and placement of the speakers, construction, etc.First calculate or measure the room's resonance frequencies. Then you have a good starting point for what improvements the electronics can make. But you should not think that room correction solves all problems. It is much more important to first try to physically improve the room acoustics and then fine-tune with room correction.

 

[Musician]

I think it is pointless to guess what settings you should have for room correction. If you have a lot of experience and regularly take measurements in different environments, it may be possible, but it all depends on what the map looks like. Size of the room, furniture, carpets, window curtains, paintings, walls and ceilings, size and placement of the speakers, construction, etc.First calculate or measure the room's resonance frequencies. Then you have a good starting point for what improvements the electronics can make. But you should not think that room correction solves all problems. It is much more important to first try to physically improve the room acoustics and then fine-tune with room correction.

Agree.
Also, very important is the correct setup for your speakers in your room. The best sounding distance from the frontwall, the best sounding distance between your speakers, the listening position and so on… this is way more important than any room correction program.

 

[Fralle]

I think you are both right. I also think this makes room correction pretty much pointless for users that dont have the knowledge about these things like you guys have. I just look at all the settings and get more and more confused the more I try

 

[slartibartfast]

Agree.
Also, very important is the correct setup for your speakers in your room. The best sounding distance from the frontwall, the best sounding distance between your speakers, the listening position and so on… this is way more important than any room correction program.

In an ideal world we could all put speakers in the best position but in reality how many of us can do that if we don't have a dedicated music room?

 

[dominikz]

I think you are both right. I also think this makes room correction pretty much pointless for users that dont have the knowledge about these things like you guys have. I just look at all the settings and get more and more confused the more I try

What seems to work fairly well in many cases (and is relatively physically inobtrusive) is to push the speakers close to the wall behind them (but keep about 5cm of gap to the wall if speakers have a bass-reflex port in the back), and to put the subwoofer in a room corner. Of course it may not work in every room and every layout, but it is a reasonable place to start with.

If you are interested to know more about why these are solid choices I suggest to read this article by Genelec.

In short, pushing speakers close to the wall behind them and subwoofer in a corner will push the main SBIR cancellation to a much higher frequency where it is audibly less problematic. Additionally, putting both speakers and sub close to boundaries will increase bass output, which you will anyway tame/knock-back later by EQ (i.e. room correction) - so it gives you more headroom for EQ.

Note that EQ is very good for reducing resonances/peaks in the response, but is not ideal for boosting dips in the response - this is what is driving placement suggestions mentioned above.

After you have optimized placement you should set subwoofer crossover frequency (typically at 80Hz) and match its level to your loudspeaker. Don't be afraid to have the sub slightly louder at this point - that will anyway be fixed by RC later.
If you can measure the in-room response with REW to fine tune the crossover that is even better, but if not you should still be able to achieve solid results by ear.

Once this is done use the automatic WiiM Subwoofer & Speaker Sync function in the WHA to tune the relative delays of the loudspeakers and subwoofer.

After that use the WiiM Room Correction function - I propose to use the following parameters to start:

• Target curve: B&K
• Correction range: 20-400Hz
  • This type of EQ much above the specified range can no longer be considered "room correction" but rather "loudspeaker correction". This can easily make the sound worse, especially if you have good loudspeakers.
  • Note: If you don't have a sub that goes down to 20Hz use instead the lower-bound frequency from the sub spec sheet.
• Max gain: 12dB
  • You need to have a high value here for the app to be able to bring down severe room resonances. A current limitation in the app is that the same max gain control affects both positive and negative gain filters, but this will apparently improve soon.
  • After the separate positive/negative max gain controls are implemented I'd suggest to keep the max positive gain below 3dB (preferably 0), and keep max negative gain at 12dB.
• Max Q: 5
  • Note that the default value of 10 is IMHO fine in case no EQ boosts/positive filters are applied.
  • If you want to be more conservative, especially until separate positive/negative max gain controls are introduced you can use a lower value like "5", but note that that will also be less precise in knocking down resonance peaks.
• Smoothing: 1/12 octave
  • IMHO 1/12 octave is the best choice to have any precision in addressing resonant peaks.
  • It would be better if WHA offered progressive variable smoothing (like in REW), but this is not implemented.
• Subwoofer Calibration: enabled if you have a sub, disabled otherwise.
• Multiple Measurements: enabled
  • Not critical either way, but I prefer to have it enabled and move the mic a little bit between the attempts to get some spatial smoothing.
• Precision Room Correction: disabled
  • I wrote about this function here, including why I wouldn't recommend it in most cases.
• Import a Calibration File: yes (if you have an external calibrated measurement microphone)

This should already give you solid results - you can share WHA screenshots here and we may be able to help you fine tune if needed.

Hope this is helpful!

 

[Fralle]

What seems to work fairly well in many cases (and is relatively physically inobtrusive) is to push the speakers close to the wall behind them (but keep about 5cm of gap to the wall if speakers have a bass-reflex port in the back), and to put the subwoofer in a room corner. Of course it may not work in every room and every layout, but it is a reasonable place to start with.

If you are interested to know more about why these are solid choices I suggest to read this article by Genelec.

In short, pushing speakers close to the wall behind them and subwoofer in a corner will push the main SBIR cancellation to a much higher frequency where it is audibly less problematic. Additionally, putting both speakers and sub close to boundaries will increase bass output, which you will anyway tame/knock-back later by EQ (i.e. room correction) - so it gives you more headroom for EQ.

Note that EQ is very good for reducing resonances/peaks in the response, but is not ideal for boosting dips in the response - this is what is driving placement suggestions mentioned above.

After you have optimized placement you should set subwoofer crossover frequency (typically at 80Hz) and match its level to your loudspeaker. Don't be afraid to have the sub slightly louder at this point - that will anyway be fixed by RC later.
If you can measure the in-room response with REW to fine tune the crossover that is even better, but if not you should still be able to achieve solid results by ear.

Once this is done use the automatic WiiM Subwoofer & Speaker Sync function in the WHA to tune the relative delays of the loudspeakers and subwoofer.

After that use the WiiM Room Correction function - I propose to use the following parameters to start:

• Target curve: B&K
• Correction range: 20-400Hz
  • This type of EQ much above the specified range can no longer be considered "room correction" but rather "loudspeaker correction". This can easily make the sound worse, especially if you have good loudspeakers.
  • Note: If you don't have a sub that goes down to 20Hz use instead the lower-bound frequency from the sub spec sheet.
• Max gain: 12dB
  • You need to have a high value here for the app to be able to bring down severe room resonances. A current limitation in the app is that the same max gain control affects both positive and negative gain filters, but this will apparently improve soon.
  • After the separate positive/negative max gain controls are implemented I'd suggest to keep the max positive gain below 3dB (preferably 0), and keep max negative gain at 12dB.
• Max Q: 5
  • Note that the default value of 10 is IMHO fine in case no EQ boosts/positive filters are applied.
  • If you want to be more conservative, especially until separate positive/negative max gain controls are introduced you can use a lower value like "5", but note that that will also be less precise in knocking down resonance peaks.
• Smoothing: 1/12 octave
  • IMHO 1/12 octave is the best choice to have any precision in addressing resonant peaks.
  • It would be better if WHA offered progressive variable smoothing (like in REW), but this is not implemented.
• Subwoofer Calibration: enabled if you have a sub, disabled otherwise.
• Multiple Measurements: enabled
  • Not critical either way, but I prefer to have it enabled and move the mic a little bit between the attempts to get some spatial smoothing.
• Precision Room Correction: disabled
  • I wrote about this function here, including why I wouldn't recommend it in most cases.
• Import a Calibration File: yes (if you have an external calibrated measurement microphone)

This should already give you solid results - you can share WHA screenshots here and we may be able to help you fine tune if needed.

Hope this is helpful!

Extremely helpful! This kind of explanation was exactly what I was hoping for when I started this thread.

 

[Fralle]

This should already give you solid results - you can share WHA screenshots here and we may be able to help you fine tune if needed.

Hope this is helpful!

Will do as soon as I get a chance on Monday.

 

[Fralle]

So max gain and min gain seem to be here now. Did I understand you right that I should set them both like this?

 

[Vladetz]

So max gain and min gain seem to be here now. Did I understand you right that I should set them both like this?

Post in thread 'iOS WiiM Home App v3.1.9 & Android v3.1.8 Update – Apr 5, 2025' https://forum.wiimhome.com/threads/...d-v3-1-8-update-–-apr-5-2025.6896/post-119786

 

[Fralle]

Got som really weird resaults using the settings above. Attached everything here.

 

[slartibartfast]

Got som really weird resaults using the settings above. Attached everything here

Why do you think the results are weird? We really need to see screenshots of the measured frequency response and predicted result not the PEQ filters. The maximum positive gain is clearly working.

 

[Fralle]

Why do you think the results are weird? We really need to see screenshots of the measured frequency response and predicted result not the PEQ filters. The maximum positive gain is clearly working.

Weird as in nothing in common with any previous results ever in the same room. I'll attach the settings I used again also.

 

[dominikz]

Weird as in nothing in common with any previous results ever in the same room. I'll attach the settings I used again also.

I saw in the other thread your loudspeakers are not the typical box front-firing design, but are instead a pretty unusual omnidirectional design.
Knowing this, plus seeing your in-room measurements, it is clear to me that the settings I proposed previously won't work in your specific scenario.

The unconventional loudspeaker design with unknown directivity pattern makes me much less confident in any advice I give, but I do notice 2 things:

1. The loudspeakers seem slightly bass-deficient in-room. You will need to boost bass so the Harman target could be a good choice. It also makes sense to set max gain somewhere between +5 and +8, depending on the amount of bass you prefer.
2. Your right speaker has a severe null between 40Hz and 50Hz that’s not there on the left, and in general the low bass response is quite different between the two. Is your speaker placement asymetrical, and is the right speaker approx. 2m from the wall to the right of it?

Are you using subwoofers? I suppose not, but worth to ask.

 

[Mesen]

I have the WiiM Ultra and a pair of Triangle BR03 Connect speakers. I also have a Klipsch sub. I have been trying to do the room correction. I even got the UMIK-1 mic and downloaded the relevant file. I tried so many variations (with and without the sub) but whatever I do I end up with very weak bass outcome (below is a sample). Could you please give me some advice?

 

[Fralle]

I saw in the other thread your loudspeakers are not the typical box front-firing design, but are instead a pretty unusual omnidirectional design.
Knowing this, plus seeing your in-room measurements, it is clear to me that the settings I proposed previously won't work in your specific scenario.

The unconventional loudspeaker design with unknown directivity pattern makes me much less confident in any advice I give, but I do notice 2 things:

1. The loudspeakers seem slightly bass-deficient in-room. You will need to boost bass so the Harman target could be a good choice. It also makes sense to set max gain somewhere between +5 and +8, depending on the amount of bass you prefer.
2. Your right speaker has a severe null between 40Hz and 50Hz that’s not there on the left, and in general the low bass response is quite different between the two. Is your speaker placement asymetrical, and is the right speaker approx. 2m from the wall to the right of it?

Are you using subwoofers? I suppose not, but worth to ask.

The low bass response is a problem thats been puzzling me. It is in fact so bad that Wiim Ultra and Audiophonics sound terrible with flat EQ.

Right speaker is approx 2 meter from wall to the right. The left one (unfortunately) don't really have a wall to the left of it since it is just an opening there leading to the hallway. No way to place it in any other way before we move to another apartment I'm afraid.