bass less room--what to do

[Chris A]

room dimensions ...23x21 feet and height is 12 feet approx.

No amount of equipment tweaking is going to compensate for the effects of room modes. I think that you're going to need to move your listening position either forward or backward. Your room may be too square in floor plan dimensions to get truly good acoustics at low freqs. What did you move to get to the current setup?

Additionally, if you have sub(s), move those into the corner(s), put a lf CD on, then move around your room-listening for the best listening positions. If you don't have sub(s), then move your fronts much closer to the corners (like within a a half-meter or so). But you are going to have to get your listening position away from the middle of the room or 1/3, 1/4 fractions of the room's basic dimensions to hear lf.

Chris

[quadklipsh]

here is a picture from my listening seat .

[quadklipsh]

now taking pictures ,clockwise

[BigCliff]

Easy solution, but I know you do not want to hear it, put a sub in a corner closest to your listening position. You will be amazed at the results.

[quadklipsh]

the rear,couch and the stairways

[quadklipsh]

the rear side !

[quadklipsh]

the left side wall from my sitting postion has two doors ..

[quadklipsh]

photo 1 and 2 show the chairs where i get the best possible bass here, but in rest of the room , there is absolute bass deficit , sorry to say . kindly now someone can suggest , as i took complete 1 hour to post those pictures

[Chris A]

here is a picture from my listening seat .

Hummm.

1) Well, one thing that you could do is move the right speaker toward the center so that you can move it back against the wall (i.e., move both speakers back against the wall). This will probably have a less-than-desired effect on the lf response.

2) Put a subwoofer in a corner and dial the crossover up to about 100 Hz, however, this will require something like an AV processor to do the crossover and room-delay compensation.

3) You can erect a false wall just behind your couch (...I've used stacked bass traps in the past just to hear the effect) up to about a foot above your head height when seated. This will act as a reflective boundary that will effectively amplify the lf response directly in front of the boundary. Actually, this technique will likely work pretty well acoustically, but it has lower WAF. I'd use something with at least 3-4 inches of thickness to try out Enough bass traps can be had for less than $400(US). You need something that is acoustically reflective at lf.

If I can think of something else, I'll post it...

Chris

[Chris A]

Actually, that large free-standing closet (actually a chifferobe) behind your listening position - if you put that directly behind the couch - it will likely make a big difference. I know that this will likely meet with some WAF resistance, but bear with me - there may be a solution to this that is not apparent only looking at the picture (i.e., you may have something else on the house that may be useful to the purpose that may look better).

If you can move that chifferobe as a trial (I know, it probably is heavy and full of stuff), you may be surprised at the difference.

Chris

[wuzzzer]

I'd say some serious room re-arranging is in order. Your right speaker isn't anywhere near a wall except the one behind it. Putting that speaker in front of a shelving unit that far out from the wall isn't helping any either. The closer the room is to a perfect square the worse that bass output will be. 21x23 is pretty square.

Is it possible to put your speakers in the area that shows the part of your room to the right of your right speaker? It looks like there's a couple wooden chairs and a computer desk there right now. Can you put the speakers in there pointing away from that area and move your couch to the other side of the room?

Like this: ?

[LarryC]

Double ugh (re the room, that is).

I personally don't think locating speaker pairs in a room offset works very well, as a rule anyway. To me, such arrangements often sound muffled and keep the music from getting out into the room.

The stairway with its big horizontal AND vertical hole in your room is probably part of the problem, which you can't solve if true.

I believe it's best to put the speakers in the larger part of a room, to project the music into the less desirable locations for speakers. So, I'd suggest keeping them about where they are, but (as others say) move both of them back close to the rear wall. That means moving the shelves out of the way, perhaps downstairs.

I'd try that before other, more major disruptions to your arrangement.

[artarama]

room dimensions ...

23x21 feet and height is 12 feet approx.

That is a good amount of room to fill with sound. I agree with Chris that the stairways up and down are an issue as well. You have a whole lot of open space to fill. A sub will help the most of course for more bass, and placed close to your listening position will allow you to keep the volume (of the sub) down to where it will not overshadow the rest of the music. Go to the corners with the speakers, this will get the walls involved in filling the room with music!! Then start to deal with unwanted reflections. IMHO.

[artarama]

I agree with Chris that the stairways up and down are an issue as well.

Sorry, that was Larry that said that.

[quadklipsh]

thanks wuzzer, for taking the time out and illustrating , for us all. your suggestion of putting the speakers in the computer box is workable but i remember from experience that it made the bass very boomy and not pleasant at all. i think this room is the worst room so far iv tried.... almost any speaker gives up here. but maybe 8 inch dual woofs are not meant to fill up such rooms with bass .....though i listen at low volumes mostly , the frustraion is increasing.....

now two queries .....

1) would an equalizer be good ?????, i wana raise the 30 to 50 hz range by about 6db .....

2) is there some frequency tone program (gimmi the link ) that analyses the dips and boosts in the 20- 100 hz range, and find out which frequencies are being missed or enhanced .........

3) is subwoofer imminent?

[quadklipsh]

a foxy

[wuzzzer]

Equalizers are usually recommended to reduce peaks in room response instead of boosting valleys in them. You could get an EQ and reduce all frequencies above 100Hz or so slightly. Doing that would boost your sub-100Hz bass response depending on how much you cut the higher frequencies.

[dtel]

is it possible that im used to very rumbly sounds of the bedroom and now they are gone , and i am left with this thin sound

Sorry to get off track but congratulations on the bedroom sounds, ask her to come back then you can work on your audio. []

A small sub may be your last chance with that shape room, if adjusted correctly you would not know it's not you main speakers making the bass.

I never really liked subs until I got one adjusted where it did not stand out, just blended in.

Nice VW. [Y]

[Chris A]

Sorry to push the point, but I'm not kidding about the barrier directly behind your listening position: you'll hear between a 3-6 dB gain in lf just by putting up a barrier that is about a foot higher than your listening position.

When I did the experiment in my listening room, I had to readjust my active crossover to decrease lf with a center freq of about at 30-35 Hz in order to get a more reasonable overall balance. The original height of the barrier was about 6" above my ears when seated. Adding an additional 2 feet of height to the barrier increased the effect by a factor of 2 (i.e., from ~3 dB to ~6 dB overall increase in response).

It's also a lot cheaper than adding reasonably sized sub (which you'll probably need in your room) and an AVP or some other type of balancing network.

Chris

[quadklipsh]

cask05,

the closet is fixed to the rear wall, sorry it cant be moved at all, my dad got it made a year ago for storage needs . it has got all sorts of my clothes and dresses hung in the almirah . if i keep its doors open and let the clothes absorb some waves , it doesnt make any difference at all.

as far as that chipboard wall is concerned , im thinking of it for some possible improvement but hey all the stupid frequencies are too much raised in this ugly sounding living room , if bass is to improve so will the highs too, wont they ?

as for a sub , i may not invite that .

anyhow why cant these two seemingly big speakers (RF3s ) sound big as i read about them all my life.......

sorry if i sound exhausted dismayed and frustrated , but just an hour ago i had a 30 minute audio session of my various old CDs , and i can swear i hated all that was coming into my ears ......