SV Sound SVS PB13 User Manual

Page 13

SV Sound

Page 13

Advanced Features: Parametric Equalizer.

“PEQ” allows you to tame

a “peak” in your room’s response. Peaks are quite common, especially in large rooms or
where your sub is far from your listening position. NOTE: A Sound Pressure Level me-
ter is a must for proper use of the PEQ, so get one before you tackle this control. TO
DISABLE THIS CONTROL: Set the “LEVEL” control in the Parametric EQ feature
“Counter-clockwise” until it stops on “MIN” — thus ensuring you do not inadvertently
cause poor frequency response until you desire to properly configure this feature.

First

you might ask yourself, “why use a PEQ?” The reason is quite simple. Your room.

See, most times even a superlative subwoofer which measures very evenly (we say “flat”)
in an open domain (no reflective boundaries) will not measure the same in your home
theater or music room. Instead, colliding bass waves can build up and cause a “peak”.
This is where a parametric equalizer helps out. A PEQ is an electronic circuit which al-
lows the user to manipulate the input signal so the acoustical output is more desirable for
their environment, in many cases allowing the worst peak to be “flattened”. By manipu-
lating the input signal with your PEQ you can cut a wide or narrow peak in response lo-
cated somewhere in the frequency range of the equalizer. Importantly, the equalizer
found your sub only allows reduction of peaks, and is “cut only”, not a boost device.

Measure the room’s response.

As indicated above, you must have a firm under-

standing of your room’s acoustical properties before you use a PEQ. To determine your
room’s natural response properties (and your subwoofer, in that room) you will need an
SPL meter shown on Page 6, and at least a pad of graph paper and a pencil for charting as
below. If you have graphing program similar to Microsoft Excel ® this will save some
time charting the response curves. NOTE: Use extreme caution with sine-waves and
only run very low SPLs in the 70dB-80dB region. Sine waves at high SPL’s will damage
your sub!

Room A Response

100

Frequency

Freq 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100

SPL 85 84 86 91.5 95 90 84 84 86 86 85 83.5 83 83.5 84.5 85 86

Figure 3