Hiding Bass

The bass seems to be hiding in my room. Its 5 x 4 m approx, with a 2m high celing, which slopes accross the width of a quarter of the room, coming down to 1m high on one wall.
There is loads of bass when listening from outside the room - and half way down the street as well probably with these transmission lines!! But in the room it is much less obvious, unless you sit really close to the speakers. The speakers are accross the width of the room, facing into the slope of the celing. Could this be the cause of my problem?? Any ideas.

 

is it a suspended floor?

 

yes - & bare boards, with a big rug between me and the speakers.

 

i was wondering if somehow the bass could be getting sucked into the part of the room were the ceiling slopes down. having tried positioning myself in various parts of the room, and also listening from all different heights; I cannot "find" the bass anywhere!

 

I would be tempted to think floor/speaker interaction.
Similar to my room but no sloping ceiling. Bass is great in the room below, not so in the listening room.

 

exactly

 

solution - move downstairs, but that won't go down too well...!!!

is there anything that can be done about it??
also the IMFs are on big old casters, which can't do any good.

 

various things to try, air platforms, stone slabs, mana
It is something i need to look into myself.

 

I had slabs under my Acoustic Energy speakers and they sounded fine. The IMFs would probably need 4 slabs each, and I'd have to find some really big spikes for them. How does a suspended floor interact with speakers?

 

Bass seems to be going through the floor, higher frequencies being reflected.

The solution I'd suggest would involve building up the density of the floor. I would use large boards of MDF over the whole floor, and then acoustically absorbant panels, then underlay, then carpet.

Putting the speaker on concrete will help to isolate it, but not assist in preventing the bass output from going straight through the floor to the room below. Im not saying concrete pavers are a bad idea (far from it), just that it sounds like more radical measures are needed.

Building up the floor density/adding additional soundproofing will stop noise leakage for the rest of your family too. The fact that the walls would remain the same doesnt matter so much, as most of the energy travels through the floor.

All IME & IMO

 

Try moving the room round so the speakers are under the sloping ceiling and firing into the full height part of the room. My room is similar and I got a huge improvement in bass performance just by doing that.

 

I had this problem in my old room . The simple solution is to add a sub .
It,s a very easy process when youv,e got no bass , I think a lot easier than having to tame excessive bass .
I did try getting bigger speakers . I went from cyrus cl70 speakers (quite bassy standmount) all the way to a pair of Cura floorstanders (they were the biggest ones in the Cura range) .
Even with the Cura,s in situ I still had no bass (and they really were big) .
I then tried a sub and just turned it up till I could hear some bass at my listening position .
There is a bit more to it than that but I think you,d be suprised by how little more you need to do .

 

I ought to expand as it looks like I,m suggesting adding more bass .
It doesn,t quite work like that .
The idea is that the sub fills out the cancellations at your listening position and then allows your speakers to be heard as they shoud be .
You should find that a positive side effect from this , is that you don,t need to turn the volume up so high to get the impact . And then you obviously don,t have the loud bass polluting everywhere else .
I hope you can follow this .

 

erm.....dont think that will be necessary - I'm running a pair of transmission lines which are big bass monkey speakers!!! theres no shortage of bass being produced its just being "stolen" by the room.

 

Thinking about it, I'm not sure I'm convinced of this bass disappearing through the floor business. No doubt a lot is going through the floor, but I mean bass is omni-directional it's not just going to go downwards through the floor and that's it. Also if it did go through the floor that easily, then it would come back up as easily as well after bouncing off whatever solid surface is below, wouldn't it?

I would suggest it's more likely you have some strong standing waves that are cancelling out most of the bass. If it's not too much effort you could try putting a mattress diagonally across each of the two corners of the room behind the speakers. If that's hard then try a rolled up large duvet in each room corner. This would act as some makeshift bass traps to absorb the standing waves and let you hear more of the direct sound from the speakers. If it helps then look into propper bass traps.
Cheers,

 

Hi.

Just a thought, speakers aren't my main area of expertise. But i asume that when the cone goes forward the reaction of the cabinet is to move backwards (only very slightly because it is much heavier) it is the cabinet reaction that is coupled to the wooden floor, this will excite the floor antiphase to the wanted signal, in the room the signal direct from the cone, and that of the floor would tend to cancel, but outside of the room little cancelation from the cone would occur and base would be heard from the vibrating floor.

Just a thought.

Chris

 

...one test we did on a new product that we were going to distribute was using an audio system on an upper floor in a property with wooden floors.

The product in question was the Stillpoints (with Risers), these are isolation devices and the largerStillpoints can hold a considerable amount of weight too making them ideal for many loudspeakers.

We tested our reference subwoofer a 120lb in weight first on the floor without the supplied spikes, this generated some of the problems you are encountering with bass loss, with bass especially noted on the lower floors.

We next installed the manufacturers floor spikes which helped a little in improving the bass control but when we removed the spikes and placed the subwoofer on the Stillpoints we were blown away with the overall improvement.

The bass was faster, controlled and had a tonal quality that was previously missing.

In short, as other members have suggested, it would be better to try isolation of your speakers, and start with the cheaper options and work your way up.

 

but still points for 2 speakers isnt exactly a cheap option

 

...no, you are right there, but I was just giving you an idea of what we found in our tests.

 

Gonna try moving the speakers around a bit, and putting mattresses (spelling?????) in different places, as that sounds like a good / cheap / easy place to start. Where would be the most sensible place to have them - at the moment they're facing towards the slope of the ceiling, so that they are in the largest part of the room, but I dont reckon this does any favours. Trouble is they're so big they'd be right out in the middle of the room if I put them under the slope. I didnt think putting them in the lowest part of the room was sensible (atleast I didn't when I was using the rear ported AEs), but the T-lines vent out the front of the cabinet so it might be different.
& getting some spikes as well because casters can't be helping. Where's the best palce to buy spikes.