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A Room Acoustics Issue?


Peter P.

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Went over a friend's house recently. He's no audiophile, but he has the money to throw around.

 

He bought his stereo equipment on the suggestions of his friend, who works in a boutique stereo shop.

 

The speakers are Golden Ear Triton Sevens; tower speakers with a pair of 5.25" mid/bass drivers, and two 8" passive radiators per speaker. Rated down to 29Hz.

 

The room they're in: it's roughly 15 feet square, 8ft. walls with an open, peaked ceiling. Large glass windows on 3 sides, and two skylights. Floors, walls, ceiling; they're all finished wood, set on a concrete slab. A double wide  opening leads to the room, and there's a large pass-through window-sized opening to visually and socially connect the kitchen to the room.

 

I thought the speakers sucked-I didn't tell HIM that! There was positively NO low end to these speakers. You'd swear the low end cutoff was 300Hz; these speakers sounded like bookshelf models. The speakers are roughly 2ft. from the back wall, and 3ft. from the side walls. The owner's manual has this to say about positioning, so you could say they were positioned correctly.

 

I've got a pair of Heresy's with a kg sw passive subwoofer and together they EASILY provide a full range sound, albeit in a differently configured room.

 

By the specs, the Golden Ears should have performed admirably. So what was it that sucked all the bass out of the room? I'm not even confident adding a subwoofer would have cured his ill.

 

 
 
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39 minutes ago, Peter P. said:

The room they're in: it's roughly 15 feet square,

This ^^ might be one of the problems. I didn't know it when I was designing and building my house: A square room sucks for sound. I have one room that is 20 x 20 with a 12' ceiling.  The room is drywall with two large areas of glass. Tried a lot of speakers in the room, all the way up to the Khorn, still sucks. One day I hope to condition the room and hopefully trap some of the tramp sounds. 

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Exactly - the documentation for the Golden Ear Triton Sevens says as much.  Square room with hard surfaces on a concrete slab = standing waves.  Even so, there should be some bass somewhere in the room as he moves around.  I was trying to figure out if the listening position just happens to be in a bass-null area or if there is no bass to be found anywhere in the room.  If it's the latter, it could be a setup/connection issue.

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Went over a friend's house recently. He's no audiophile, but he has the money to throw around.
 
He bought his stereo equipment on the suggestions of his friend, who works in a boutique stereo shop.
 
The speakers are Golden Ear Triton Sevens; tower speakers with a pair of 5.25" mid/bass drivers, and two 8" passive radiators per speaker. Rated down to 29Hz.
 
The room they're in: it's roughly 15 feet square, 8ft. walls with an open, peaked ceiling. Large glass windows on 3 sides, and two skylights. Floors, walls, ceiling; they're all finished wood, set on a concrete slab. A double wide  opening leads to the room, and there's a large pass-through window-sized opening to visually and socially connect the kitchen to the room.
 
I thought the speakers sucked-I didn't tell HIM that! There was positively NO low end to these speakers. You'd swear the low end cutoff was 300Hz; these speakers sounded like bookshelf models. The speakers are roughly 2ft. from the back wall, and 3ft. from the side walls. The owner's manual has this to say about positioning, so you could say they were positioned correctly.
 
I've got a pair of Heresy's with a kg sw passive subwoofer and together they EASILY provide a full range sound, albeit in a differently configured room.
 
By the specs, the Golden Ears should have performed admirably. So what was it that sucked all the bass out of the room? I'm not even confident adding a subwoofer would have cured his ill.

 

   





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Went over a friend's house recently. He's no audiophile, but he has the money to throw around.
 
He bought his stereo equipment on the suggestions of his friend, who works in a boutique stereo shop.
 
The speakers are Golden Ear Triton Sevens; tower speakers with a pair of 5.25" mid/bass drivers, and two 8" passive radiators per speaker. Rated down to 29Hz.
 
The room they're in: it's roughly 15 feet square, 8ft. walls with an open, peaked ceiling. Large glass windows on 3 sides, and two skylights. Floors, walls, ceiling; they're all finished wood, set on a concrete slab. A double wide  opening leads to the room, and there's a large pass-through window-sized opening to visually and socially connect the kitchen to the room.
 
I thought the speakers sucked-I didn't tell HIM that! There was positively NO low end to these speakers. You'd swear the low end cutoff was 300Hz; these speakers sounded like bookshelf models. The speakers are roughly 2ft. from the back wall, and 3ft. from the side walls. The owner's manual has this to say about positioning, so you could say they were positioned correctly.
 
I've got a pair of Heresy's with a kg sw passive subwoofer and together they EASILY provide a full range sound, albeit in a differently configured room.
 
By the specs, the Golden Ears should have performed admirably. So what was it that sucked all the bass out of the room? I'm not even confident adding a subwoofer would have cured his ill.

 

   

Standing wave


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There was no bass to be found anywhere in the room, and I put my hand over one of the passive radiators and could feel it moving. While there was a lot of hard surface area, he had an overstuffed sofa and a recliner in the room. There were lots of broken up surfaces so reflections weren't an issue. If it was a standing wave issue, it had to be broadband in nature because there wasn't just one frequency missing but ALL the bass.

 

Other than changing the room dimensions, how would someone treat the room to bring the bass back?

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4 hours ago, pbphoto said:

I'm not sure.  Something isn't right.  Wonder if he has them hooked up out-of-phase or they are being powered by an AVR and he has them set to 'small' or something like that.

I didn’t think of that. Dollars to doughnuts it is one or the other.

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There has got to be a big pocket of bass hiding in that room somewhere. My listening position is in a null without treatment. My missing bass primarily stacks up in the left rear corner of my 10'x12'x8' room on a carpeted slab.

 

If there is NO bass anywhere in that room, as stated above, it has got to be at least partially a phase issue.

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It's not an AVR but a strictly two-channel audio setup. Some fancy beast of a power amp, and a high falutin' preamp with no tone controls. As to the out of phase wiring: it's possible, but his audiophile store workin' friend who hooked him up with the goods supposedly setup the equipment, too. Unless my friend moved the wires somehow. I will definitely surreptitiously check that out next time I'm at his house. His setup includes some esoteric, magic dust speaker wire which are merely 4 conductor wire for each speaker; 2 wires for speaker positive and 2 wires for negative. There's no bi-amping or be-wiring going on, so it looks silly. I did peek behind the amp and the wiring is good at the back of the amp but you'd at least think there would be banana plugs or spade connections. Nope; just twisted together two-conductor to +, and 2 conductors to -.

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It's not an AVR but a strictly two-channel audio setup. Some fancy beast of a power amp, and a high falutin' preamp with no tone controls. As to the out of phase wiring: it's possible, but his audiophile store workin' friend who hooked him up with the goods supposedly setup the equipment, too. Unless my friend moved the wires somehow. I will definitely surreptitiously check that out next time I'm at his house. His setup includes some esoteric, magic dust speaker wire which are merely 4 conductor wire for each speaker; 2 wires for speaker positive and 2 wires for negative. There's no bi-amping or be-wiring going on, so it looks silly. I did peek behind the amp and the wiring is good at the back of the amp but you'd at least think there would be banana plugs or spade connections. Nope; just twisted together two-conductor to +, and 2 conductors to -.

It’s a standing wave. The lower frequencies are reflecting off those hard smooth surfaces. The reflected frequencies are 180 degrees out of phase with the source frequencies. When they collide they cancel each other out resulting in silence for those frequencies.


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This is what we are attempting to reproduce in our living rooms, or at least I am.

 

K-Horns, LS or Klipsch industrial theater speakers can stand toe to toe and punch with the ALTEC Speakers of Legend.

 

Our living rooms will never have the acoustic qualities of a theater, I just can't bring myself to carpeting the walls.....maybe someday.

 

Try though they may, there is no way around the cabinet size, and the size of the room.

 

A Chihuahua can't go toe to tow with a Rottweiler.

 

http://www.ominous-valve.com/altec.html

 

no_screen.jpg

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I have owned many Goldenear speakers and lack of bass, definitely shouldn’t be an issue. 

 

I am also having some setup issues with my new speakers and I just ordered these, to help with the room acoustics:

 

https://m.ebay.com/itm/Studio-Acoustic-Foam-CityBlox-Hybrid-Next-Acoustics-PRO-Performance-Panels-24sf/282989499682?epid=1804004336&hash=item41e37d1522%3Ag%3AiogAAOSw7GRZHmJa&_sacat=0&_nkw=acoustic+panels&_from=R40&rt=nc

 

I also ordered 4 of these for my front speakers and subwoofers:

 

https://m.ebay.com/itm/Auralex-SubDude-V2-Subwoofer-Sub-Woofer-ISOLATION-PAD-NEW-PERFECT-CIRCUIT/292370036494?hash=item44129cb70e%3Ag%3A384AAOSwC-taMcxy&_nkw=subdude+subwoofer&_from=R40&rt=nc

 

I am planning on starting a setup thread, from start to finish, as soon as I get some time. I am hoping to get advise from members here and I think that thread will be relevant to your friend.

 

Definitely have your friend invest in and thick pile area rug, that made a noticeable difference in my room. 

 

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