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bass control in living room

seangoodman

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Hi, I am starting to look at doing some room treatment to hopefully get my bass control a little bit under control and improve some reflections. I am currently in the process of making some absorbers for the first reflection points so all that remains is to get a bit of a strategy regarding the bass. as a living room its a bit of a compromise bit maybe a few of you more knowledgable guys can offer a bit of advice.

1) Left Speaker: I can either do a Soffit column or a SuperChunk triangle, if I go square the sides would be 300mm x 300mm absolute max. speaker position makes more that this tight. I can do a triangle 620 x 620 max. can however only do a height of just above the speaker ca 1300 max.

2) Right Speaker: here it is a bit more difficult, there is a window recess in the corner, I never use it however and the curtain in front of it is always closed. I can go full height of the recess here. I could either do a flat panel and fill the complete recess which would be 570 w X 234 h X 220 thick or a bit thinner with a 5 cm or so air gap behind it, or a triangle 570 w X 220 so not equilateral.

3) I have one more position in a corner behind the MLP where I could either do a square column or triangle, I can either do from top of record storage to ceiling or full height as the record storage is two shelf units pushed into the corner so has a gap in the corner behind it. if I went square I could do about 270 x 270 and triangle again about 270 x 270

any comments or advice would be great other ideas are always welcome

Sean
 

Balle Clorin

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Get REW a mic and measure the repsonses. Posistining is important
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seangoodman

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have done that already Thanks.

here's a few pics of the room and left speaker response
 

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Hipper

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Bass would be roughly defined as from 0-300Hz.

There are four ways to control the bass in your room:

1. Positioning of speakers and chair.
2. Room treatment.
3. Using a subwoofer or multiple subwoofers.
4. DSP/EQ.

Or a combination of any of these things.

Domestic arrangements can be the limiting factor of course. So can an asymmetric room or setup.

If you look on the GIK site you can get some ideas as to what effect the different sizes and shapes of bass traps can have:

https://gikacoustics.co.uk/product-category/bass-traps/

For instance, compare the Soffit Trap, which is 400mm square, to the Tri-Trap.

If you make the products smaller they have less effect or you need more of them. It is possible to make them blend in to some extent into your room by covering them with some attractive outer layer but that covering will still need to be an open type weave. There may be places where you can get such material printed with some design of your choice (I believe GIK can do this).

In your domestic setting I would think that suitable bass traps would be quite intrusive. In addition it may not be practical to move the speakers further away from both walls, which I think might improve the bass. Try it anyway just to hear and measure what that does. Perhaps it is possible to move the speakers out for listening and back when not in use.

I would think the ideal for you would be some DSP or EQ.

If you insist on bass traps then the bigger and the more of them the better. All corners will help - wall-wall, ceiling-wall, and floor-wall.
 
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seangoodman

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Bass would be roughly defined as from 0-300Hz.

There are four ways to control the bass in your room:

1. Positioning of speakers and chair.
2. Room treatment.
3. Using a subwoofer or multiple subwoofers.
4. DSP/EQ.

Or a combination of any of these things.

Domestic arrangements can be the limiting factor of course. So can an asymmetric room or setup.

If you look on the GIK site you can get some ideas as to what effect the different sizes and shapes of bass traps can have:

https://gikacoustics.co.uk/product-category/bass-traps/

For instance, compare the Soffit Trap, which is 400mm square, to the Tri-Trap.

If you make the products smaller they have less effect or you need more of them. It is possible to make them blend in to some extent into your room by covering them with some attractive outer layer but that covering will still need to be an open type weave. There may be places where you can get such material printed with some design of your choice (I believe GIK can do this).

In your domestic setting I would think that suitable bass traps would be quite intrusive. In addition it may not be practical to move the speakers further away from both walls, which I think might improve the bass. Try it anyway just to hear and measure what that does. Perhaps it is possible to move the speakers out for listening and back when not in use.

I would think the ideal for you would be some DSP or EQ.

If you insist on bass traps then the bigger and the more of them the better. All corners will help - wall-wall, ceiling-wall, and floor-wall.
oing to make a soffit


thanks for your reply, I can do room eq and have indeed made some filters with some success for my digital music, I am now looking at improving the room so as to benefit in my vinyl playback world and maybe reduce filters in new / Roon.
I have taken REW measurements and compared to various speaker positions, 20 cm in or out left or right, bit of toe in etc. where they are now is the best results, the room is symmetrical so my measurements are pretty much the same both sides which at least is one good thing. the two chairs about 114cm away from the speakers (can just see corner of one in pic) are a bit in the way I admit but I can't do much about that.

have just got back from store and am going to make one or two soffit type traps 41.5cm x 41.5 cm and 120cm tall and see what they do. I was thinking put one in corner behind left speaker and measure just that speaker to see if anything changes,

as I mentioned above at the top, any thoughts on what size / shape traps which might be beneficial without ruining aesthetics of room too much would be great, I have the front left, right and that little corner above records as areas where I could get started

many thanks
 

Willem

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There is no reason why dsp room eq would not work for vinyl as well, although it may require different hardware, depending on how you equalize your digital sources.
 
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seangoodman

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There is no reason why dsp room eq would not work for vinyl as well, although it may require different hardware, depending on how you equalize your digital sources.
thank you, yes I know its not what I am looking to achieve though, I am going on a journey learning / building my experience on natural room treatments as I find it interesting
 

Willem

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OK I understand. Mind you, it is not either or. The combination of as many tactics as possible is likely to give the best results.
 

Frank Dernie

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thank you, yes I know its not what I am looking to achieve though, I am going on a journey learning / building my experience on natural room treatments as I find it interesting
I have found the position of the speakers to be the most powerful influence on evening up the bass throughout the room. Mind you, I did noise and vibration research almost 50 years ago and for most of the time I have been a hifi enthusiast bass traps and speaker position were the only options for good in room bass.
If you position the speakers to excite a lot of the room modes and harmonics rather than just the main ones each of the several peaks will be smaller and the bass will be more even throughout the room. This is the same science as that behind NXT and BMR speaker drivers.
A friend of mine used his sofa base to make a big tuned helmholz absorber for his main room mode which works well.
If you are using vinyl it is essential to have a phono stage which maximally filters out all frequencies below 20Hz, there is a technically foolish recent fashion for not having this, which is a very strong indication of how very few people, even in the industry, understand seismic vibration transducers and how they work!
 

Bjorn

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If you're to use porous materiale for bass trapping, you will need thickness and cover as much area as possible. The total area covered is what matters, and not the shape of it. One also need to use to optimal porous material for the specific thickness.

Using thick absorbers to treat specular reflections will also give you some additional low frequency absorption.

Working with placement of both speakers and listening position should always come first. You can move yourself out of room modes to some degree.
 
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