I got a slightly early Christmas gift from Outlaw this year - an SMS-1. Well, technically it came from my wife since she wrote the check, but it was apparently at Outlaw's suggestion. It's going to take me some time to get a good handle on it. Tonight I probably won't even get it hooked up and it clearly is a complex enough piece of gear to warrant some thought, but I've got Friday afternoon all to myself to play with it (office closes at noon, but wife and daughter will not be home until later that day). My application is a single subwoofer so the very interesting debate about multiple subs won't factor into my system, but some time next week I'll let you all know how the SMS-1 works for me.

Edit: shortly after posting this, I noticed the Secrets best of 2005 awards . A few notable entries include the often-discussed Oppo (best budget DVD player) and the Velodyne SMS-1 (best audio processor). Neat!

gonk,they didn't even let you borrow another LFM-1 for a review?

I eagerly await your review in this one, Gonk. I am seriously considering getting it for my newly aquired SVS PB12 Ultra/2.

Let us know! One of the reasons that I went with the 970 was that I could put the difference towards the SMS-1.

According to Stereophile it is quite easy to get it up an running on automatic mode. The complexity comes in if you want to manualy tune it up.

Good Luck.
Regards,
Charlie

I've had mine for about a week and a half and I must say that even with my crappy sub, I've noticed a difference. I don't think the auto setup is all that great but the manual setup is quite amazing and not too hard to use. In fact, I have been able to get an almost flat response curve all the way to where my sub starts rolling off.

Forgot to mention... you can move the 8 eq's to different portions of the response curve which is a fantastic feature. for me, i noticed that most of my adjusting came in the 45-70 hz range. using the test tones made it very easy to find the best place to put my sub before i eq'd it. where it had been turned out to be the worst place for it. you also can see how far down your mains will go before rolling off. this is an incredibly powerful device... more so than they are letting on with all the things you can adjust.

A note of WARNING... be very careful about stacking the EQ...especially at lower frequencies. you can burn your sub up in the process. also, apparently it takes way more power to boost a valley than it is to lower a peak.

i thought the manual was a bit vague about things but talking with the tech guy at velodyne was very helpful.

not sure about other processors, but with the 990 that i have, you want to disable the SMS crossover. this is vaguely referenced in the manual.

jongaro,
Why do you not like the auto set up? I ordered one today actually and I should have it by Friday. I like the idea of an auto set up because it's simple but I guess I will have to try the manual deal.

because the processor in the auto setup isn't smart enough to recognize problems when EQ'ing your sub. in my situation the auto setup tried to boost to max(+6) in the lowest portions of the frequency curve while lowering the mid and upper range to almost -12. grantd i don't have a good sub at the moment...waiting on the new HSU VTF3-HO. there would have been a good chance that i would have damaged my sub had i not adjusted it.

what i would do is use a good quality set of RCA cables and backfeed from the sms to your 990 (into analog inputs). this allows the sms to generate test tones through your mains which allows you to see the frequency curve of your mains and your sub. you can mute the tones to your sub to see what your mains produce and then unmute to see what your mains and sub produce together. does that make sense? i'm a bit tired.

what i found is that most of my adjusting came in the mid range of the freq curve for my sub. so rather than having all 8 eq's spread out in areas that my sub either couldn't reproduce or were okay, i moved the eq's to areas of the freq range for my sub that needed the most help.

i hope that made sense. honestly, manual mode is where this product shines. you won't realize the full potential by using the auto setup.

i don't even think the manual covers moving the eq's within the freq range. i was goofing around and realized i could. by this i mean selecting an EQ, and then moving it to the left or right within the freq curve so that you can better correct peaks and valleys.

let me know if you have any further questions.

I don't recall seeing anything about moving the EQ's within the frequency when digging through the manual, jongaro, but I think your idea of moving the EQ's toward the range where the sub is most capable is an excellent one - and one that an automatic process would have a hard time adjusting for without some human assistance. I plan to run the auto cycle once just tomorrow to see what it does and then start tweaking from there.

i was suprised it could be done and only found out by accident. just higlight an eq in manual mode so that the slide show 3 bits of information on the lower right of the screen below the volume(L, F, Q). when this happens, you can then move that eq to the right or left.

when i talked with velodyne, they didn't indicate if putting them too close together was a bad idea. the concern they mentioned was stacking, as stated in the manual, but what there definition of that was was not made very clear to me.

did they mention at outlaw to disable to crossover on the sms? just go to the system settings scree, highligh the low pass xover freq, and reset it. you'll have all zeros in the top two rows.