These are the settings I use on my 2017 LG B7P OLED. Other model years have slightly different options in some cases, which I’ve tried to mention where applicable. But no promises that I’ve remembered everything!
These are in the order: SDR Settings for a Dark Room, SDR Setting for a Bright Room, HDR10 Settings, Dolby Vision Settings. If I only list one setting, then that’s for all four.
Read more…
1) if your room is an enclosed rectangle, put the subs directly across the room from one another. Mid-points of opposing walls is best. Diagonally opposite corners is 2nd best. Or, for example, if one is on the front wall and five feet in from the left, put the second sub on the back wall and five feet in from the right.
2) Feed them both the same signal (mono). And on the advice of Todd Welti from Harman (check out our interview with him about using multiple subwoofers: https://avrant.com/av-rant-737-interview-with-todd-welti-on-subwoofers/ ), start with the volume, phase, and polarity all being the same for both subs – ie. identical settings.
3) Run your auto-setup as usual. Since the mono subwoofer signal is being played by two subs that are across the room from each other, you might get an odd looking setting for the distance. Leave that alone.
4) If there is an audible imbalance in the levels (that is, you can tell one sub is louder than the other), then level match them by using your Receiver’s built-in test tone. Set the Receiver’s master volume to 0dB (very loud), set the subwoofer trim level in the Receiver to 0dB. Temporarily connect only one sub and adjust its volume dial until your SPL meter (C-weighted) reads 72 dB at your primary seat. Then disconnect Sub1, temporarily connect only Sub2, and repeat – adjust Sub2’s volume dial until SPL meter reads 72dB at your seat. Then connect both subs. Playing in mono together, they should read ~75dB at your seat now.
One additional note, as pointed out by AVRant Listener David, is that your Receiver’s test tone is a broad range of frequencies. And if you have a particularly nasty hump or dip at a certain frequency from one sub or the other, it might be bad enough to throw off the SPL reading at your seat significantly. If that’s the case, use a single frequency sine wave test tone instead of the Receiver’s pink noise. Pick a frequency that doesn’t have a huge hump or dip for either sub, and use the same frequency to adjust both subs.
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5) If your room is not an enclosed rectangle, or you simply cannot position the two subs directly across the room from each other, then still try to position them roughly across your space. Try not to have them both on the same side. Spread them apart as much as possible.
6) Level match them – same procedure as above.
7) Now, figure out which sub is physically farthest away from your main seat. Set that sub’s phase knob to 0°. We’ll call this Sub1.
8) Start with Sub2’s (physically closer to your main seat) phase knob at 0°.
9) Play a bass sweep on repeat (you can download a bass sweep from audiocheck.net , or just play one off of YouTube on repeat).
10) With the bass sweep repeating, move from seat to seat (every seat you care about, but nothing way off to the sides. Think 3-seater couch). Listen to the sweep. What you want to hear is uniformity. Not necessarily linearity at this point. Some humps & dips in the sweep are ok. But you want the same humps & dips in every seat. Uniformity is the goal.
11) Adjust the phase knob of Sub2 only. Ideally, do so 3° at a time, although that can be very tedious, so you can start with 6° at a time and possibly fine tune after. And don’t expect there to be one, “perfect” setting. Don’t expect it to suddenly “click”. A whole range of phase settings might all sound roughly as good as one another in terms of uniformity.
It’s just trial & error: adjust Sub2’s phase knob, listen to sweep in all seats, try to find uniformity (although no total nulls. If it’s uniform, but you have a full on null (silence) at some point in the sweep, then you need to keep searching). Repeat until uniformity is achieved!
12) Once you have uniformity, run auto setup. Again, two subs are playing the single subwoofer output in mono, so expect a strange distance setting in the Receiver.
Lastly, manually set all speakers to “small” if any were set to large by the auto setup. If auto setup set the crossover frequency of any of your speakers higher than 80Hz, leave those alone. If it set any crossovers lower than 80Hz, manually raise those to 80Hz.
That should do it!
As a final note, if you want to set up three or four subwoofers, check out the Multi-Sub Optimizer Software.
One of our awesome AV Rant Podcast Listeners requested a bit of a step-by-step tutorial on getting full, lossless HD Audio and Immersive Audio bitstreams from an HTPC to an AV Receiver, as well as how to play physical Blu-ray discs in full quality from a PC, and how to set up a nice media library using Plex.
Rob H. decided to take a stab at putting together a simplistic slideshow presentation and posted it to YouTube. It’s not exactly great production values, but some folks might find a few useful tidbits of information in there, so we hope you enjoy it!
I love the idea and the goals of VIDITY. With large hard drives being affordable, I see no reason why physical media should remain the only means of getting the highest quality.
But for the love of all that is good, can you PLEASE encourage the studios to also give consumers the highest quality AUDIO as well?
I’ve groused about this topic on Twitter. And the @VIDITYdigital account was kind enough to reply to me there and let me know that, as far as what Vidity is able to offer from a technical point of view, there is nothing preventing the inclusion of lossless, immersive (eg. Dolby Atmos or DTS:X Master) audio. And yet, the earliest examples of Vidity content have all failed to include lossless audio, let alone immersive audio. Read more…
Shopping for an AV Receiver or Pre-amp/Processor can be confusing. There are so many features, it can be difficult to sort through all of the details and keep it all straight!
Last week, I posted a write up on The Current State of DTS:X and Atmos Receivers. That editorial focused largely on models capable of using 9 or 11 speakers. In my opinion, when Immersive Audio is the priority, it is necessary to use at least 9 speakers for an optimal experience.
But there are two phrases that come up very often when AV Rant Listeners ask us for advice regarding AV Receivers and Pre-Pros: “Future proof”, and “Bang for buck”.
The industry is currently in a transition phase to new audio and video standards. If you want your new AV Receiver to be “future proof”, that means having the ability to support these new A/V formats. And when you get that support at the lowest price, there’s your “bang for buck”!
This write up will focus on 7-channel models that are as “future proof” as possible while listing some of their other features that will hopefully allow you to determine exactly what you want at the lowest price possible.
