PEQ, gain, Q, and curves

[Hazenhart]

Questions for those who are wise in the ways of EQ and room correction and comments for the WiiM techs.
I am in the process of integrating a subwoofer into my main-floor audio (primarily background, social, music). Without diving too deeply into my installation details, I am using a pair of WiiM Pro+s:
One for my full range in-ceiling mains.
The second for the new powered satellite subwoofer in another area of the room where there is no wiring other than power (hence using a separate WiiM device to link it wirelessly with the mains).
Eq-ing the sub has been a bit of a trial without any kind of subwoofer-specific utility in the Pro+, resulting in the WiiM room correction thinking that everything from ~200hz and down (the range that the sub can actually play at all) is wildly loud and prescribing massive cuts. Short version - I can't just blindly apply the automatic results because regardless of setting the frequency range as 20hz to 200hz because it still is referencing everything to a full frequency range and the sub is producing nothing above 200hz.

Comment 1: It would be nice to be able to run the room measurement and correction process for my grouped devices all together at once, and/or specify the functional frequency range of the speaker I am correcting for (stop trying to measure response above the range of my subwoofer).

I do have a stable set of measurements that I have been manually manipulating into a custom correction curve. I guess this is obvious but I am learning that closely-spaced frequency points can result in curves that stack the gain well above your "maximum gain" setting.

Question 1: Does the resulting correction curve represent the actual gain to be applied continuously along the frequency range?

Question 2: What are reasonable limits that should be applied in any curve or at any given frequency? I had been shooting for +8 db max, but some of my manual correction curves are hitting way up in the +12db range.

Thanks for your time.

 

[jeffme]

Hi @Hazenhart - I'm just seeing this thread after posting a similar thread (https://forum.wiimhome.com/threads/pro-setup-with-sub-in-different-room.5578/).

What are you using to generate your PEQ values? If it's just the WiiM app, you may want to check out REW (and maybe Housecurve) to set up a target curve for your mains of your cutover frequency to 20K.

Ideally, you could set up a high pass filter on your mains WiiM, but I don't believe that type of PEQ filter is available yet.

 

[jeffme]

In the absence of a high pass, did you try adding a low bench with negative gain?

 

[Hazenhart]

In the absence of a high pass, did you try adding a low bench with negative gain?

Yeah I have rolled off the mains with negative gain, same with a low-pass approach for the sub. I'm reasonably happy with the resulting curves -- both on how the curves themselves look, and the resulting sound. Using the canned WiiM room correction software, I've tried both the little stock mic included with Denon AVRs, and with a nice Rode stereo mic I use for recording live music sometimes. I can plug each of them into my phone using a little Rode interface adapter. I've settled on using the Rode mic. As more of an ambient background audio application, I have taken to collecting ~8 or 10 measurements from various locations around the room, manually looking for consistent patterns, then make a sort of average of the samples and applying that as my curve. Then adjusting to taste. This definitely cleaned up my low mids in the mains.
It would be good to be able to better quantitatively test all this with an onboard tool though. I have toyed with the idea of learning how to use REW over the years, mostly in the context of my theater room, but I have limited ambition for the tweaking, and it comes and goes in waves .