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Humbling lesson in Sound proofing your listening room


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You ever hear something in your system that you can't quiet put your finger on that just bugs the crap out of you (Andy Roony voice off)

For a month now I've been screwing around with my Klipschorns...trying to get them just right and I occasionally was getting some distortions so I kept running through the whole routine:

Interconnects v

Source material good v

Speakers in phase v

Crossovers hooked up correctly v

both channel of amp working v

switch out amp v

Trade out speakers to Cornwalls v

Switch everything back try again............on and on

Could never pin it down.......Then I remembered that Thumper XES gave me a IASKA set up disk so I figured what the heck

It starts off with basic right and left channel checks...phase..test songs for determining sound stage and so forth.......I run through the whole disk and it is very well recorded and my system is checking out 100%...sounds awesome.....and it's driving me nuts......What is the intermittent distortion I keep hearing?

turns out the last track 33 is a tone generator that starts at the extreme low end and emits a long series of tone pulses that slowly gain in amplitude .

Eureka!!!! All of a sudden I see one of the pictures on my wall start to vibrate and move on the wall........I put my hand on it and its buzzing away....one down...

then at a higher frequency I hear the distortion!!! its the spring counterweight on a window thats making a god-awful noise...

.so I stuffed some weather proofing in the window channel and moved the picture and placed a felt mat under some glasses in a china cabinet (in another room) that were rattling at high frequencies and Viola....no more distortions....

Thanks Chuck!!!! I should have listened to yur disk when you gave it to me!!!

Got me wondering how many of us have upgraded amps, sources, magic wires, mysic cubes....and all the while it was just a stupid window fixture that cost .03 cents to fix???

in the word of Homer....."Dooooooh"

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If you're trying to track down buzzes, then you might try out a signal generator that way you can pinpoint exactly every frequency. The test tone CDs leave out a lot of frequencies inbetween.

Way back when I was helping Trey set up for the Hope Pilgrimage, we were running sweeps on all the speakers to make sure all the buzzes were out of them. It was insane how Trey could tell exactly what the problems were and would just fix them right away. And then Trey went to a meeting and Roy came over to help and he did the same thing. (Though I have to say it was pretty cool seeing Roy take a screwdriver to a cabinet).

I think many might be surprised by how many rattles the speakers can get over time, let alone everything else in the room too. Though I suppose something that shakes around all the time is bound to loosen up anything that's gonna get loose...

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It's so important to go around your room and get all the rattles and buzzes stopped. It took me some time to get all my gone. Sometimes you don't realize you even have one until it's gone. Those speaker cabinets need to be checked regular too for loose screws and such that cause noises.

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All of a sudden I see one of the pictures on my wall start to vibrate and move on the wall........I put my hand on it and its buzzing away....one down...

then at a higher frequency I hear the distortion!!! its the spring counterweight on a window thats making a god-awful noise...

Been there....Done that!!! [:P]

I've killed two clocks in my main listening room because of the "subbage". Velcro, two-way sticky tape and a few screws have come in handy.[:D]

Have to say that it's always a relief to find that it's not the system making the annoying noises.........just causes them.

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wow great story to run down the buzz. Congrats on finding them.

Its a relief...I can listen to all my "head Banging" rock at moderate to loud levels and it sounds good now!!!

Dr. Who.....I think I will get a tone generator so that I can periodically test everything out....will come in handy as I have 2 channel set ups in two different rooms and HT in a third....none of then "Ideal" listening rooms as I periodically have to use my house for actual living [:D]

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Fender, glad your problem was an easy, inexpensive fix.

I had problems with my picture frames and my window vibrating like crazy when I had my McIntosh MC7200 crankin' out 300Wpc and my two Carver M-400t amps each bridged to 500 watts mono driving my DIY subwoofer! I later fixed that buzzing problem when I purchased my 6.5Wpc 300B SET power amp...can't play my pipe organ recordings at over 100dB SPL anymore, and no more rattles!

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Dr. Who.....I think I will get a tone generator so that I can periodically test everything out....

If you've got a laptop or computer nearby, you can do it for free...or just the cost of a cable to hook your computer to your system.

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I think many might be surprised by how many rattles the speakers can get over time, let alone everything else in the room too

I'm not... [:S]. You should hear the brass deflector on my fireplace buzz, then there's the windows and then..... [:(]

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It's not just the Klipschorns. My daughter will complain periodically that the piano needs work, "it's making a funny noise when I play this note". It's usually a pencil or CD that someone left on top, or fell down inside.

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Subwoofer location can make a difference, too. I tried my sub in a location that seemed sensible, but the pane of the picture window behind it would thrum hard enough at 32Hz to give me a headache in less than a minute.

When I relocated the sub to a spot between the speakers, farther from the window, the problem went away and the bass response was more even.

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