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]