Thanks for all of the responses to my questions prior to the arrival of my SMS-1. Over the weekend, I had an opportunity to install the unit. The net result is everything sounds much, much better and I was able to address a very nasty peak between 32-55 Hz that was causing some serious bass bloat in my room.

I did not have my camera handy when I first ran auto EQ, so the attached picture is of preset 6 (no EQ) after a couple of days of the SMS-1 in my system. You can see the mountain in the middle of the graph. I suspected I had a hump around 50-55 Hz, but I was surprised to see the true scope of the problem.

[img]http://share.shutterfly.com/action/slide...d=1174314653962[/img]

When I ran auto EQ, it was no surprise most of the equalization focused on bringing the peaks down. In one case, auto EQ lowered the 32 Hz slider by 10.5 dB! The other peaks were lowered on the order of 7.5 dB. The only frequency that auto EQ boosted was at 20 Hz, by an order of 6 dB.

After running a few quick listening tests, I noticed a number of improvements. But after tinkering around a bit on Day 2, I was able to smooth things out nicely. Here’s where things stand at the moment:

[img]http://share.shutterfly.com/action/slide...d=1174316330269[/img]

For the most part, I was lucky, as my EQ problems related to peaks, not valleys. The first thing I did once in manual mode was to zero out the 6dB boost at 20 Hz. I then placed the subsonic filter at 25Hz and used a very steep (48 dB per octave) slope to quickly roll off any frequencies below the LFM-1’s optimum performance range. However, I may go back and lessen the roll off so it isn’t so much of a brick wall. After that, by adjusting phase, honing in the sliders on some specific frequencies, and then tweaking Q, I was able to do a lot of fine tuning on the fly by watching how the graph responded (as gonk noted in one of his replies, it really made the whole task pretty easy).

Anyway, I’m pretty impressed with the results and think it was money well spent. I’m hearing a lot of new information on my go-to test CDs that was masked by boominess before the SMS-1. In addition, the whole front speaker presentation now sounds like a pair of full range floor-standers instead of a sub / monitor combo. Things are so well integrated, the sub isn’t calling attention to itself. With the sub now tamed, I stole the upgraded power cord from the sub and hooked it into the McCormack amp that powers the monitors. I’m now getting a lot of subtle background information on recordings that are pretty eerie, case-in-point is the Boards of Canada CD, “Geogaddi.” And as usual with my power cord experiences, blacker background (okay, you all can start throwing the rotten vegetables at me).

For good measure, I snapped a couple pics’ of the granite sub platform I picked up a couple weeks ago; here’s how it looks:

[img]http://share.shutterfly.com/action/slide...d=1174316460776[/img]

Damn. My pictures didn't come through. Not sure what I'm doing wrong; but if you're interested, click on the "System Pics" link in my auto-signature and view the second page of the album.

That looks like a very successful manual EQ - and you can see why it can make a lot of sense to give manual EQ a try with the SMS-1. For those who are interested, check out these two links: before manual EQ and after manual EQ . (There are also a couple pictures of the LFM-1 on its granite platform.)

Thanks gonk. BTW, I appreciate your posting those pics' in for me, but, er... it looks like they're all of the granite platform Anyway, at least you got something in there, unlike me!

Question for you: Is there anything I can do about that horrible dip at approx. 112Hz? I really, really want to keep the 970's switch at the 80Hz analog crossover because it sounds so sweet in bypass mode. Would adjusting the low pass crossover slope at 80Hz really low (i.e. 6dB per Octave) help smooth things out before the big plunge?

Lastly, any tips from you or anyone else on customized settings for the various presets? Or do you just stay with the EQ'd default settings that are in input 4?

Hey Videodrome, nice job on getting your sms-1 set up,also like the granite slab. I think you can do what you want with the other presets, for example if you want one preset for hard hitting bass and one for flat etc.also try adjusting the Q on the 100 slider that might help a little.do some more trial and error, what I did was get everything pretty decent and than I wrote down the settings and than tried adjusting the Q and moving the sliders around to see if it got better or worse. lots of fun,

Grrr... They all are. Shutterfly's interface is not very friendly for this sort of thing, it appears. I tried harvesting the image names, but even that didn't work for all cases. Sorry.

I'm not so sure about the big dip at 112Hz. Like you, I'd prefer to keep the crossover closer to 80Hz, which means that the SMS-1 can't do anything for you. Can you move the microphone around a bit to see how large an area is affected by the dip? Maybe some adjustment to speaker placement or room layout could help resolve it.

It would be interesting to see what mic placement does to the graph. But I'm locked into speaker placement in terms of the room and WAF (wife acceptance factor).