Room Mode + Speaker Anechoic Measurement Correction

[lempogi]

By the way, I found a bug where the previous RoomFit saved profile will disappear if you will re-run RoomFit correction. The workaround is I have to re-run RoomFit again, and then cancel it or skip it afterwards. It will now show the other saved profiles. What's also weird is I tried to delete my first saved profile, but when I do a re-run and skip it, it will show again there and will be selected as the default profile. Did anyone else encountered this also?

 

[slartibartfast]

By the way, I found a bug where the previous RoomFit saved profile will disappear if you will re-run RoomFit correction. The workaround is I have to re-run RoomFit again, and then cancel it or skip it afterwards. It will now show the other saved profiles. What's also weird is I tried to delete my first saved profile, but when I do a re-run and skip it, it will show again there and will be selected as the default profile. Did anyone else encountered this also?

Really? If you save the profile before you rerun RoomFit it should still be available.

 

[lempogi]

Really? If you save the profile before you rerun RoomFit it should still be available.

Yes, If I will do a re-run and I complete it and save, the other previous profiles will disappear. But like I said, if I will do a re-run again and skip it, all profiles will appear.

 

[dominikz]

By the way, I found a bug where the previous RoomFit saved profile will disappear if you will re-run RoomFit correction. The workaround is I have to re-run RoomFit again, and then cancel it or skip it afterwards. It will now show the other saved profiles. What's also weird is I tried to delete my first saved profile, but when I do a re-run and skip it, it will show again there and will be selected as the default profile. Did anyone else encountered this also?

Interesting, I didn't have this issue so far, no.
Note that RoomFit will only display the latest 3 profiles in the initial window; you can see the full list by clicking the "See all" button on the right side of the screen. Probably you noticed this, but just in case.

I'm amazed on the result just by adjusting the speakers a few inches away from the side wall. I'm so thankful on you guys here! I will use the 90Hz crossover profile.

Oh oh.. Actually the first time I received the sub, my plan is to position it at the right corner because my thinking is the same as what you've said. But my wife blocked me, saying that area is for her mini altar and plant, period! Well.. It will be a very long battle and discussions if I will insist, so I give way and put the sub at the left corner.

Yes, all other settings are the same since the beginning. Also yes, UMIK-1 with loaded calibration file. I use the 0° calibration file, as recommended from UMIK website for stereo use. I pointed the mic steady at the middle of the left and right speakers.

I'm much happier now. I compared the sound of the measurement today from yesterday and the difference is big. The midbase is punchier and tighter. I also forgot to mention that the effect of spinorama EQ is so good! No more harsh high frequencies and the voice and instruments are clearer. I played the song Unholy by Sam Smith, and I say WOW!

I'm again excited on this. I'll do it again tonight. Let's go!

Good to hear you find the improvements worthwhile!

The sub could perhaps fit below the 'mini altar'... Joking aside, I don't think you really need to move the sub, it might not even help much.
Also note that just rotating the sub (e.g. by 90° in either direction) could also give a different response (again not necessarily better).

For what it's worth from the graphs I believe you're probably already 90-95% of the way there - I personally wouldn't expect any more large subjective improvements going forward.

 

[lempogi]

Interesting, I didn't have this issue so far, no.
Note that RoomFit will only display the latest 3 profiles in the initial window; you can see the full list by clicking the "See all" button on the right side of the screen. Probably you noticed this, but just in case.
View attachment 26017

Yes it will show like that if I will do my workaround. Weird that I'm the only one having that bug. Can you try doing a re-run, complete and save it and rename the profile. Our only difference I think is I rename all my saved profiles. But I'm not sure if that causes the bug to me.

Good to hear you find the improvements worthwhile!

The sub could perhaps fit below the 'mini altar'... Joking aside, I don't think you really need to move the sub, it might not even help much.
Also note that just rotating the sub (e.g. by 90° in either direction) could also give a different response (again not necessarily better).

She also doesn't like that. For the sub rotation, I selected the front facing because my thinking is, if I will rotate it facing the main speakers, it may cause harm to our neighbor. We live in an apartment by the way.

For what it's worth from the graphs I believe you're probably already 90-95% of the way there - I personally wouldn't expect any more large subjective improvements going forward.

Sounds good! I still would like to try to measure the different delays just for curiosity.

 

[dominikz]

Yes it will show like that if I will do my workaround. Weird that I'm the only one having that bug. Can you try doing a re-run, complete and save it and rename the profile. Our only difference I think is I rename all my saved profiles. But I'm not sure if that causes the bug to me.

I'm pretty sure I already renamed some saved profiles and never saw issues. I'd suggest to report this via the "Feedback" function in the WiiM Home App.

She also doesn't like that. For the sub rotation, I selected the front facing because my thinking is, if I will rotate it facing the main speakers, it may cause harm to our neighbor. We live in an apartment by the way.

Luckily the current sub position is quite OK!
BTW I don't believe rotating the sub would significantly impact how much sound passes to the other apartment - low bass is anyway omnidirectional and easily passes through walls, so in apartment buildings it's mostly important not to go wild with playback levels regardless of placement.

Sounds good! I still would like to try to measure the different delays just for curiosity.

TBH I would do the same in your shoes.

 

[lempogi]

I'm pretty sure I already renamed some saved profiles and never saw issues. I'd suggest to report this via the "Feedback" function in the WiiM Home App.

Ok I'll report it there.

Luckily the current sub position is quite OK!
BTW I don't believe rotating the sub would significantly impact how much sound passes to the other apartment - low bass is anyway omnidirectional and easily passes through walls, so in apartment buildings it's mostly important not to go wild with playback levels regardless of placement.

I see, thanks for correcting my false thinking regarding that. Yeah, that's why my goal is to have a good sound even if the volume is not that loud.

TBH I would do the same in your shoes.

Please wait for the results later.

 

[cristoo]

Thanks.

You may want to try running RoomFit with just the sub once.

1) Set the crossover to 250 Hz in the subwoofer settings of the WiiM app.

2) Disconnect the WiiM speaker cable.

3) Turn on 'Subwoofer Measurement' in the RoomFit settings.

3-2) Change the frequency range to 6700hz-8000hz.


...This will confirm the response of the sub only.

So i did it, don’t know whether i understood directions properly but here are my results

Phase on sub for whole measurements set to 0

Crossover 250 hz, Mains off

RF seetings


Here are results for WHA Sub Phase 0 (and sub phase 0)



and here for WHA Sub Phase 180 ( and sub phase 0)



They are very similar so maybe I did sth wrong

Interestingly my first shot was done on different frequency range in RF (I think it was 700-8000) and for WHA sub phase 180 results were as follow:


I would be grateful if any of you wise men can tell what it means and what to do next.

K

 

[harkpabst]

They are very similar so maybe I did sth wrong

No, you did nothing wrong at all. You just put more work into this than required.

When using the subwoofer only, the polarity doesn't matter. Delay and "phase" will only play a role when combining the output of more than one source. Your measurements are very valuable, still. They show that the dip around 70 Hz is probably not caused by by a bad transition between mains and sub, but inherent to the room (or at least your listening position in the room).

It also shows that even with the subwoofer's crossover knob set to "180 Hz" there's little meaningful output above ~130 Hz.

Some things you can try from here:

• Move the microphone position 50 cm ahead when measuring. No, this is not really a solution if you cannot move your MLP there, but you could see if this made a meaningful difference. If this is the case, there's little you can do about it and no need to search for further optimisation.
• Play around some more with higher or lower crossover frequencies in the WiiM subwoofer setup, but if the main reason is the MLP, there's probably little point to that.
• If possible, you could move the sub around a little, but again, it might or might not help.
• I'd still invite you to further reduce the level of the subwoofer. Maybe set the knob to the 10 o'clock position, or even lower. RoomFit currently reduces your subwoofer's output between 30 Hz and 100 Hz. This tells me that the sub is too loud throughout this range.

Sorry, this is mostly guesswork on my part. Maybe others can come up with better ideas.

 

[dominikz]

So, again taking a opportunity of these discussion I did some testing:

My listening (for this setup) room is my bedroom, sqarish, about 12 m2, there is not much space because of master bed, and my TV is located on the closet which is not centered. I put speakers by TV, one on stand and one on closet next to TV. They (speakers) are around 15cm from rear wall (that's way I decided to buy front ported), left one is about 80 cm from side wall, right one is around 1,3m from side wall. Sub is located between left speaker and side wall (circa 15 cm from the corner).

My RoomFit settings as for today test:
BK Curve 20-400hz
Cut-Only Mode
Positive Gain 3,5 db, Negative -12db, Q 12db
Individual L/R
Mic Dyton IMM 6C, Calibration file enabled
Single Sweep

Sub cross: 70Hz
Phase on sub and in Wiim App: 180
Speaker vs sub latency : 3ms (calculated by Wiim, sub in the same line as speakers)
Sub by pass mode and Mains output bass : off (although I got the feeling that with this second option sound is fuller)

Results from today:

View attachment 25980View attachment 25981


and here is control sweep in HouseCurve

View attachment 25982

I can't get rid of dip around 150-170 no matter of setting I use. I tried to play with subwoofer cross, phase (witch brings some impact to overall result) but this dip is higher than crossover so I don't know if it matters. Another dip is around 70 so maybe it is sub cross related.

I can't rearrange speakers much, I can put them very close to wall, or toe them in but rather can't replace it

The problem that I try to fight from a long time is (and I don't know how to explain it properly): when there is bass line (most scenarios) some notes are played with full deep bass but when melody pattern goes, others are thin, like it can be heard that they are with less volume and body. There are songs with like 3 notes bass pattern and I can hear audible differences between for example second and third one. When I hear the same song on my AirPods I can hear then as melody goes all bass line notes are played with the same volume/body/bass impact so to say. And I don't know what to do frankly speaking. Is is the gear, the room itself, gear placement/quality or acoutitcs.

In terms of harshness reduction, Elac's Spinorama eq seetings work similar to 1,6 kHz HS filter that I experimented with. In some scenarios it works, but for some it affects bass/mids/trebles balance and bass and mids are too much presented, especially if RoomFit is more bass oriented.

Here are 5 cents from my side , hope someone can assess my results and help get better ones, and resolve my problems.

best regards

K

What you describe hearing in the bass is very common. It is due to the peaks and dips in the bass response. Luckily this is something which can usually be fixed by proper subwoofer integration, placement (dips) and EQ (peaks).

It is unfortunate you don't have a lot of flexibility with placement as that is one of key tools for optimizing bass reproduction.

What I'd do first is push the speakers as far back to the wall behind them as you can, ideally so that they're right against the wall. This should push the 150Hz dip higher in frequency, which should make it less audible.

Next I'd move the sub all the way into the corner and see if that by any chance helps with the 70Hz dip. I'd also try rotating the sub in various directions in 90° increments and see if that helps.

If neither of the above helps with the 70Hz dip, I'd try to use 60Hz as crossover frequency in the WiiM Home app and see if that gets a better overall response.

Re-run RoomFit after any change and see if there's any improvement with the dips.

Only once you minimized the dips as much as possible (with placement and crossover optimization) does it make sense to think about fine tuning RoomFit parameters, IMHO.

Good luck!

 

[Wiimer]

So i did it, don’t know whether i understood directions properly but here are my results

Phase on sub for whole measurements set to 0

Crossover 250 hz, Mains off

RF seetings
View attachment 26028

Here are results for WHA Sub Phase 0 (and sub phase 0)

View attachment 26030View attachment 26029

and here for WHA Sub Phase 180 ( and sub phase 0)

View attachment 26031View attachment 26032

They are very similar so maybe I did sth wrong

Interestingly my first shot was done on different frequency range in RF (I think it was 700-8000) and for WHA sub phase 180 results were as follow:
View attachment 26033View attachment 26034

I would be grateful if any of you wise men can tell what it means and what to do next.

K

I have nothing to add to excellent advice. Good luck and I hope you have a great time


@harkpabst, @dominikz

RoomFit seems to be turning down 50hz-90hz too much, is this normal?
(I don't use individual speaker correction so I'm not sure.)

I had expected this would be the case...




Edit: Deleted below

 

[lempogi]

Here are the RoomFit corrections that I did with variable time delays.
Crossover that I chose is 90 Hz. All other settings are the same as before.

1. 5ms delay




2. 6ms

 

[lempogi]

3. 7ms




4. 8ms

 

[lempogi]

5. 9ms




6. 10ms

 

[lempogi]

7. 11ms

 

[cristoo]

Thank you all for good discussion and all advices.

I will try to apply them and will come back with results

I will try to follow @dominikz advices about placement although as I mentioned I have limited options

in terms of subwoofer options

At the moment it is placed by left speaker circa 30-40 cm from side wall, and circa 25-15 cm from rear (I provided wrong data previously.) It is in line with my main speakers, front facing to my listening position. It is covered by small table on which I have my power supply for all gear and I am to put my target amp when I buy one but at the moment this is more place for my cat to visit and sleep. I can get rid of this table it is important for acoustic reasons (although at the moment this table is convenient for me and if I get rid of it I will have to rethink my cable management).

1. So I can push it more towards side wall a bit by 15-20 cm towards side and rear wall so It will be placed more in the corner - I have power wall sockets there so I have to save space for cables. In that case my main setup will remain the same.

or

2. I can replace sub completely - move to to the corner of opposite wall by the bed and my listening position (so just exactly opposite position as now) so it will be facing towards my speakers, TV and rest of gear. I have to buy sufficiently long sub cable (like 6-8m) to connect Ultra to place sub there. I guess in that case I will have to recalculate latencies and play with phase. It will be revolution in my set, no to the say I will have to talk my wife about this crazy idea (so it maybe kind Mission:Impossible) so please advise is it worth to try this idea


K

 

[dominikz]

5. 9ms

View attachment 26081
View attachment 26082

6. 10ms

View attachment 26083
View attachment 26084

Good job!

Out of these I'd choose +10ms, since that gives more energy around the crossover (prior to correction). Try using 10ms, apply the corresponding RoomFit profile and do some listening to see if it sounds OK to you.

The only 'issue' now is the too high target level set by RoomFit, which results in a few dB extra bass. It is not necessarily a problem, however - many people prefer a little extra bass.

Hope you're satisfied with the results!

 

[dominikz]

I have nothing to add to excellent advice. Good luck and I hope you have a great time


@harkpabst, @dominikz

RoomFit seems to be turning down 50hz-90hz too much, is this normal?
(I don't use individual speaker correction so I'm not sure.)

I had expected this would be the case...
View attachment 26070
View attachment 26071


Another concern is positive correction below 30hz. (I don't know if this is actually applied to the profile.)
View attachment 26072

IMHO both should be reported as issues to WiiM. Their RoomFit algorithm should be updated to avoid such results.

 

[dominikz]

Thank you all for good discussion and all advices.

I will try to apply them and will come back with results

I will try to follow @dominikz advices about placement although as I mentioned I have limited options

in terms of subwoofer options

At the moment it is placed by left speaker circa 30-40 cm from side wall, and circa 25-15 cm from rear (I provided wrong data previously.) It is in line with my main speakers, front facing to my listening position. It is covered by small table on which I have my power supply for all gear and I am to put my target amp when I buy one but at the moment this is more place for my cat to visit and sleep. I can get rid of this table it is important for acoustic reasons (although at the moment this table is convenient for me and if I get rid of it I will have to rethink my cable management).

1. So I can push it more towards side wall a bit by 15-20 cm towards side and rear wall so It will be placed more in the corner - I have power wall sockets there so I have to save space for cables. In that case my main setup will remain the same.

or

2. I can replace sub completely - move to to the corner of opposite wall by the bed and my listening position (so just exactly opposite position as now) so it will be facing towards my speakers, TV and rest of gear. I have to buy sufficiently long sub cable (like 6-8m) to connect Ultra to place sub there. I guess in that case I will have to recalculate latencies and play with phase. It will be revolution in my set, no to the say I will have to talk my wife about this crazy idea (so it maybe kind Mission:Impossible) so please advise is it worth to try this idea


K

Try option 1. first and see if that helps.
You can measure just the sub response using the procedure provided to you by @Wiimer to see if the modified sub position helps with the 70Hz dip.

 

[Wiimer]

IMHO both should be reported as issues to WiiM. Their RoomFit algorithm should be updated to avoid such results.

Sorry,
The 30hz boost was normal.
I missed @cristoo saying he turned off non-boost mode in #53.