Hmmm... there's an issue there with the way you did the setup and calibration, it seems. This is what your data file is showing:
This is what a typical soundcard should look like:
It looks like you might have a feedback loop within your soundcard itself. Check the settings for your card, to see if there is maybe a headphone feed or something like that, that is turned on when it should not be. Also check that you had your loop-back cable connected correctly, from the speaker output connector on your computer, back to the mic input connector. Another thing to check: that you have the correct output and input selected on the REW "preferences" panel: if you have several inputs or outputs, it's easy to accidentally select the wrong one.
Something is up there, and you'll need to fix it before you can take any measurement, validly.
I can't really sound treat it, unfortunately. This is the family room so it has to stay "in tact" for now.
Unfortunately, without at least some treatment in there, it's not going to be a good listening environment, to do justice to all that gear and those speakers that you have. Treatment can be disguised to fit into the room decor, so that shouldn't be a problem. Or it can be made portable, so you can store it some other place most of the time, then just carry it in when you want to watch movies, or listen to music. Many, many people don't realize how necessary treatment is in a home theater... until they hear what a room sounds like with good treatment in it! There's a huge difference: night and day.
There's also the issue that you can't actually use EQ successfully for the majority of problems you will have in your room, because they are acosutic issues, caused by the sound waves moving around the room and interacting with each other: EQ cannot correct that, because it happens after the sound waves have already left the speakers. EQ can only fix problems that happen before the sound leaves the speakers, as well as a very small, very limited set of acoustic things.
The mistake many people make, when they read the glossy brochures on "Room Correction" software or hardware, is not realizing that the manufactures of those products are not telling you the truth: they make it sound like you can just plug in their product and magically make a bad room sound good: that simply is not true. It does not work like that: the laws of the universe prevent that from being true. You can only use those EQ products successfully after the room has already been treated acoustically, to deal with the typical basic issues that all small rooms have. One those are dealt with bu the treatment, then the EQ can be used to iron out many of the remaining issues.
What most people find when they first use such a product, is that the do the analysis, fiddle with the controls, and the curves on the screen get a bit flatter... but then they are disappointed because the room still sounds like garbage! They look at the screen, see the curves flatter, and think that this MUST be an improvement... except that it isn't! The problem with the room is not in the "frequency domain", which is what a frequency response graphs shows you, but rather the problems are mostly in the "time domain", which you cannot see on a frequency response graph! "Time domain" refers to how sound bounces around the room and slowly dies away after it has left the speaker. That is not visible by looking at the frequency graph... or rather, you can see some of the effects in the frequency graphs, but you can't see the actual problem. That's where REW comes in: it shows you the frequency graph, yes, but that's not the most important one. REW also shows you a whole bunch of time-domain graphs, such as the waterfall plot, the spectrogram, the decay plots, the RT60 plots, and most important of al (but hard to understand); the "Impulse Response" graph, set to "ETC" mode. ETC means "Energy-Time Curve". It shows you how the sound energy in the room is behaving over time. Not easy to read (waterfall is much simpler to understand), but very useful.
As you start using your EQ to try to fix the room problems, you will run into all of these issues: there will be some that you just can't fix at all, no matter how hard you try, and some that seem to improve when you fiddle with the EQ.... but only for one seat in the room! As you sit in different spots, you'll hear different sound... because that's the other thing that the manufactures don't tell you! EQ in an untreated room will, at best, only improve the sound at one single location in the room... at the expense of all others! Things can be better for that one spot, but will be worse for all other locations in the room. That's fine or a recording studio control room, where the mix engineer is the only guy who needs to hear perfectly, and always sits at that "sweet spot" in any case. But it's not so fine for a home theater, where you usually have several people who want to hear well...
Anyway, excuse the long explanation, but I just wanted you to be aware of what you are going to find out soon enough when you start using your EQ. And to urge you to consider doing some simple, basic treatment to improve the acoustics somewhat. As I mentioned earlier, treatment can often be disguised in a room, so it isn't too noticeable, or it can be made portable and moved out for storage when the room is not being used as a home theater.
There are a handful of things that EQ can help with, when applied correctly, even in a poorly treated room, but EQ cannot fix most of the issues, and the results of trying will likely not make you happy. Especially if you are wanting to hear quality sound in your room, similar to what a large movie house sounds like. The real solution to achieve that, is acoustic treatment plus EQ at the end.
But first comes the analysis! As soon as you figure out the problem with your REW setup, do a room measurement with REW, and post the results here. We can show you what the problems are in your room, and identify which ones can be improved with EQ, and which ones require treatment.
- Stuart -
