How to make bass sound tighter?

Wharfedale EVO 4.4 Floorstanding Speakers
Bass Traps do help but the placement is quintessential to get a balanced sound output in the room. W/O proper arrangement you run the risk of absorbing too much high frequency making the room sound very dull. Start using bass traps at four tri-corners of the room and then add additional traps at the four wall ceiling corners. Assuming that these are velocity/porous bass traps, you would need to install them at-least 4 inchs from the wall boundary for better low frequency absorption. Bass traps which are more than 10ft away fom the couch it is better to use a thin plastic on top of the insulation which will reflect the higher frequencies preventing over dampening of the room.
I guess the key would be to go slow with bass traps and keep experimenting by placing them at different wall corners. Again REW would be very useful tool in understanding the effect of adding bass traps as you keep experimenting with them.
 
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Indranil Sen said:
Bass Traps do help but the placement is quintessential to get a balanced sound output in the room. W/O proper arrangement you run the risk of absorbing too much high frequency making the room sound very dull. Start using bass traps at four tri-corners of the room and then add additional traps at the four wall ceiling corners. Assuming that these are velocity/porous bass traps, you would need to install them at-least 4 inchs from the wall boundary for better low frequency absorption. Bass traps which are more than 10ft away fom the couch it is better to use a thin plastic on top of the insulation which will reflect the higher frequencies preventing over dampening of the room.
I guess the key would be to go slow with bass traps and keep experimenting by placing them at different wall corners. Again REW would be very useful tool in understanding the effect of adding bass traps as you keep experimenting with them.
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To prevent high frequency absorption one can use thin plywood or dry wall or plastic to cover the bass trap surface.
 
Faster and uniform decay of low frequencies indeed is the key to getting good sound in any room. One might not be able to control or change the frequency response of a small/medium room but the time decay factor could be improved by adding bass traps in the appropriate locations. If you are out on a mission to controlling the decay time in a room then your best friend is Waterfall graph which REW produces very easily.
Thanks.
 
Indranil Sen said:
Faster and uniform decay of low frequencies indeed is the key to getting good sound in any room. One might not be able to control or change the frequency response of a small/medium room but the time decay factor could be improved by adding bass traps in the appropriate locations. If you are out on a mission to controlling the decay time in a room then your best friend is Waterfall graph which REW produces very easily.
Thanks.
Click to expand...

How expensive are the devices to measure the decay at the cheapest?
 
Hi subsatya...

From what you mentioned, I wouldn't expect a 8 inch sub to thump loud. I myself am living with a small 8 inch sub due to lack of space.

These small driver subs can sound good at higher frequencies, closer to the designed cross over frequency of the speakers they were designed for. But can't come up at frequencies below 34 to 36 hz. Since there is no cut off frequency for subs, the only option is to lower the sub gain from -1.5db further down to atleast - 3.5db. Just so that the hum becomes inaudible. My small qacoustics sub hums all the while in heavy movie scenes, and after trying everything else , including isolation feet , I just reduced the sub woofer level in my avr from 0 to -1.5db, and it now sounds good for both movies and music, as hum is now inaudible in the rest of the sound. Or if you have more space, go for a better sub.
 
subsatya said:
Thanks for the help. The bass is boomy. It is humming or I think it's called mid bass, and it should decrease. Only the thump should be felt.

By soft bass I meant the beats are not felt as they should be. The Logitech 10 inch sub did not have a port at the rear. Paradigm has two rear ports.
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Please send some pics of where the sub is right now placed and the space of sub near the wall......also mark alternative areas you have already tried.....
 
IMO, though a UMIK-1 & REW are viable solutions, the landing cost of the Mic is anywhere between 10 ~ 12K, and then it would demand the user to have hands on with REW & then figure out the ideal response thru multiple measurements.. For a lil more money that he would spend on Mic, he can get an other sub (Dual identical sub) (or) more possibilities of getting an other 10inch affordable sub, which could help the user.. This is purely from a cost perspective..

The best the user can do in the present situation is, to re position the sub as many times as possible in the room and settle where he thinks / feels it is good..
 
elangoas said:
IMO, though a UMIK-1 & REW are viable solutions, the landing cost of the Mic is anywhere between 10 ~ 12K, and then it would demand the user to have hands on with REW & then figure out the ideal response thru multiple measurements.. For a lil more money that he would spend on Mic, he can get an other sub (Dual identical sub) (or) more possibilities of getting an other 10inch affordable sub, which could help the user.. This is purely from a cost perspective..

The best the user can do in the present situation is, to re position the sub as many times as possible in the room and settle where he thinks / feels it is good..
Click to expand...
Fully agree with elangoas. I bought a umik-1 from Amazon India for around 16k I think. And after installing and opening REW, I realised that the complexity of the software was beyond my small nut head. Will probably give it another try after reading somemore on the net.
 
newlash09 said:
Fully agree with elangoas. I bought a umik-1 from Amazon India for around 16k I think.
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Oh buddy.. 16K for UMIK-1..:( Really sad..I got it for 6K from US thru a friend.. Exactly the same reason, why i didn't want the user to take that route..

If the UMIK-1 were as cheap as 2/3K, then eyes closed, yes..

And after installing and opening REW, I realised that the complexity of the software was beyond my small nut head. Will probably give it another try after reading somemore on the net.
Click to expand...

Same here.. For a novice it is always challenging.. I used the detailed REW guide (PDF) prepared by the AVS forum member and it did help a lot to get comfortable with measurements.. Incase, you missed to see, here is a link for the same & if it would be of any help to you - https://www.hifivision.com/threads/measuring-room-responses-using-rew.67269/

PS : Please ignore any mistakes..
 
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Yes, I agree that UMIK-1 or any microphone is not going to be free but this one-time investment is quite reasonable for building a solid audio framework in your listening room that helps unravel the real potential of your system. There is another cost attached to this effort. You need to familiarize yourself with REW graphs which are not always trivial to look at at-least for a new user. But if you are in this hobby I guess you would take the trouble of learning REW and be comfortable at interpreting REW graphs. There are tons of materials on the web that explain how to use REW and interpret the graphs.
Having multiple subs definitely helps taming the low frequency response in your room but the key again is placement. So you can either judge the result of this sub-placement-experiment by your ear or look at some objective measure i.e charts output by the software REW. Choice is yours....
 
I agree with you all that REW in the beginning could be a little PIA but like anything in audio you have to spend some time to master it. But REW is not the only component in this PIA category. It is equally challenging to position your speakers correctly in a room, handling vibration, matching cables to your system synergy, handling dirty power. The list goes on and on... Again you don't have to do any of these if you are a casual listener. But a for a serious listener who is ready to make some good investment into audio then I guess this framework needs to be set up either by you or by a professional. Otherwise you would always feel like upgrading or buying additional electronics and yet not be satisfied.
This is entirely my experience and not necessarily true for everybody and every situation.
 
I will suggest you to try the below to integrate the main and subwoofer phase -
- reverse connect the subwoofer speaker terminals - there should be a 0 deg and 180 deg phase switch in your plate amplifier.
- position the subwoofer (&/or main speaker) to the point where you get minimum bass (out of phase condition).
- once you have found this position, reverse the phase switch back to normal for getting a well balanced bass w.r.t. main speakers

Post your feedback if done for benefit of others.:)
 
T
elangoas said:
Oh buddy.. 16K for UMIK-1..:( Really sad..I got it for 6K from US thru a friend.. Exactly the same reason, why i didn't want the user to take that route..

If the UMIK-1 were as cheap as 2/3K, then eyes closed, yes..



Same here.. For a novice it is always challenging.. I used the detailed REW guide (PDF) prepared by the AVS forum member and it did help a lot to get comfortable with measurements.. Incase, you missed to see, here is a link for the same & if it would be of any help to you - https://www.hifivision.com/threads/measuring-room-responses-using-rew.67269/

PS : Please ignore any mistakes..
Click to expand...
Thanks a lot again elangoas :)

Will surely go through your link. That might help me learn about REW. Thanks.
 
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