looks good imo should sound balanced the 50 Hz may be the room mode. Try increasing the xover a small amount, 3-5 clicks or so iirc 15 clicks based on my estimation is ~50 Hz If that doesn't help, likely the room geometry
Have you tried doing the "sub crawl"? Get on your hands and knees and crawl around your listening room(probably play some music too). Imagine the low frequency sound waves end up occupying about 97% or thereabouts of the room area (instead of about 80%). Crawl around and see if you can find the 3% where the low end is lacking. If you can, then move the sub a little until you cant (easy with 2 subs). This will also improve overall bass response. And thanks for the coolio gif Ingenieur!
Thanks for all the advice. Do you know whether room treatment like bass traps in the corner where the REL sits have a negative impact on its performance? Since one of its working principles seems to be to excite the room it sounds counter-intuitive to absorb bass right where it sits. Background: I spent hours and days researching and moving speakers around to get rid of the dips in the lower frequencies. Without subwoofer on, I have the same sonic signature as with sub. Came to believe it must be a speaker-boundary interference problem, but moving the speakers farther away or very close to the walls in different position never gets rid of the 50 hz dip or 80 hz peak, no matter where they are. Same with moving the T/7i around along the front wall. I then tried EQ adjustments, but the dip and peak signature stays as it is no matter what I do. So now my thinking is I have to change the room with more room treatment (or find a wildly different spot for the T/7i; which I have tried and to my ears it didn't improve the sound, but haven't measured yet). Attached a 20-200 hz sweep of the T/7i and L/R speakers at the best position I could find so far. As requested in higher resolution. The light purple graph is same with phase at 180, which strangely takes even more air out of the dips instead of flattening the peaks.
nice work That looks pretty good, you can start spinning your wheels too much, if it sounds good, it is good. You have it phased properly, you can see the 180 is lower (meaning it cancels) at a few frequencies. The slope looks good too. The mode at at80 Hz is the only obvious one, otherwise +/- 5 dB. Slope ~ -6 dB from 30-120, 2 octaves
My room is approximately 15’x12’ Standard ceiling height Two channel audio only Should I be looking at a single T7 or a pair of T5’s?
Looking to add dual subs with my mains (KEF R3). The website pairing recommendations indicated T7x for my speakers and room size (sealed 10x16x8). I also emailed REL and asked for their "honest" advice regarding going dual T7x vs T9x. Jacob of REL strongly recommends the T7x, and I respect that. My goal is to augment the lower frequencies I'm probably missing out on and not to blow the house down kind of bass. Debated on going with SVS before their sale ended, but decided on REL based on my research. I'll take advantage of their 60 day trial period. It'll be interesting and looking forward to the addition.
I retightened the sub, passive and amp bolts yesterday (1/2 turn) and I swear it improved the sound, deeper, sharper, etc.
I’m demoing a REL T7x this weekend at home and really enjoying what it’s adding to the music. My question is, if I invest in one, is it enough to get an Auralex isolation pad or does that need to then be decoupled, and if so, any tips?
I can’t answer this from actual experience, but I did read on the Rel site somewhere that they don’t need isolation from the floor as such as they are engineered to not need. Sorry don’t have a link but google may be your friend for finding…
You are correct Solutions For Hard Floors - REL Acoustics We do not recommend the use of spikes or platforms as they do not work well on RELs or any high-quality sub. Remember, the goal is to couple the subwoofer to the floor and transfer the energy into the room.
no.1 i can't believe how loose mine were, they were tightened once already since new and no. 2 how much better they (and my system) sound now! thanks for the tip !!!!
It's crazy isn't it? I'm going to check mine every few months. Easy and cheap mod lol I might pull one, if a threaded insert I might loc-tite them, do one at a time.
Loctite is a great idea....for anyone considering this,use purple or blue loctite....the other grades can be tough to remove,some require heat to loosen.
I'm not sure how loctite will help. I think the bolts loosen because of material creep, not working themselves loose.
Again not from sub experience, but this happens with tools I use for work - screws/nuts and bolts in lawn mowers, hedgecutters etc eventually come loose from vibration. For these I never force them and ‘over tighten’ in case something snaps - checking them every so often and tightening if needed is better. I wouldn’t personally risk using glue on a sub or speaker - it’s likely it’ll crack over time from tiny vibrations, and if it doesn’t and you ever need to take the screws out, that’ll be a problem! My speakers have had their bolts tightened a few times over the last 10 years, just a fraction of a turn but they were definitely a bit loose.
MDF is a compressible material. I have had projects in the past using t-nuts and decent washers for bolted joints and they loosened up over time with no vibration input. The material creeps under load. My DIY car subwoofer experienced the same thing and eventually they remained tight after a few run downs.
New owner of a T/9x, had a T/7x but when they went on sale I returned it to get a T/9x, and am happy I did. The T/9x just has more. I could've gone with two T/7xs but that would have cost me nearly a grand more. REL recommended a T/9x for my set-up, but said a pair of 7s would work too.
I keep saying why multiple subs can come in very handy on multiple threads not just for bass extension, but to solve room modes, sbir, etc. Have you used a room mode calculator yet? Before you spend anything on more room treatment, watch this video. As a start, this video should help you to map out your room modes and address them with subs...(it would save me a lot of typing) Don't even think about SBIR before you watch the above mentioned video (a.k.a break a bigger problem down into smaller problems first ) . Watch this video for sbir. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwHcBCWDYAo
Can any REL T7 owners help with set up for optimal benefit. I’m trying out a REL T7x this weekend with a pair of Sonus Faber Sonetto II speakers. The Sonettos have a response of 42 Hz - 25,000 Hz, the dial is from 30 to 120 with 39 increments (I didn’t personally count it but read it on the spec). By my calculations that makes each increment 2.3, so to get from 30Hz to 42Hz, it’s 5 increments. However, I don’t feel like that’s giving me anything. Am I being too calculated and instead aim for 50-69Hz? This is the first time I’ve set up a sub on my stereo (connected directly the LF on the left speaker itself, not the amp), so want to be sure I’m doing it properly.
Check this out, second diagram down explains amp connection, but unless I’m mistaken this can be replicated at both speaker terminals to: How to Connect a REL to a Class A/B Amp | REL Acoustics
The dial does not correspond to the actual cutoff. This is for the 9 but my guess they are all similar. It looks more like a band pass. You want you speakers and the curve to intersect at -3 dB. This is only a staring point. Your speaker are close to -3 at 60 Hz as measured. Let's use 50 Hz. On the REL curves look up from 50 and see which curve is -3 from its peak. Looks between 30 and 75, but closer to 75. I would start 2/3 to 75, ~ 12-14 clicks. Gain at midpoint. You may adjust the xover up a few after listening to music. Just my opinion.
