Operating instructions
28THE OUTLAW’S GUIDE TO THE SMS-1
valley at a certain frequency for special cases. What happens if that’s
not enough? What if you want to have a much dierent curve for
certain types of movies, or if you want to use a completely dierent
subwoofer for music? That’s when we suggest making use of the
“Preset:” option on the System Response screen. By changing the
preset being adjusted from “setup” to a specic preset, you can apply
completely dierent equalization settings to each preset indepen-
dently. That opens up all sort of potential avenues for excitement.
Receiver bass management settings
If your receiver’s bass management oers an adjustable crossover,
you may have spent a few hours mulling over where to set the
crossover for the mains. With the SMS-1, you have the opportunity
to experiment a bit with the crossover and see exactly what the
frequency response curve looks like for your mains with dierent
settings. If you mute the SMS-1, the frequency response curve rep-
resents the mains only, which will let you get a very clear picture of
how your speakers perform in your listening environment. You can
also try dierent crossover settings and observe how the mains and
sub blend. This will allow you to see what setting gives you the best
response.
Optimizing subwoofer placement
The SMS-1 is great for correcting problems created by your listening
room, but the best way to correct a room problem is to x the cause
rather than treat the symptom. Methods for xing the room include
acoustical treatment, speaker placement, and subwoofer placement.
We could write an encyclopedia on acoustical treatment, but we
won’t. Likewise, a great deal can be said about speaker placement,
but we are going to restrict ourselves to subwoofer placement
because the SMS-1 oers a great way to update the age-old method
of optimizing subwoofer placement. The original concept was to put
the subwoofer in the listening position, play a test tone, and crawl
around the room listening for the best bass response. The place that
sounds best would be the best place to put the sub. With the SMS-1,
there is a more eective (and potentially less silly looking) version of
this approach. Put the sub in the listening position, but replace the
Mark One ear with the SMS-1’s microphone. Move the microphone to
each of the potential subwoofer locations and observe the frequency
response curve with no equalization applied. The location that yields
the attest curve is the best place to put the subwoofer.
Deciding When To Get Multiple SMS-1’s
As we've mentioned in several places, it is possible to operate mul-
tiple SMS-1's in a single home theater, but we haven't really said when
such an arrangement might be necessary. With outputs available to
connect as many as three or four subwoofers to a single SMS-1 it may
seem like you'd only need to have two SMS-1's if you happened to be
running half a dozen subs, but there are cases when a second SMS-1
may be in order with a less drastic subwoofer population. Probably
the most important factor is whether or not your two subs are truly in
a stereo conguration (each getting a dierent signal). Multiple subs
that share a common signal are a simpler case to consider. On the
one hand, using a separate SMS-1 for each subwoofer would let you
equalize each one separately so that each had a smooth response and