Small room with bass issues

[hascherpur]

Dear all

I have recently purchased the Genelec 8030s which sound very good. However, I keep having some sound issues. Specifically, I am having a really annoying 120hz peak behind my desktop PC monitors (see red zone). I bought bass traps, but could not get rid of the issues. As you will see on the picture, I also have a mounted space heater in the corner that makes things complicated. I cannot remove that heater and also get some peak there, thought most of it is behind the monitors. It seems to be a weird resonance with my wooden table and my desktop pc monitors. Do you have any advice for treating this room?

Much appreciated!

 

[Aerith Gainsborough]

Why exactly do you care about bass resonance peaks BEHIND your monitor? Do you often stick your head in there to check the cabling?

Funsies aside: you will always have peaks and dips across the room. Especially near walls/corners. When I lie in my bed (above my computer) and my had is basically in a corner, I could swear that my sub tries to bash in my skull. Physics, can't be helped. Or rather can only be helped by a lot of subs distributed in the room.

If you get an annoying peaks at the actual listening position, I would recommend DSP equalization.
Can be manual like Equalizer APO with REW or automatic like Dirac Live.

Dips at the listening position are far more problematic, difficult to impossible to fix, depending on the room.

 

[hascherpur]

Thanks for your response. I guess my description was a bit off. What I meant to say is that I noticed a big peak behind there (I guess because of weird reflections and resonances), which then go into the room. It makes listening to bass heavy stuff quite annoying.

This is not something I can fix with DSP and I want to possibly get rid of the peak, if possible. Does that make sense?

 

[LightninBoy]

You are always going to have bass peaks as you get close to a wall. Since that's not where you listen, you shouldn't care. So what we need to know is what is the response at your listening position.

You mention that the peaks are resonating the desk? Is that your theory on why the peak is there or do you feel and hear the desk resonating?

 

[Aerith Gainsborough]

This is not something I can fix with DSP and I want to possibly get rid of the peak, if possible. Does that make sense?

"Chopping off" peaks is precisely why programs such as Dirac Live have been created. it's what they excel at.

You will still notice that the room "likes" some frequencies and others not so much but it'll be far less egregious.
I had a super annoying peak of ~+7dB @ 60Hz. Made listening to wandering bass lines so annoying.
With Dirac enabled, that problem is mitigated by 85%.

 

[DSJR]

It would appear on the surface that the only way to moderate this is to get the speakers away from boundaries. I can't do this easily with my Harbeths and blocking the ports made no difference here. Surely there's some DSP you can do to moderate the 120Hz region? Speakers should be off the desk (Isopods can maybe help here and decouple from the workstation a little). You probably can't cure the issue but it may be possible to moderate the worst effects of this perhaps?

 

[hascherpur]

Thanks for all the replies. To clarify:
I am sitting behind the desk (as this is where I work). A lot of answers say to DSP this problem. Yes, technically this is possible, but the issue I have is that it DSP this would make my setup very complicated. I am running a DX7 Pro to use headphones and to power the speakers. I do not want to change the DSP settings everytime I switch to speakers. On top of that I do not possess any Dirac capable device. If I wanted to integrate a Dirac capable device (e.g., minidsp), I would have to buy it and probably buy a second dac/amp for my speakers, so that I can use the dirac only for that.
It is possible, but it seems to become complicated.

That is why I was wondering, if any wall treatment could help.

 

[Aerith Gainsborough]

If your source device is a computer, Dirac Live standalone makes it very simple.

That being said: if you do not want "complicated" solutions, I can give you two options:
- stick to headphones
- get your head away from the wall when listening to audio

Treatment of bass is... problematic at best and requires rather large absorbers.

 

[Jas0_0]

I agree that DSP would solve your problem.

If your computer is the source, Dirac as suggested above is great but there are lots of ways to implement DSP without spending lots of money on dedicated systems like Dirac. If you’re on a PC EqualiserAPO is free and does system-wide music correction.

A simple route would be to measure your room using REW (also free) and a mic such as a miniDSP UMIK (about £100), then use REW’s EQ function, then output the resulting correction filters as a WAV and then load this into EqualiserAPO. I believe EQAPO allows you to create presets, so you’d be able to switch between EQ for your speakers and EQ for your headphones with a couple of mouse clicks.

 

[Willem]

The last post is spot on and is exactly what I do. One other thing to consider is the proximity to the desk. I use Harbeth P3ESRs as my desktop speakers and for best result they had to be lifted from the desk to bring the tweeter to ear height. That also reduced the bass boost from the desk (the desk effectively created a corner position for the speakers). Even so, measurement with a UMIK-1 and REW showed that there was still some unwanted bass reinforcement. So I created an equalization curve in REW and uploaded that into Equalizer Apo on my PC (my only source in this system).

 

[Eetu]

Have you already tried the desktop setting on the Genelecs?

 

[daftcombo]

I am in a similar situation in my small room: 6m² with Genelec 8030C.

On some tracks, I have a resonance hitting hard at LP. I have a window 40cm behind LP.
I would say it's around 80Hz though I didn't measure yet.

If I move my head 75cm ahead, the resonance isn't there anymore, and bass is kinda lacking.

 

[Aerith Gainsborough]

The last post is spot on and is exactly what I do. One other thing to consider is the proximity to the desk. I use Harbeth P3ESRs as my desktop speakers and for best result they had to be lifted from the desk to bring the tweeter to ear height. That also reduced the bass boost from the desk (the desk effectively created a corner position for the speakers). Even so, measurement with a UMIK-1 and REW showed that there was still some unwanted bass reinforcement. So I created an equalization curve in REW and uploaded that into Equalizer Apo on my PC (my only source in this system).

Yop, the free version works reasonably well, depends on how "tinker happy" the person in question is though.
I used it myself for a while but to me, Dirac was just easier, especially since I wanted it for a multichannel setup.

No insult intended but I doubt the OP would be willing to do the fiddly REW dance.

 

[Willem]

I did not find the REW plus equalizer Apo route too complex. See here for a tutorial by the always clear Julian Krause:

 

[Jukka]

That sounds like a room mode for sure, I don't think 8030 has enough power to excite a desk. If you got stone walls (concrete, brick etc), that's what you got for a room of that size. REW has a room simulator that can predict the modes, you could try it.

Acoustic treatment is harder when you go lower in frequency. Something like "Manhattan diffusors" could work, but you need to cover at least half of the wall on the axis you want to cure. Bass absorbers are out of the window if you are space limited.

Many miniDSP products have 4 output channels, which can be dsp'ed independently, so you would still get clean headphone experience.

I'd try with REW and EQ APO first and after you've fallen in love with it, try a miniDSP product that fits your needs (= SHD). That's what I did

 

[keenly]

ALL small rooms have major bass issues. ALL, without exception.

 

[Watsonian]

The 8030 should have a bunch of dip switches round the back of the monitor, it's worth playing with them (refer to the manual).

See how you fare with changing the settings - it'll cost you nothing.

 

[Jukka]

ALL small rooms have major bass issues. ALL, without exception.

There also is no such a thing as too large speaker for any (small) room. If it fits in, it's good! Any speaker can be tuned to compensate room gain with dsp and kill modes with acoustic treatment and dsp. In fact, I encourage to try large subwoofers (≥ 12", the bigger the better, sealed box if possible) with dsp crossover regardles of room size, because that's how you get high quality bass reproduction at the edge of your hearing range with a force that will make you smile. Every time.

A 16-incher next to your pair of R3 will make you cry for not getting it sooner.

 

[txbdan]

I also have a pair of 8030Cs in a 12x13 office and also have a 120Hz mode/peak. I Dirac'ed that sucker into submission.

 

[keenly]

There also is no such a thing as too large speaker for any (small) room. If it fits in, it's good! Any speaker can be tuned to compensate room gain with dsp and kill modes with acoustic treatment and dsp. In fact, I encourage to try large subwoofers (≥ 12", the bigger the better, sealed box if possible) with dsp crossover regardles of room size, because that's how you get high quality bass reproduction at the edge of your hearing range with a force that will make you smile. Every time.

A 16-incher next to your pair of R3 will make you cry for not getting it sooner.

Dennis Foley would say you can not EQ 10db dips or peaks?