your listening room is your biggest problem

Sorry have been away and not able to contribute. The things that SOS advise to 'fix' room problems are in part about speaker placement but much more about understanding about the contribution that the room makes to the sound, for eample if two dimensions of a room are equal (as one poster here has) then you will have a problem with standing waves. Fixes do include things like base traps which need not be expensive and any more unsightly than a sub-woofer. Other tricks are to use a duvet pinned to various positons on walls to determine where to soak up sound and then to apply acoustic tiles where the duvet indicates. Typically this is on the opposite wall of the speakers. There are various things that you could do such as mount a number of acounstic tiles on a piece of MDF and cover it with an attractive piece of fabric to create a piece of art that also serves as a very effective room correcting device. This is the sort of thing that we need to be looking at first and foremost rather than reaching for the paving slabs yet there is little talk of it here. Is it lack of knowledge or a fear or making our rooms unsightly. There are products out there than are cost effective and look good or can be camoflaged.

what do you think?

DominicT

 

Room interaction is very real and hard to 'cure' problem that effects nearly all Hifi systems I feel, having a definate K2 bass peak in my system with my previous speakers Much to the amusement of a few members
Over time this has been greatly reduced, my first speaker x/over mods, much less bass interaction and cabinet rattling, then changing I/c's helped more, next better speakers wow, what a difference, better placement of said speakers, power mods, again better, I don't believe any one thing is the total cure all, but 'Room Thangs' I feel are purely about clear signals, less defractions, and reflections, how you deal with them is total indivdual system idiosyncratics. WM

 

Pinning duvets to your walls will do nothing for a 50 Hz bass hump. It takes seriously LARGE absorption to soak up bass that low. Either you need to fill the back quarter of the room with mineral wool (not very practical) or you need LARGE membrane absorbers. Tube traps are not effective down to 50 Hz whatever the marketing droids might like to have you believe.

If you can, put your listening chair one third of the way into the room from the back wall. This will minimise the effect of the worst front to back standing waves.

Chris

 

signal genarator http://www.dazyweblabs.com/sg2102/index.html
cool edit 30 day demo http://www.syntrillium.com/download/

 

Thats if the absorbtion is near the walls. Try absorbing in the middle of the room, as described here:

http://www.bruel-ac.com/tr/tr9602/tr9602.html

 

????
:SWMBO: :spank:

 

Good link. My own absorbers are designed to space the mineral wool away from the wall by a few inches and this increases their effectiveness considerably.

One interesting line from that link...

"So by 50 Hz where the wave length is 6.8m the thickness of the [absorbent] wall has to be 80 cm to give some absorption and 1.5 m thick to be good. If this large volume has to be filled with mineral wool the price for the last octave at lower frequency will be extremely high."

See what I mean

Chris

 

Chris

The duvet test is to identify where to put absorbtion panels so that you do not have to hang heavy panels to the wall and move them about every five minutes. Absorbtion panels about 2' square in size each do work as evidenced month after month in SOS (www.sospubs.co.uk) which is why I have brought it to the attention of those here.

 

I've had a look through the site and whilst there is much discussion about bass traps, I cannot find any mention of these 2' x 2' panels. Could you find us a link?

Chris

 

Ya that bass was certainly amusing, if not AWSOME! but really enjoyable (to a bass lover like me!) I've not heard the new setup thought, but HenryT seems to like it (he keeps visiting, so he must like it).

But its all in the construction of your room / house isn't it? Being totally solid concrete block all around, solid floor. My recollection its a oblong room, with not real potentional problems, I thought the glass fronted cabinets would give you a problem, know how much glass likes to vibrate, but we didn't hear that rattle.

It looks like the Mrs wants to move and solid wall / hifi friendly house isn't on the cards, I may have to contend with Plastboard walls, (oh god no!!), then I've lost my bass for good.

 

Or you could move into my flat with solid walls and floors and have no bass too... Grrr...

Hippy - so THIS is what your kit looks like:


Groovy - those speakers are huge - are they quite sensitive due to the size of the cabs?

 

Hi Chris

You need to look for the Studio SOS features in each magazine. April 2003 issue is a good one because the reader upgraded his speakers but they were still not right. There were real problems with the bass end as well as the high frequencies. The room and speaker placement were the problems. A top guy from Genlec came out and measured the room etc. You will need to be ab e-subscriber to read the article online which is why I have not been able to link through to anything for you. I am a magazine subscriber which is why I cannot cut and paste. regardless of the problem that the team go out to fix, they nearly always do something with the monitors because there are always things that can be improved. It is worth bearing in mind that these visits are normally to home studios (big studios can help themselves) and obviously the owners do not want to rebuild their houses.

You can also look up Canford Audio on the web. They are the largest studio supply company in the UK. They are very helpful and can advise on sound treatment. http://www.canford.co.uk/

Hope that this helps.

DominicT

 

Thanks Dominic. I'm still toying with the idea of trapping deep bass so all info is helpful.

Chris

 

Are dom but that's the speakers that have no bass, not the room, plus you don't play it loud enough cos you don't want to upset the holiday home owner downstairs!

In fact "if" we "do" get the one she's looking at, I'm going to have a complete nightmare trying to get my hifi in the living room, 3 doors, fireplace, abolutly no room to put a hifi unless I put shelves on the wall! (hum didn't think of that).

If we get it I'll draw up a plan and we'll see if the collective brains of the ZeroGain forum can figure out how I'd put a hifi in there. Its big enough 4.9m x 3.10m, so don't know, anyway might not get that one.

 

themadhippy,

Serious looking enclosures. I can't tell from the photo, but are they on a plinth?. Or is it a slot port or transmission line terminus?.

 

that there slot is the tunning port,or at least thats wot i designed it for,they can do a good impresion of a boy racers sub bins if the mood takes me:JPS:

 

But minus the Nova with obligatory LED washer jet lights I take it?