TABLE OF CONTENTS
- What's Room Correction
- The Benefits of Room Correction
- Preparations for Room Correction
- Step-by-Step Guide to Room Correction
What's Room Correction
Room correction is a process that involves adjusting the audio output of a sound system to compensate for the acoustic characteristics of a specific room, enhancing sound quality and accuracy.
The Benefits of Room Correction
1. Improved Sound Quality: Room correction systems analyze the acoustic properties of a room and apply adjustments to minimize negative effects such as echoes, reverberations, and standing waves. This results in clearer, more accurate sound reproduction.
2. Compensation for Room Acoustics: Every room has unique acoustic characteristics that can affect sound quality. Room correction compensates for these characteristics, adjusting the audio output to ensure that it closely matches the original recording. This is particularly important in rooms with hard surfaces that reflect sound or in oddly shaped spaces where sound can be unevenly distributed.
3. Optimized Listening Experience Across Different Spaces: Whether you're in a small bedroom, a large living room, or a basement, room correction ensures that your audio system is optimized for the best possible listening experience regardless of the room size or layout.
4. Enhanced Detail and Clarity: By correcting frequency response anomalies and time-based errors, room correction brings out the detail and clarity in music and audio content. This means you can hear each instrument and voice more distinctly, bringing you closer to a live performance experience.
5. Adaptability to Different Listening Preferences: Some room correction systems allow users to customize the correction curve according to their personal listening preferences. This means you can tweak the sound to be warmer, brighter, more bass-heavy, etc., according to what you enjoy most.
6. Integration with Home Theater Systems: For home cinema enthusiasts, room correction ensures that the surround sound experience is immersive and accurate. It ensures that the soundstage is well-balanced and that effects move smoothly across the room, closely mimicking the experience of being in a movie theater.
7. Balanced Bass Response: One of the most challenging aspects of audio reproduction in rooms is achieving a balanced bass response. Room correction helps to even out the bass frequencies, reducing boominess and muddiness that can occur when bass waves interact poorly with room dimensions and furnishings.
8. Increased Sweet Spot Size: Normally, there's a specific spot in a room (the sweet spot) where the audio sounds the best. Room correction can help increase the size of this sweet spot, making the audio more enjoyable from more positions within the room.
In summary, room correction is a powerful tool for anyone looking to get the best possible performance out of their audio system. It customizes the audio output to match the specific acoustics of the room, ensuring a more enjoyable and accurate listening experience.
Preparations for Room Correction
Before Calibration
1. Ensure Proper Speaker Placement
- Avoid obstructions around the speakers.
- Set the volume to a moderate level.
- Close doors and windows.
- Keep the room as quiet as possible.
2. Configure Parameters
On the Room Correction page, tap the Room Correction Settings icon
to configure any of the following parameters:
- Target Curve: Choose the desired frequency response curve before room correction.
- Frequency Range: Adjust the frequency range to be corrected.
Note: If your speakers have bass enhancement, it's recommended to exclude that frequency range. - Gain: Adjust the volume level during calibration. Set gain according to the room's acoustic characteristics and personal preference to avoid distortion or unnatural sound.
- Q Value:
- Lower Q values are suitable for smooth frequency response adjustments.
- Higher Q values are used for precise correction of specific frequency peaks and dips but may cause "ringing."
- Smoothing: In Room Correction, smoothing reduces small fluctuations in the frequency response curve, making it easier to interpret and focus on overall trends. It removes unnecessary details caused by noise or measurement artifacts, prevents overcompensation during adjustments, and helps achieve a more natural correction outcome.
- 1/3 Octave Smoothing: Balances detail with overall trends.
- 1/6 Octave Smoothing: Retains more detail while maintaining readability.
- 1/12 Octave Smoothing: Provides highly detailed adjustments for fine-tuning specific areas.
3. Subwoofer Consideration
- If you are using a subwoofer, enable the Subwoofer Calibration setting.
- Check your subwoofer's crossover frequency and ensure the start of the frequency range for correction is above this crossover to avoid incorrect adjustments for your room's acoustics.
During Calibration
1. Preparation
- ALWAYS remove the protective case from your phone.
- ALWAYS hold the phone as far away from your body as possible.
- ALWAYS point the microphone towards the speaker you are currently measuring.
- ALWAYS place the microphone at ear level (if you sit while listening, use the height of your ears when seated).
2. Microphone Placement
- Ensure the microphone, the listener's ears, and the speaker's acoustic center are approximately at the same height.
Step-by-Step Guide to Room Correction
You can select one of the following types of Room Corrections:
- Stereo Room Correction
Synchronizes audio across both channels to effectively perform Room Correction, refining the overall sound quality. - Individual Channel Room Correction
Allows precise adiustments of each audio channel to tailor sound to unique room characteristics, ideal for uneven layouts or obstructed channels.
If the Subwoofer output is enabled, the Room Correction process will be limited to Stereo Room Correction only.
Stereo Room Correction
- Open the WiiM Home app.
- Navigate to the Devices tab and tap the Device Settings icon
for your WiiM device. - Select Room Correction.
- Tap Next to start the Room Correction process.
- Tap Play Sound to start an audio check.
- If you can hear the sound, tap Next to continue. Otherwise, tap Play Again to check audio again.
- Select Stereo Room Correction.
- Tap Start Tuning to begin the acoustic measurement.
- When the Results Overview page appears, view the results and then tap Next to proceed to the evaluation step. Alternatively, tap Complete Correction to save the settings and finish without evaluation.
- Tap Start Evaluation to evaluate the Room Correction results.
- When the Final Assessment page appears, tap Sounds Great to continue. Alternatively, if you are not satisfied with the results, tap Adjust Again to run Room Correction again.
- Tap Save EQ to save the customized Room Correction settings.
- Tap Done to finish the Room Correction process.
Individual Channel Room Correction
- Open the WiiM Home app.
- Navigate to the Devices tab and tap the Device Settings icon
for your WiiM device. - Select Room Correction.
- Tap Next to start the Room Correction process.
- Tap Play Sound to start an audio check.
- If you can hear the sound, tap Next to continue. Otherwise, tap Play Again to check audio again.
- Select Individual Channel Room Correction.
- Tap Start Left Channel Tuning to begin the acoustic measurement of the left audio channel.
- Tap Start Right Channel Tuning to begin the acoustic measurement of the right audio channel.
- When the Results Overview page appears, view the results and then tap Next to proceed to the evaluation step. Alternatively, tap Complete Correction to save the settings and finish without evaluation.
- Tap Start Evaluation to evaluate the Room Correction results.
- When the Final Assessment page appears, tap Sounds Great to continue. Alternatively, if you are not satisfied with the results, tap Adjust Again to run Room Correction again.
- Tap Save EQ to save the customized Room Correction settings.
- Tap Done to finish the Room Correction process.
