Subwoofer calibration quandary...


Is there a generally accepted axiom for a target room response?
ie: is it better to achieve a flat, but significantly elevated lowbass response, or a flatter overall bass balance with large peak/valleys?
snickelfritz
Briefly scanning over your post (I'm tired), it appears you have problems with getting your speakers/sub to couple between 80hz-125/160hz). You NEED TO make sure your speakers play solid at these critical bass frequencies, which are likely played through your mains from what I gather. Your Servo play well upto 80hz, or wherever you cross over. I recommend starting at 80hz, and work down if you like your music played lower through the mains.
The mains should be setup, from the listening possition, to couple flat down to the crossover ideally...same for the sub upto the crossover.
Without figuring your room dimmensions/setup, you should start by figuring where better places are for either your seating possition(s) or your speakers, so they couple at 80hz-160hz strongly! Looks like you got either the seats or the speakers sitting in some dips at 80hz,100hz,125hz, etc. You need to adress that.
If you have a single seating possition, and it's equi-distant from the sidewalls (center spot), I'd like to see you place the sub NOT DIRRECTLY LINED UP INFRONT OF YOU ON THE FRONT WALL! Either get it at 1/4 spots in the room conversely, or put on sidewall in middle. Never the less, if you place the sub were your final listening possition(s) is,where your ears will be located, you can play bass steady music and test tones through the sub, while you move around the room and listen! Where it sounds/measures the flattest/best, you can place the sub there! This works well.
In a smaller/medium sized room, I personally like to have a slighly lower response bellow 40/50hz, to compensate for the lack of bass absorption and excesss bass reverb in such rooms. It seems to make a better balance. In larger rooms, where there's enough bass absorption, (6000cu/ft or better), I prefer a more flat response down to 20-30hz range. That's my prefference for you.
So how big is your room?
The 125hz valley is purely the main speakers and listening position within the room. (the response from 63hz - 200hz is the same with or without the sub)

If I move toward the center of the room, the null shifts downward to 60hz, basically gutting the midbass and causing a large rise between 20 and 40hz.
20hz extension is no problem at all for the sub, though I often wonder how much impact it actually has on the quality of the bass response.

I can use a 120hz crossover, allowing the sub to fill in the 125hz valley, but this results in a shelved response, with the range from 20-60hz being 9db higher in level than the upper bass, and 7db higher than the reference level.
Tends to vibrate the light fixtures and windows audibly.
The 8'x5' living room window sounds like it's gonna collapse at high levels, and the character of bass instruments is not particularly realistic.
Flrnlamb,

Thanks for the detailed response!
The room is 13x17 with an 8' opening into a 10x10 dining room at the speaker end.
Here's a link to an edited illustration I made a few years ago for the tilesetter.
(white areas are walls; tiled area is floor)
http://www.byrographics.com/media/room-setup.jpg
Don't forget to add or subtract these amounts from the Radio Shack correction table to your figures:

Radio Shack SPL Meter Corrections
------------------------------------
10hz.....+20db
12.5hz...+16.5db
16hz.....+11.5db
20hz.....+7.5db
25hz.....+5db
31.5hz...+3db
40hz.....+2.5db
50hz.....+1.5db
63hz.....+1.5db
80hz.....+1.5db
100hz....+2db
125hz....+.5db
160hz....-.5db
200hz....-.5db
250hz....+.5db
315hz....-.5db
400hz....0db
500hz....-.5db
630hz....0db
800hz....0db
1k.......0db
1.25k....0db
1.6k.....-.5db
2k.......-1.5db
2.5k.....-1.5db
3.15k....-1.5db
4k.......-2db
5k.......-2db
6.3k.....-2db
8k.......-2db
10k......-1db
12.5k....+.5db
16k......0db
20k......+1db

THX Home Theater 16000 -8.5
20000 -11.2

Dave