a few questions

[slemmon]

So I just put in a order for dual SS-18.1s with a Dayton Amp, I do have a couple of questions since I have not had to deal with an external amp and have always had subs with the plate amps.

I have a Yamaha receiver #665 with an emotiva upa-7 amp running my speakers. On my current setup all I have done was run the YPAO processing which would be like (Audyssey) and it sounds good, but with this amp will I have to make a lot more adjustments such as the freq, bandwith, level? Will I have to get a SPL meter or computer program because there is more than one Sub?

If you look at my photo album in my profile you can see the area that I have to work with. There are only a few spots I can put the dual 18.1 that will also be “WAF” I just want to make sure I will be using these subs to their full potential in the space they will be in.

Will the Dayton amp be one more piece of equipment that my wife will have to remember to turn on and off, or is there some sort of way to turn on and off? Is there good priced universal remote that can turn on and off all my gear? Current items are PS3, emotiva amp, Yamaha receiver, and Dayton amp.

Recommendations and or help would be greatly appreciated.

[boober]

To give you a little bit of help, 1 thing you definitely may want to do is buy 1 of these for all your gear...

http://shop.emotiva.com/collections/accessories/products/et3

Just set it up so that when you turn on your RX-V665, it powers up everything as well. And powers down everything when you turn off the RX-V665. I use it for all my stuff and alot of other people do as well. I have a TV, 2 Emotiva amps, and my RX-V663 hooked up to my Emotiva ET-3.

Also the Dayton amp does have an auto on/off feature. I think after 15 minutes of no signal it shuts off. Or you can just leave it on 24/7. That's what I do, I know it's not green but it really uses a minimal amount of power when left on. The reason why I leave my Dayton on 24/7, instead of having it hooked up to that Emotiva trigger device is, I CANNOT STAND THE POPPING sound my dual VS18's make when they power down. You'll see what I mean soon enough when you get your subs. :)

There's no harm being done when the popping sound is made, I just CANNOT STAND THAT DAMN SOUND. :D

[boober]

As far as setting up your subs. That's where it gets really tricky. Alot of it depends on just how much work you really want to do.

Being that you don't have many placement options, that can lessen the work load. :woo:

I can give you an example of how I set my subs up and you can try and apply it to how you may want to go about it as well.

For me, when I bought my dual VS18's, there was only 2 spots that really would work for me due to placement options. I didn't want my subs out and about in my room. Especially since they're so damn BIG. I really ideally wanted all my HT gear in the same area. Which would be up by my rack, amongst my big screen TV and all of my equipment. So my subs are just on either side of my TV basically. For me this wound up working about as perfect as I could ask for. Turns out, in my HUGE 10,000 cubic foot space, I was able to get an extremely flat response with my subs set up this way.

The way I found this out was by running some test tones. I downloaded some test tones, going all the way as low as 16hz, and incrementally on up to 200hz. There was about 12 tones in all. I set my AVR to an easy to remember number on the volume control, which for me was at -50. Make sure that when doing this, you are setting it so that it's loud enough to be heard, but not too loud....! As you might damage your subs if you're cranking it. I need to mention that I also had to make sure that the only sounds being heard were from my subs and ONLY my subs. All other speakers were not active, or connected. I then sat down at the primary seating location, which for me is a good spot since it is basically centralized. I then turned on the Radio Shack meter, and set it C weighting (default setting) and changed it to slow from fast. I also grabbed a pad and a pen. I then just played each test tone, 1 by 1, and wrote down the number that showed in DB's on my sound level meter. Don't worry when you see the really low test tones displaying lower numbers than the rest of your higher test tones. The tones (I believe) from 25hz or so on down, are going to be lower than what they really are, due to the way the Radio Shack meter works. It's a bit inaccurate down that low IRC......!?

After I was done doing all this, Craig happened to be online and he was nice enough :D to help me out with what settings I should apply on my Dayton amp, based on the results I had gotten. I applied those recommended settings and reran the test tones. Initially I had a slight bump in the 60hz range I think it was, and after applying the amp settings, I was able to get an incredibly flat response. Make sure that when you're doing all this, I think you should have the bass boost and the subsonic filter on the Dayton amp disabled. I think you may also want the level and also the frequency on the EQ portion of the amp set to 0 as well. So that way when you're running the test tones, you're not getting any assistance from the EQ. The EQ is to be used later, after you've run the test tones. To help flatten your in room response.

So you really don't need to use REW or hook up your computer and all that stuff if you don't want to. That can be alot more work than what most people are willing to do. Doing what I did is just about the easiest and most hassle free way to get an idea of how your room is responding to your subs and how good they are actually performing.

Are you planning on stacking your new subs? If you spread them both out around the room apart from each other, you can get a smoother overall
room response that way. If I were you, since you don't have alot of placement options, just try putting the subs first where you want them to be the most. And then just run the test tones like I did. And then go from there. You can post your findings here and I'm sure someone will be able to help you on where and what to do with your results. Or if Craig is around, I'm sure he'd be more than happy to help you out if you send him a PM.

As far as your AVR having YPAO, when I ran my test tones on my RX-V663, I had and always have had YPAO disabled.

So your situation is a bit different than mine since you run yours where as I don't. That's a whole nother issue that I don't know exactly how to advise you on. Does YPAO even have a decent sub EQ on it? You should find out for sure if it does or not. All I know is I wasn't very happy with the YPAO on mine, so that's why I've always left it off.

Here's where I got my test tones from. I just downloaded them, and burned em onto a CD.

http://www.realtraps.com/test-cd.htm

Hopefully this helps and wasn't too confusing for you. :salute:

[slemmon]

To give you a little bit of help, 1 thing you definitely may want to do is buy 1 of these for all your gear...

http://shop.emotiva.com/collections/accessories/products/et3

Just set it up so that when you turn on your RX-V665, it powers up everything as well. And powers down everything when you turn off the RX-V665. I use it for all my stuff and alot of other people do as well. I have a TV, 2 Emotiva amps, and my RX-V663 hooked up to my Emotiva ET-3.

Also the Dayton amp does have an auto on/off feature. I think after 15 minutes of no signal it shuts off. Or you can just leave it on 24/7. That's what I do, I know it's not green but it really uses a minimal amount of power when left on. The reason why I leave my Dayton on 24/7, instead of having it hooked up to that Emotiva trigger device is, I CANNOT STAND THE POPPING sound my dual VS18's make when they power down. You'll see what I mean soon enough when you get your subs. :)

There's no harm being done when the popping sound is made, I just CANNOT STAND THAT DAMN SOUND. :D

Boober, thanks for the great posts.

I think all of information is a good start and should help me out a whole bunch. I use to have an onkyo receiver and onkyo dvd player that I had set up with a trigger cord. So I tried that cord last night with my 665 and UPA-7 but it started to clip the emo amp on and off when I was messing with the cord. With the trigger cord it didn’t turn the emo amp off or on when turning the 665 on or off, I’m not sure but maybe a bad cord or something. I really liked the idea of get that emo trigger you linked but I’m not so sure now with the problems I was having last night, I guess I will try I few more test to see if I can get the trigger to work. So you can also turn on and off your T.V. with the trigger too? That would be every nice to do that, do you have any kind of universal remote for all your gear too or just the trigger?

[sbdman]

Like boober found out, many receivers can't trigger more than one other amp, hence the recommendation for the emotiva 3 way trigger. Sounds like your cord has a break in the connection, so you probably need a new one. When I trigger my CHT-18.2 with the receiver, it too makes a pretty good pop, but I prefer that to Auto mode where you may get a pop during watching a show after there's been no LFE being sent for a while - and this could be repeated several times. But not everyone gets this sudden spike. And triggers only work for amps. TVs, Receivers, Cable Boxes - anything that has it's own remote usually rely on IR transmitters except for the PS3.

As for remotes, most go with Logitech, and the prices are a wide range with lots of options. You may just want something simple with a macro to turn on receiver and TV at the same time. Some receivers have universal remotes, check for that first. As for the PS3, that can start to get expensive if you want one universal remote. I think Logitech's IR to bluetooth add on is $60 plus the remote you decide on. So, it may make more sense just to have the Sony remote and a universal.

My remote is an old Home Theater Master MX-800, uses non line of sight RF to control a IR repeater in the equipment rack, as well as an IR to bluetooth box for the PS3. I can also control the DVR and HTPC with it, but being lazy ends up costing me about $300. A lot of money to skip turning on things by hand, but the wife can understand some of it's basics, even when I'm not there.

[dguarnaccia]

There are only a few spots I can put the dual 18.1 that will also be “WAF” I just want to make sure I will be using these subs to their full potential in the space they will be in.

I would split them up flanking the midpoints of the walls if you can get away with it. That might give you the most balanced sound. across all the seating positions. If that doesn't fly, then flanking the TV mght be the second best option.

[slemmon]

Being that you don't have many placement options, that can lessen the work load. :woo:

I can give you an example of how I set my subs up and you can try and apply it to how you may want to go about it as well.

For me, when I bought my dual VS18's, there was only 2 spots that really would work for me due to placement options. I didn't want my subs out and about in my room. Especially since they're so damn BIG. I really ideally wanted all my HT gear in the same area. Which would be up by my rack, amongst my big screen TV and all of my equipment. So my subs are just on either side of my TV basically. For me this wound up working about as perfect as I could ask for. Turns out, in my HUGE 10,000 cubic foot space, I was able to get an extremely flat response with my subs set up this way.

The way I found this out was by running some test tones. I downloaded some test tones, going all the way as low as 16hz, and incrementally on up to 200hz. There was about 12 tones in all. I set my AVR to an easy to remember number on the volume control, which for me was at -50. Make sure that when doing this, you are setting it so that it's loud enough to be heard, but not too loud....! As you might damage your subs if you're cranking it. I need to mention that I also had to make sure that the only sounds being heard were from my subs and ONLY my subs. All other speakers were not active, or connected. I then sat down at the primary seating location, which for me is a good spot since it is basically centralized. I then turned on the Radio Shack meter, and set it C weighting (default setting) and changed it to slow from fast. I also grabbed a pad and a pen. I then just played each test tone, 1 by 1, and wrote down the number that showed in DB's on my sound level meter. Don't worry when you see the really low test tones displaying lower numbers than the rest of your higher test tones. The tones (I believe) from 25hz or so on down, are going to be lower than what they really are, due to the way the Radio Shack meter works. It's a bit inaccurate down that low IRC......!?

After I was done doing all this, Craig happened to be online and he was nice enough :D to help me out with what settings I should apply on my Dayton amp, based on the results I had gotten. I applied those recommended settings and reran the test tones. Initially I had a slight bump in the 60hz range I think it was, and after applying the amp settings, I was able to get an incredibly flat response. Make sure that when you're doing all this, I think you should have the bass boost and the subsonic filter on the Dayton amp disabled. I think you may also want the level and also the frequency on the EQ portion of the amp set to 0 as well. So that way when you're running the test tones, you're not getting any assistance from the EQ. The EQ is to be used later, after you've run the test tones. To help flatten your in room response.

So you really don't need to use REW or hook up your computer and all that stuff if you don't want to. That can be alot more work than what most people are willing to do. Doing what I did is just about the easiest and most hassle free way to get an idea of how your room is responding to your subs and how good they are actually performing.

Are you planning on stacking your new subs? If you spread them both out around the room apart from each other, you can get a smoother overall
room response that way. If I were you, since you don't have alot of placement options, just try putting the subs first where you want them to be the most. And then just run the test tones like I did. And then go from there. You can post your findings here and I'm sure someone will be able to help you on where and what to do with your results. Or if Craig is around, I'm sure he'd be more than happy to help you out if you send him a PM.

As far as your AVR having YPAO, when I ran my test tones on my RX-V663, I had and always have had YPAO disabled.

So your situation is a bit different than mine since you run yours where as I don't. That's a whole nother issue that I don't know exactly how to advise you on. Does YPAO even have a decent sub EQ on it? You should find out for sure if it does or not. All I know is I wasn't very happy with the YPAO on mine, so that's why I've always left it off.

Here's where I got my test tones from. I just downloaded them, and burned em onto a CD.

http://www.realtraps.com/test-cd.htm

Hopefully this helps and wasn't too confusing for you. :salute:

Yeah I like the whole less work thing for placement options, if you looked at the photos I was thinking of 2 different options for the sub placements.

1st options was going to be one 18.1 in the same location as the current sub and the other one on the right side wall close to the siding door underneath the rear surround speaker. The layout of furnisher has moved just a little since the photos’ where taken. This would also give me the smoother room response I would like.

2nd would be move the red speaker stands and (make or by) speaker stands that can either sit on top of the subs on both sides of the T.V. or mount the speakers on the wall with the subs still on both sides of the T.V.

I was planning to move the T.V. a little bit higher and to the left. I would like to make a new A.V. cabinet to put all my gear in and make it a little more baby safe so my 9 mouth old does not play too much with my gear ;) at the wife would like the tower to go.

I will be downloading that test tone CD and try to test it the same way you did. Thanks a lot boober this will really help me out.

[slemmon]

I would split them up flanking the midpoints of the walls if you can get away with it. That might give you the most balanced sound. across all the seating positions. If that doesn't fly, then flanking the TV mght be the second best option.

Darren, by flanking do you mean one up front by the T.V. and one along the side wall maybe midway back?

Because that is placement I want, in hopes to get the best room response.

[slemmon]

Sbdman,

I think I will get a new card or just buy the emotive 3 way. I know it can’t power on and off my ps3 but if it can do the amp receiver, t.v. and Dayton amp then it will be well worth the money to get.

I have a ps3 remote all ready so if I can get all the stuff to turn on with the emo trigger then the need for a universal remote is not really needed. I personally don’t mind having to turn everything on and off my equipment right know and my wife for the most part does not either, but I just don’t want to make it to hard for her or other people who might come over to use the set up. So that is why I’m hoping the trigger might fix my current problem or turning everything on and off.

Thanks for the response.

[sbdman]

triggers only work for amps.

Your TV and receiver can't be turned on by a trigger. When the receiver is turned on, it will energize the 3 way trigger that will turn on both amplifiers.

So, without a universal remote, you'll need the remote for the receiver, the remote for the TV and the remote for the PS3. And is that a DVD player on the top of the rack?

I have at least 9 remotes in a drawer - every time I open it, a couple fall out. Now, only one sits on the table, and I guard it with my life!

[dguarnaccia]

Darren, by flanking do you mean one up front by the T.V. and one along the side wall maybe midway back?

Because that is placement I want, in hopes to get the best room response.

I was thinking 1 sub on each side of the room each at the mid point of the wall. Something to try. If I have time, I can swing by and take measurement sweeps in various locations with my XTZ software.

[slemmon]

Your TV and receiver can't be turned on by a trigger. When the receiver is turned on, it will energize the 3 way trigger that will turn on both amplifiers.

So, without a universal remote, you'll need the remote for the receiver, the remote for the TV and the remote for the PS3. And is that a DVD player on the top of the rack?

I have at least 9 remotes in a drawer - every time I open it, a couple fall out. Now, only one sits on the table, and I guard it with my life!

LOL, that sounds like a lot of remotes and I would also guard it with my life. Ok it is starting to make much more sense now. Thank you for the clarification on the trigger and remotes. No I don’t have another DVD player, I don’t even have cable T.V. :peeping: my wife and I feel it’s much too expensive for what you get and we feel that T.V. programs have really went downhill. So what we do is watch movies and stream Netflix though the PS3. Do you think I should or need to get DVD/Blu-ray player?

[slemmon]

I was thinking 1 sub on each side of the room each at the mid point of the wall. Something to try. If I have time, I can swing by and take measurement sweeps in various locations with my XTZ software.

That would be great but the way the room is laid out there is no real good locations to put subs opposite side of one another. The only way I might be able to pull it off is by putting one up front and the other one in the kitchen, but I don’t think the wife will like that idea. :fryingpan:

Darren you also don’t have to come down all this way just take some readings, for some small little every day stereo. Know I’m not going to say no to a little help, but if end up coming this way make sure you bring something to hold 46gbs so I can give you that blu-ray demo disc.

[boober]

Sorry about the somewhat false info I posted on how I have my stuff set up, in regards to triggering on my TV I mean. To be more exact and clearer, what I had done was I had my TV plugged into my RX-V663 AVR, so that when I power everything up, that's what turns my TV on. You could do that if you'd like with your TV as well, and then just plug all your other stuff except your PS3 of course, into the Emo ET-3.

Getting a universal remote would be a great idea as well.

You're welcome for my help earlier also. :)