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A good Klipsch The Fives upgrade? (powered, 5k max)

Voices on TV shows etc sound very nasally
If connected by HDMI eARC check your settings on the TV. No, I doubt they need to break in I was thinking if used you might do factory reset to erase any previous settings, for instance external sub settings.
 
Maybe they need to break in?
No, that's not really a thing beyond the first few minutes and is often done during testing at the factory.

The LS60s should be able to go below ~38hz pretty well, which suggests you might have a room null there that's being activated more by the LS60s than the Klipsch speakers...
 
No, that's not really a thing beyond the first few minutes and is often done during testing at the factory.

The LS60s should be able to go below ~38hz pretty well, which suggests you might have a room null there that's being activated more by the LS60s than the Klipsch speakers...
Damn that’s such a bummer, i was hoping these would be the perfect upgrade and give me the same satisfaction in terms of bass as the Formation Duo’s did… Oh well
 
Damn that’s such a bummer, i was hoping these would be the perfect upgrade and give me the same satisfaction in terms of bass as the Formation Duo’s did… Oh well
Have you tried a frequency sweep to see if you can hear which frequencies are problematic? I use this a lot, you can run it on your phone via bluetooth if nothing else.
 
Have you tried a frequency sweep to see if you can hear which frequencies are problematic? I use this a lot, you can run it on your phone via bluetooth if nothing else.
No I haven’t, I can try but tbh they sound great from the mids up, it’s just that the quantity and the amount of hz of bass i’m getting that’s a bummer
 
Damn that’s such a bummer, i was hoping these would be the perfect upgrade and give me the same satisfaction in terms of bass as the Formation Duo’s did… Oh well
A functioning LS60 will easily produce audible bass below 40Hz.

Room modes can reduce bass, but only in a very narrow frequency window. They can't cut all bass below e.g. 40Hz.

Try using a frequency generator to sweep from 100Hz downwards.

Once with both LS60s playing, once with just the left one and once with just the right.

If you consistently lose bass at a frequency higher than what the LS60 is capable of, then that would suggest either a setup issue (try a factory reset->User manual), or a fault with the speakers.
 
A functioning LS60 will easily produce audible bass below 40Hz.

Room modes can reduce bass, but only in a very narrow frequency window. They can't cut all bass below e.g. 40Hz.

Try using a frequency generator to sweep from 100Hz downwards.

Once with both LS60s playing, once with just the left one and once with just the right.

If you consistently lose bass at a frequency higher than what the LS60 is capable of, then that would suggest either a setup issue (try a factory reset->User manual), or a fault with the speakers.
Okay I will try. How can I do that with my phone?
 
Must be a setting messed up or a fault with the speakers. Using those tone generators I can hear 80hz on my tablet at 50% volume.
 
I don’t think i have the equipment for that i think, maybe i connect my laptop and use a 10 band EQ?
Yeah that'd be a good way to go about it. I could recommend Equilizer APO with the Peace EQ front-end.
Do both the Klipsch The Fives and the Formation Duo have elevated bass?
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1741637125487.png


My interpretation of this is that the Klipsch, with its characteristic V-shaped (or "smiley") frequency response will perceptually have an elevated bass response. Bass from about 100Hz on down is boosted roughtly 3dB compared to the rest of the frequency range (at least until you get to the elevated treble response). The KEF LS60, by comparison, is much flatter in the bass (and obviously has far superior extension). Perceptually this will probably sound bass shy in comparison. I think a 3dB boost in the bass might get you what you're looking for.

That's assuming, of course, that the LS60 isn't activating a serious room mode due to its superior extension that the Fives and Duo weren't. If so, you still need EQ but you'll need measurements to see where the room mode is occurring to correct it. Or you'll need an automated room EQ like Dirac to do it for you. I think it's worthwhile to invest in a DSP platform of some sort. And a measurement microphone.

Edit: You should definitely be trying what the others suggest, though, to ensure it's not something more basic like messed up settings or a damaged/defective driver.
 
Yeah that'd be a good way to go about it. I could recommend Equilizer APO with the Peace EQ front-end.

View attachment 435125View attachment 435126

My interpretation of this is that the Klipsch, with its characteristic V-shaped (or "smiley") frequency response will perceptually have an elevated bass response. Bass from about 100Hz on down is boosted roughtly 3dB compared to the rest of the frequency range (at least until you get to the elevated treble response). The KEF LS60, by comparison, is much flatter in the bass (and obviously has far superior extension). Perceptually this will probably sound bass shy in comparison. I think a 3dB boost in the bass might get you what you're looking for.

That's assuming, of course, that the LS60 isn't activating a serious room mode due to its superior extension that the Fives and Duo weren't. If so, you still need EQ but you'll need measurements to see where the room mode is occurring to correct it. Or you'll need an automated room EQ like Dirac to do it for you. I think it's worthwhile to invest in a DSP platform of some sort. And a measurement microphone.

Edit: You should definitely be trying what the others suggest, though, to ensure it's not something more basic like messed up settings or a damaged/defective driver.

I honestly think that’s it, the V shape of the other speakers. Which frequencies can i boost with PEQ to (temporarily and i know not the most accurately) test this? Is maybe a WiiMP a good future purchase?
 
LS60’s aren’t bass shy as others have already pointed out. Mine had very useable response below 30Hz in my room. Room mode for me that is/was problematic was ~70Hz in my setup.

OP - I might have missed it but what’s your room layout like? Size? Cubic feet/meter volume. How loud? Do you have some flexibility with speaker placement and or your listening position? First things first, before messing with settings is playing with optimizing your set up if possible. Still sound like something weird going or you’re sitting in some hell of a spot for cancellation.

Measuring would tell more…
 
I honestly think that’s it, the V shape of the other speakers. Which frequencies can i boost with PEQ to (temporarily and i know not the most accurately) test this? Is maybe a WiiMP a good future purchase?
If you want a subjective bass boost that will get you closer to the Fives I would add a +3-5dB low shelf at 100hz. I don't advise this, but you could also try scooping the mids with a very wide (very low Q) peaking filter at -2dB around 1Khz.

If you do this and the bass still sounds weak, it's probably either a problem with the room (which is possible to correct with a WiiM), an upstream issue, or the speakers themselves might be defective.
 
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LS60’s aren’t bass shy as others have already pointed out. Mine had very useable response below 30Hz in my room. Room mode for me that is/was problematic was ~70Hz in my setup.

OP - I might have missed it but what’s your room layout like? Size? Cubic feet/meter volume. How loud? Do you have some flexibility with speaker placement and or your listening position? First things first, before messing with settings is playing with optimizing your set up if possible. Still sound like something weird going or you’re sitting in some hell of a spot for cancellation.

Measuring would tell more…
This is the result (no wall mode, bass extension extra, treble trim +3)
IMG_5078.png


The sweep was pretty loud and i could definitely hear more low frequencies now, so i truly think i need to do a slight V shape EQ, to maybe get satisfying bass at my listening level and to make it more comparable with the Fives/Duo’s.

The speakers are in a 35m2 rectangle room. Sadly i don’t have much flexibility in terms of
placement because of the layout of the room and the seating area in it.
 
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This is the result (no wall mode, bass extension extra, treble trim +3)View attachment 435140

The sweep was pretty loud and i could definitely hear more low frequencies now, so i truly think i need to do a slight V shape EQ, to maybe get satisfying bass at my listening level and to make it more comparable with the Fives/Duo’s.

The speakers are in a 35m2 rectangle room. Sadly i don’t have much flexibility in terms of
placement because of the layout of the room and the seating area in it.
I'm going to mostly disregard the high frequencies because it's from an iPhone, but you've definitely got some room modes going on here, looks like maybe a null down near 20hz, big peak around 32, null around 64, and more. These tend to really throw off the bass you hear, unsurprisingly.

I might just try pulling the mids down a little with and see how that sounds to you. Also, if you are hooking a laptop up for testing, I would definitely recommend pulling down the peaks you see here using EQAPO / PEACE.
 
I'm going to mostly disregard the high frequencies because it's from an iPhone, but you've definitely got some room modes going on here, looks like maybe a null down near 20hz, big peak around 32, null around 64, and more. These tend to really throw off the bass you hear, unsurprisingly.

I might just try pulling the mids down a little with and see how that sounds to you. Also, if you are hooking a laptop up for testing, I would definitely recommend pulling down the peaks you see here using EQAPO / PEACE.
Im such a beginner this sounds so complicated, I don’t even know wat PEACE is and which peaks/which frequencies I need to pull down or up.

I might just buy a WiiM and do room correction, although i don’t know how to do that either.

I’m definitely willing to learn and do the work to make these sound perfect tho
 
1741646493840.png


I'm not an EQ expert, but I believe those would be the peaks of concern. Somewhat counterintuitively, peaks are way more audible than dips. Those peaks also result in masking of the surrounding frequencies, so (again counterintuitively) they can make the bass sound recessed since, perceptually, there are whole swaths of the bass that are being drowned out by those few frequencies with huge boosts.

So for your filters, I think the best approach would be to bring those peaks down to flat-ish and then do a low-shelf boost to bring the bass region up to your taste. For the one at ~33Hz, for example, you'd want a -15dB or so peaking filter. I'm not sure what the "Q" of the filter would be (Q defines how narrow or broad the filter is).
 
Im such a beginner this sounds so complicated, I don’t even know wat PEACE is and which peaks/which frequencies I need to pull down or up.

I might just buy a WiiM and do room correction, although i don’t know how to do that either.

I’m definitely willing to learn and do the work to make these sound perfect tho
Doing EQ by hand sounds pretty complicated but it can be pretty intuitive once you've done a couple measurements and tweaks. Basically you are adding one filter per peak to lower them, so that the green line becomes smoother and closer to the yellow line.

Basically, to handle peaks by hand, here's what you would do:

Find a peak (as @kyuu points out), note the frequency. Look at the difference between the top of the peak and the yellow line. For the lowest peak, this would probably be 33ish Hz and 13dB.

In the EQ software (Peace or EQAPO or WiiM or MiniDSP etc.) make a "peaking" filter (easy to remember) with the same frequency, but -13dB gain instead of +13. You are lowering the peak here.

There is a third setting, "Q". This stands for the width / sharpness of the filter. Usually for correcting bass, Q will be between 1.0 and 2.0. Higher numbers make sharper peaks or cuts. Setting Q is somewhat trial and error, but the goal is to make the filter match the width of the peak in your measured response. It might take a few tries.

If the software shows you the EQ curve, you can use that to adjust Q by eye, otherwise take another measurement and adjust based on the result.

WiiM has the same functionality as this, it's pretty standard in any EQ software.

Basic room correction software (like on WiiM or the REW utility) automates this process, but doesn't do anything you can't theoretically do by hand. It works on exactly the same basis, but tries to solve for the best-fit curve it can using a set number of filters.

You can also sort of try to fill in dips the same way, but it doesn't work as well due to the acoustic nature of dips vs. peaks. Peaks are 1+1=2, so 0.5 + 0.5 = 1. But dips are 1-1=0. If you adjust it, 2-2=0 and 0.5-0.5=0... so adjusting dips doesn't work the same.

IRL dips aren't usually cancelled truly perfectly, so you can fill them in a little, but asking your amp to do +10dB at low frequencies is typically not fun for the amp, so they're hard to deal with using EQ.

More advanced room correction software like Dirac, Audyssey or Trinnov does fancy things with phase and even actively cancelling some reflected sound to further improve sound... but you get pretty far (maybe 80%) by just leveling out peaks.

Anyway, it looks like you have some pretty considerable peaks in your response... it's likely that your Klipsch speakers were exciting the same modes. Once you correct the dips you're probably going to feel even more of a lack of bass. But, once that's done, don't be afraid to add a low shelf to the whole thing and boost the bass back to where you like it. Once you've done that, you'll have smooth bass and the correct quantity, with each bass note coming through at the correct volume, not the semi-random in-and-out sound you get with uncorrected bass.
 
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