How To Blend Your Subwoofer(s) with Your Speakers

yo kippy's guy here what's going on youtube so there's been a lot of chatter lately in my in some of my videos about subwoofers and how to kind of calibrate it to match the rest of your system so i decided to make this video just to give some enlightenment to you guys on how to do that because it's actually a really tough thing so in this video we're going to talk about how to calibrate your subwoofers to match and blend with the rest of your system with or without calibration systems whether you have an app or you have room eq of some sort or if you have a receiver with odyssey or y pow or mcacc whatever you're using if you don't have that i'm going to show you how to effectively calibrate your system with your ear and if you have the calibration systems i'm going to show you how to use both your ear and calibration to fix your subwoofer so stay tuned for that we're going to have a good video let's get after it [Music] so there are three really key things that i want to talk about in this video to really help you calibrate that sub so that it blends in really well and the first thing i want to start with is crossover we have to get the crossover right so in a quick little um example here i'll switch i have my yamaha pulled up right now this is the interface for my yamaha and i'll zoom in in just a second but i'm going to show you guys how to crossover so what a crossover is in a quick short explanation here as you can see you have a different um range of frequencies and so if i zoom in a little bit more here on the tv you see that i have different numbers here so for example my atmos speakers are at 80 my surround lesson right my bookshelf are at 60 as well as my center channel and then my big four setting speakers at 40. so how you know what this is telling you is that the lowest number on the screen is where your subwoofer should be crossed over at so for example you're going to be crossing over your subwoofers to what your front speakers can play whether it's a bookshelf whether it's a satellite whether it's a floor standard that's where you're going to be utilizing the crossover so my floor sting speakers my big old poke lsims they get down to around 25-ish or so hertz and so my subwoofer i don't have to cross it over so high because my speakers play so low if that makes any sense so i cut it off around 40 but i crossed over my subwoofer at 50 and why did i do that you want to cross over your subwoofers at 40 uh excuse me at 50 because you want the transition to be seamless so what this means is that when my speakers start to reach around that 40 hertz range it starts to roll off and hand the rest of the frequencies over to the subwoofer so you want a nice simple exchange from 50 to 40. you don't want to cross your subways at 40 if your speakers are crossed over at 40 because you're going to have a gap in the sound you want to go ahead and pass the baton from the speakers to the subwoofer around 50 since you're crossing at 40. so if you're running satellite speakers and they play around 100 hertz you want to have your subwoofer crossed at maybe 120. if you're using bookshelf speakers or spirit doesn't get too low a good starting point is across it over at 80. so cross your speakers at 80 and let the subwoofers handle it all the way down so that's how you're going to handle your crossover again you just take your your floor setting speakers your bookshelves whatever you're running in your front left and right you're going to want to cross your subwoofer maybe 10 hertz or so higher than that so that your transition is seamless now arguably this might be the most important thing to get right with your subwoofers and this is its phase and on most subwoofers you have a switch between 80 or excuse me zero and 180 you can kind of toggle a switch and for those who not who aren't sure what that does um that changes what direction the subwoofer is moving so if you look on my yamaha receiver here if i zoom back in there on that television right there you see it says normal and reverse that just means in phase and out of phase and i'll show you a little example for what in phase and out of phase is so if you have two speakers these are your two subwoofers right here when these speakers are in phase they're moving in and out at the same time at the same rate up and down up and down if you change it out of phase you're now moving out of sync i guess you could say it that way so when you're in phase or in sync you're moving at the same time the same direction if you change one of your phases let's say i change this speaker to out of phase and leave this in phase now you're doing this so if they're both on zero degrees on the back your subwoofer both speakers are moving the same direction if you flip a switch and go to 180 now they're moving in opposite directions and if you have a variable zoom which most people actually don't but i'll show you on the svs app here which is really cool actually allows me to go in to my subwoofer settings and change that phase so now instead of having 0 to 180 i now have everything in between so that allows me to kind of more fine-tune that phase to sound perfect now this is really important when you're using more than one subwoofer so let's say you have one in the front of the room and one in the back you don't want both of them to be on zero because you don't want them to be moving the same direction when they're across from each other because what that causes is cancellation that's when you have absolutely no base at all but if you flip your phase switch to at least 180 you're able to kind of recorrect that cancellation and get the base you're supposed to be getting so with this sbs app it allows me to kind of more fine-tune itself and a lot of subwoofers um unless you're spending a good dollar don't have this kind of option you need to have a switch some of you have a little dial on the back but you're usually going to have between 0 and 180 if you're using two subwoofers in the front you want them to be on normal or zero and if you're going to have one subwoofer in the front one subwoofer in the back you want it on one on zero and one on 180 if you can kind of play with it then you can kind of get more of a an option as you can see here i'm kind of just going through different options zero do 180. if you have one on the left side wall and the right side wall you still want both of them to be on zero when they're adjacent to each other when they are across the room from each other that's when you want to change it to zero if you're using one subwoofer but you have it in the back of the room you can kind of play with this i've had times where i've had to change it to 180 and i had to leave it there sounded better with my four setting speakers there's been times when i had to leave it on zero so kind of have to kind of play with it and keep your ear open you really have to listen for this that's really what's going to tell you what's the right setting but if you're running two subwoofers you really want to try to play with that phase because it's going to make a big big difference another really important aspect to keep in mind when you're trying to calibrate your subwoofers is going to be volume and this is probably one of the hardest things to get correct because when you're listening to bass it's usually harder to hear low notes than it is high notes so people have an issue of trying to figure out what to match your volume to some people say you should match your subwoofers volume to your tweeter of your speakers some people say you should match your subwoofer's volume to the mid-range of your drivers it's really hard to tell but it really comes down to preference and what you're going to be listening to but there is a basic guideline to follow so let's say um i have two subwoofers i have two two pp4 thousands right and so how do i get those volumes to match the rest of my system and it's actually quite easy so you're gonna need a nice music track doesn't matter which one but it needs to have a good base in it you can listen to spotify tune in youtube whatever you want to listen to but make sure you're familiar with the track you're going to choose choose a track then sit on the couch in your listening position where you're gonna be at close your eyes and just listen and then tell me if you can hear where your subwoofer is coming from if you can hear where your subwoofer is at in the room then it's too loud so how can we fix this take that music track that you have turn that subwoofer way too high way higher than you know it should be and then close your eyes and slowly start to turn that volume down until you hear a blend between the base and the rest of your system that may be a little bit louder than your speakers it may be a little bit softer than your speakers in relation to what volume you choose so on the screen here you see that my front left and right speakers are at 0 db and plus 0.5 db but my subwoofers are at negative 3 db and that's a good sweet spot for my sound and i'll tell you why when i listened to a music track i first cranked up my subwoofers way beyond the limits that it should be for what i'm listening to and then i closed my eyes and i kind of turned it down slowly one by one one decibel by one decibel until it sounded like it was coming from the front speakers and that's what you want to try to achieve you want your base to sound like it's coming from the front left and the front right even though it's not it's coming from the subwoofers but that's how you know it's blended when your subwoofers sound like they're not there when they don't sound like they're in the room in the corner or in the back of the room you don't want to hear where they are in the room but you want to hear them nonetheless so turn that subwoofer up all the way that you can um not all the way but you know where it's at where you know it's too much and then close your eyes and slowly start to turn that volume down and then listen to see when you stop hearing where it is but you still notice that it's there you want it to integrate with the speakers that you're going to be using so it doesn't matter what speakers you have whether it's big floor setting speakers like i have here or maybe it's small satellite speakers like the one i have up there it does not matter at all the same principles apply um you want to turn your subwoofer up just a little bit too much and then dial it back until it sounds like it's coming from the speakers that you have that's how you're going to get a seamless transition between your speakers and your subwoofer that's how you're going to have a cohesiveness a cohesion between everybody in the system you're going to have a really good sound so that's the way that i calibrate my subwoofer's volume it's not necessarily a relation to what you're going to be using as far as your tweeter or your mid-range it's not relation to that per se it's more of what you're listening to if you're listening to movies if you're watching movies all the time i kind of have my superfoods cranked up just a little bit more than usual because i'm watching a movie you really want the explosions to come through with the thunder the plane crashes things like that you want your subwoofer to be a little bit higher because you want to feel that um that that bass that rumble but when you're listening to music that's when you really want to have that kind of sound kind of tuned in to your speaker so you're not hearing your subway for too much so that's how you're going to calibrate the front speakers to your subwoofer so there you go guys that's what's that's going to do it for this video i really want to help you guys try to get your subwoofer tuned into your system because it's so hard to do and you can do this with or without any kind of room correction your ear is going to be the best correction you're ever going to have there's nothing out there that's going to do better than your ear and of course everybody listens to different things and they like it a different way so you're going to be the one who decides if it sounds good or not these are just basic rules and guidelines to kind of get you started and then you can tweak it from there so of course most receivers have calibration nowadays so you can go in and let your receiver guess where it should be and then go in and make corrections to it because it's going to be wrong 100 do not rely on it it's going to be wrong so go back and fix it the way you like it um get those distances right get that level right i forgot to say throughout this video but for example my my svs speakers when i calibrate my system i have it on negative 10. you usually want to have your subwoofers at halfway point at the halfway point of your subwoofer put that dial on halfway then run calibration and then go back and fix it never turn the volume up on your subwoofers at all leave it at halfway at all times and change the settings within the receiver itself use that as your bases as your guidelines but leave yourself at halfway at all times and then make your adjustments in the receiver that's where you're going to get most of your results from and that's you can actually see what you're doing on the screen so that's just a guideline there's a lot of more things that we can do to make your subwoofer sound good but i think that's a good starting point guys so if you have any other questions leave them down below in this video ask me whatever you want i most likely know the answer and if i don't i will definitely find the answer for you so leave me a comment down below how your subwoofers performing what subwoofers are you using right now and are they integrated um run that calibration and make sure you have it correct check your settings you can always fine tune nothing's ever perfect so leave me a comment down below what subwoofers are you using have you ran calibration how do you like your sound what are you watching are you listening to music are you watching movies more let me know down below hit that like button if you thought this video was informative and it helped you even just the slightest and smack that subscribe button with your elbow if you can i challenge you to hit that l if you got a touch screen use your nose if you have a mouse hit that mouse button with your elbow i'm challenging you to hit that subscribe button and we'll see you guys in the next video okay pace guy out [Music] you

Channel: Kpaceguy

Views: 34,279

Keywords: Kyle pace, Kpaceguy, home theater, Subwoofer, how to blend your Subwoofer, bass, pb4000, svs, Atmos, Prime elevation, pb16, audioholics, how to, that home theater dude, techno dad, z reviews, music

Id: guc-H6gsZOs

Length: 13min 10sec (790 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 06 2019