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RF-7 Towers, Zero bass ?


Cirdecus

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Hey guys, 

 

Just got a set of RF-7 towers with 8" woofers to replace my RF-15 speakers.  Unfortunately, they appear to put out a lot less mid range.  Even when the receiver is set to "large" for front speakers and "no" sub-woofer, I just get massive high end with no bass.  I'm not bi-amping them and I have the two terminals cross-connected properly it seems.

 

Is this just what is expected with these speakers?  I just can't image huge, 100lbs ported tower speakers with two 8" woofers not having some serious bass.  I mean, I should be hearing so much bass that a subwoofer may not even be needed.

 

help!

 

I have a Pioneer ELITE VSX-53 Receiver

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10 minutes ago, thisgsx said:

Or it could just be the room it's in...? I have a pair of Klipsch rp-280s in my bedroom and they also lack bass.

Sent from my LG-LS997 using Tapatalk
 

 

Can vouch for this. I used to use F-20s in a basement and the bass was huge. Then I moved and put them in a smaller room and it was much less, and then when I upgraded to RP-280F even less. Room response is weird.

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Can vouch for this. I used to use F-20s in a basement and the bass was huge. Then I moved and put them in a smaller room and it was much less, and then when I upgraded to RP-280F even less. Room response is weird.




Yup! Before buying my Forte's from the previous owner he played a few tracks and the bass was amazing! I thought he had a sub playing to. When I brought it home and had it setup the bass was non-existent! It sucked! Lol...

Sent from my LG-LS997 using Tapatalk

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@Cirdecus you said you set speakers to Large in your Pio AVR.

 

I would recommend you rerun your MCACC room correction software.  In other words, don't use the settings from your previous setup.  Go ahead and recheck all your previous settings, including whether or not your previous speakers were bi-amped.  Properly set up you should be getting some decent bass out of those RF-7's.

 

 

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Did any of you pay attention to what was running the speakers at your test/seller source versus what you're running them with?  I've read it here many times where an AVR is not nearly as good as a dedicated 2 channel setup, too much processing.  The Elite VSX-53 appears to have a host of different processing components that could be causing your sound to suffer if not setup right.

 

If you have a 'Source Direct' mode on your receiver I would try that.  Positioning of the speakers is crucial, with or without toe-in, distance from the wall, corners, absorption and diffraction, cancellation, modes, etc. will all wreak havoc on a system.  As many others here have said, a microphone and dedicated sound analyzing software can show you worlds about your room.  Small rooms present problems, I know, I have one in my basement where my little HT setup is. 

 

There is also a situation with new gear, whether used or new, that I consider the dial-in, adjustment, break-in, period.  I remember when I got my first SVS cylinder sub.  I thought it sucked to start, but after many nights listening, adjusting, positioning, the sub eventually got to the point that it would rattle the house, sounded amazing to me.  Also, I would definitely check the polarity/wiring of all of the drivers, source to speaker, to ensure that there are no mistakes. 

 

I just have a hard time believing that a good set of RF-7's would suffer from bass response.  I still use old KG 5.5's with dual 10's in a large room and a junk AVR and they rock pretty hard. 

 

Anyway, thoughts from an elementary audio enthusiast.  Hope you get them running as you expect they should be.  

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It is rare to find the RF 7's lack bass, especially in a 2 ch system.  I read in the subwoofer section that the OP is also having trouble with the sub.  It seems he's off to a rocky start.  Is this a new avr or were speakers working fine on it before getting the sub and RF 7's?  The speakers can be temporarily positioned on a side wall to see if the problem persist.  Try the speakers set to Large without a sub and then set to Small with a subwoofer.  Use the sub crawl with placement.

 

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57 minutes ago, derrickdj1 said:

It is rare to find the RF 7's lack bass, especially in a 2 ch system.  I read in the subwoofer section that the OP is also having trouble with the sub.  It seems he's off to a rocky start.  Is this a new avr or were speakers working find on it before getting the sub and RF 7's?  The speakers can be temporarily positioned on a side wall to see if the problem persist.  Try the speakers set to Large without a sub and then set to Small with a subwoofer.  Use the sub crawl with placement.

 

I have heard this on the forum before but didn't know what it was . Thanks for the video. 

 

For my speakers, I just went into tone control and turned up the bass a bit on the front speakers and now I'm happy with the bass.

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Thank you guys, I appreciate the feedback!

 

To give you a bit more information, I've been a Klipsch owner for about 15 years, using this setup:

 

RF15 Towers

RS 25 Surrounds

RC25 Center

RSW 12 Subwoofer

 

I've only had two receivers in that time, the first being an ELITE receiver very similar to the one I have now.  

 

A year ago, the RSW-12 stopped registering sound to its "auto on" feature.  Shortly after this, it stopped powering on altogether.  I just now decided I would sent the amp and input panel to Edwards Electronics on ebay to repair the amp and return it to me.  While I was waiting and on ebay, I saw a set of gently used RF7 Tower speakers, an RC7 Center and another RSW12 sub for only 1100 bucks.  Pickup only, but in my city.  I met the owner the other day, he's a huge audiophile, and picked up the speakers.

 

I hooked everything up and it worked great for about an hour, until I started adjusting speaker settings and sizes as well as frequencies in the receiver to dial in the sound.  The subwoofer started letting out max bass non stop.  I'm currently troubleshooting this here:

 

 

While the sub is disconnected as I try various things, I decided to try to configure the RF7, RC7 and RS25's as if there were no sub-woofer to see how much bass those 8" woofers can give out.  That let me to this post :) 

 

Oh, to make matters worse, I'm getting this dreaded UE22 error on the receiver (started a few months ago).  I've read that this is the beginning of a receiver failure, but I haven't noticed any particular issues with it other than the flashing error on the display.

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Oh and I agree with the rest of you, I find it hard to believe these RF7's aren't putting out some very fantastic bass.  Holy crap, I can't believe I didn't think to do that subwoofer crawl.  I've always noticed that over the years, there would be a place in the room that the bass just comes alive from the sub and then another where you would swear I had no sub at all.  I'm going to try this if I can get one of the RSW12's working.

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I say its the jumpers on the back are loose I have seen this several times. Or the AVR is causing it.......just set the AVR equalizer to manual and adjust the settings. I don't totally agree with this space theory ,,,,when I was veneering my Ks in my SMALL basement shop with the speaker sitting on a short table not even in a corner the bass was fine.  Check your wiring and your AVR.

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Looks like the jumpers are is good shape and tight.  I didn't think it mattered which input I plugged the speaker cables into.  I believe they're plugged into the LF on the RF7's.

 

I'm going to adjust the room size in the receiver and set it to Direct Sound to see if that helps.  I wonder if the receiver could just be bad?

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20 hours ago, thisgsx said:

Or it could just be the room it's in...? I have a pair of Klipsch rp-280s in my bedroom and they also lack bass.

Sent from my LG-LS997 using Tapatalk
 

 

I was going to suggest the room may be factoring into it.  If it's a room with a lot of reflective surfaces, the MCACC will overcompensate and give you really high and/or harsh highs.  Placement of the microphone also factors into it.  I was placing my microphone lower than my ears and was catching reflections off the leather couch that was causing the MCAAC to over compensate.  The highs were very high and the audio sounded thin.  I raised it to ear level, which is above the back of the coach which allows it to hit the back wall and the sound panels on the wall to do their thing and it sounds much better.  Mine are RF-5s and the mids are fine in a room that is 17'x23'x20'which still has a fair amount of reflective surfaces.  The RF-7's are a better speaker.  They should have good mids.  In your case Thisgx, since we typically put a bed against the wall and there is a hard surface either with the wall or head board, it might be doing it to you, like the couch did to me. 

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6 hours ago, Cirdecus said:

Looks like the jumpers are is good shape and tight.  I didn't think it mattered which input I plugged the speaker cables into.  I believe they're plugged into the LF on the RF7's.

 

I'm going to adjust the room size in the receiver and set it to Direct Sound to see if that helps.  I wonder if the receiver could just be bad?

AVR could be bad but I doubt it.  I would suspect a setting being out of whack as a more likely suspect.

 

Do you have a computer connected?  Can you do a frequency sweep?

 

 

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Alright, before i did the frequency sweep, I decided to play around a bit.  I kept the sub set to "No", the Front set to "large", but instead of keeping the huge RC7 at "large" i changed it to small, then changed the frequency from 50hz to 80hz.  This adjustment effectively doubled the bass that the towers are putting out now.  I was actually a bit startled and thought my sub magically turned on.  Then i switch the Auto Surround mode from 5ch Stereo to Dolby Music and got even more improvement.  They sound very well balanced with healthy mids now. I'm not sure why setting the center to "large" had such a negative impact.  It is a HUGE center channel with powerful woofers of its own, but who knows.

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If you were listening in stereo that shouldn't have had anything to do with it.  Moreso if you were listening in direct mode.  Glad it's working better now, but I don't know the culprit at this point.

 

I have RF-3's, and an RC-7.  All of them are set to small, and the 3's are set to cross at 60 Hz, while the center crosses at 70 Hz.  You might want to run MCACC just for fun and see what comes up.

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