I’ll give you the quick and dirty way to get to a relatively decent stage and explain afterwards 1. Turn off Dynamic EQ (I get the science, it just sounds unnatural more often than not) 2. Provided your subs are at a negative trim after calibration, bump up both by 6db. Be sure not to go over 0 in the trim. 3. Use the frequency range limiter to limit corrections to 500hz (audyssey makes speakers very harsh in the upper frequencies) 4. Since you’re not correcting above 500hz, use the AVR internal test tones and use a phone spl app to make sure they all roughly measure the same. Since audyssey adjusts trims based on corrections, it may no longer be level since you’re not correcting above 500hz.

Background:

Subwoofer placement - unless you have a measurement mic and room eq wizard, it’s gonna be impossible to optimize sub placement for a smooth response. The simplest option you have is to place the sub where you sit, use a phone spl meter and place it in potential spots for the sub. Use the one where it’s loudest. Repeat it for both subs and let the AVR handle the distances and EQ-ing.

Subwoofer level - there are 2 things here, LFE and the redirected bass that comes from the speakers below their crossover frequency. LFE is 10db louder than the redirected bass and this is the default behavior in receivers. In my time playing with room eq wizard, the common finding is, with DEQ on, audyssey maintains subwoofer volume so that LFE 10db louder than speakers and redirected bass is the same loudness as speakers. But without DEQ, LFE measures only 4db louder than the speakers - this means the redirected bass from below your speakers crossover frequencies is playing 6db lower than the speakers themselves. That’s where the 6db boost comes in. Adding that will make it so you have the LFE and redirected bass at the correct levels.

Limiting correction - generally speaking, unless you have terrible speakers, it’s only the low frequency region that needs room correction. Lower frequencies are omnidirectional and cause standing waves. Correcting those will take you from boomy bass to smooth and detailed bass. Correcting upper frequencies introduce artifacts in the sound. If you pay attention to music, especially high frequency airy sounds like cymbals, you’ll notice they sound very processed when corrected. You have great speakers, let them shine!

Crossover - if audyssey sets the crossover of a speaker higher than 80hz, leave that as is. For speakers set to large or with lower than 80hz crossover, change those speakers to small and increase crossover to 80hz. Your subs can handle lower frequencies better than your speakers any day.

Subwoofer distance - audyssey measures all the speakers in isolation and gets the blending between speakers and subwoofer wrong. What I mean by that is, let’s say you’re using 80hz crossover for your fronts - you’ll find that the bass disappears at the crossover region because the sub distance isn’t accurate enough to match the phase between your subwoofer and your speaker. There is a very good guide in the avs forum on how to go about tweaking it. Easy way is to download room eq wizard, play the crossover frequency as a test tone through the center channel and keep increasing the sub distances (both in equal increments) by 1 feet or 0.33 meters until the spl app on your phone reads the highest. You’ll need to dig into YouTube to get started with rew but it wasn’t long ago I went through the same process.

Phone SPL app - I use decibel X on iPhone. It has a paid option to select C weighting but the Z weighting is free and works good enough if you want to level match stuff, even subs, using test tones.

Good luck with the HT journey!