Summary of Results

We covered a good bit of ground in the tutorial, and what you've learned by following it can be applied to your own projects. Starting with version 1.1.0 of MSO, the introduction of the Measurement Import Wizard and the Configuration Wizard, along with some other new commands, has changed the way you create and modify MSO projects, making the process faster, easier and less error-prone.

Now is a good time to recap our progress with the tutorial.

• We started with a discussion of various ways to prepare your data and hardware to make your experience with MSO easier and faster. This included naming of measurements to simplify later work with the MSO Configuration Wizard. The usage of the miniDSP channel labeling feature was also recommended so that the names you give to the channels of the miniDSP device match the names you give to the subs in the measurements and in the Configuration Wizard. Keeping the data organized by careful naming makes it easier to work with MSO from start to finish, ending with getting the optimized filter channel data from MSO into the miniDSP.
• We ran the MSO Measurement Import Wizard to import the REW measurement text files. After completion, this wizard launched the Configuration Wizard to create a new MSO configuration, including the graph we needed to examine the predicted results. This method greatly speeds up the creation of new MSO configurations compared to the manual creation method used in versions of MSO prior to 1.1.0.
• We learned how to use the configuration cloning feature. This feature served two purposes.
  • Together with the Reset All Filter Parameter Values command, it allowed us to return to the state of our configuration prior to optimization so that the "before and after" conditions could be easily compared.
  • It allowed us to explore different optimization alternatives, such as the number of PEQs per sub to use, whether or not shared PEQs should be used, and so on.
• The configuration cloning feature led us to two techniques for comparing different optimization strategies.
  • By putting traces from different configurations on the same graph, we could compare them visually.
  • By using the Configuration Performance Metrics dialog, we could compare objective, numerical performance measures of multiple configurations. We saw that in order for these comparisons to be fair, they had to be done over the same frequency range. We used the custom frequency range feature of the Configuration Performance Metrics dialog to ensure that the same frequency range was used for all comparisons.
• After some experimentaion, we arrived at a configuration that at first appeared to meet our needs. But running a filter report of the configuration revealed the problem of a large gain mismatch between subs. This problem compromised the available maximum output of the system.
• We studied the Normalize Gains command with a simplified project and demonstrated that this command creates an equivalent system. This equivalent system uncovers the relative gains between the reference sub (defined as the one with the highest gain) and the others.
• We learned that after transforming the system with the Normalize Gains command, we could directly constrain the gains of the non-reference subs relative to the reference sub, disallowing the optimizer from causing large sub gain disparities.
• We created a new configuration using the cloning process, then ran the Normalize Gains command on it. After this, we constrained the relative sub gains so the non-reference subs were disallowed from having more then a 10 dB gain difference from the reference sub.
• We ran an optimization on this new configuration and found a much more satisfactory result from the perspective of relative sub gains, while having similar MLP flatness and seat-to-seat response variation. This new configuration yielded a maximum output increase of more than 11 dB compared to the previous attempt. We decided to use this configuration.
• We then looked at how to export filter channel biquad data from MSO and import the filters into the miniDSP device.
• Finally, we took the attenuation and delay values found by MSO and displayed in the filter report and entered them into the miniDSP 2x4 HD using the instructions from the miniDSP documentation.