Stuffing Socks into Speaker Ports - Is There a Better Alternative?

[Connor1a]

One useful thing I've run across is further damping rather than blocking ports. Loose foam might sort of do that. I forget the product which fit in ports and let them breathe only one way or some such. My homebrew method is stuffing ports with straws. You can bundle them together so they fit the port and tape around them so they slide right in. This will resistively damp the ports action. Those small coffee straws provide a bit more damping than regular diameter straws, but both will measurably alter the port response. The length of the straw honeycomb also changes the amount of damping as well.

Here is an old Stereophile measurement section where they show the effect of straw stuffing on some RS LX5 speakers (one of those with the Linaeum tweeters).

RadioShack Optimus Pro LX5 loudspeaker Measurements

Sidebar 3: Measurements

www.stereophile.com

This is really interesting (seriously). Much better, more appropriate, than stuffing my (clean) gym socks into my unoffending and otherwise innocent speakers… Thank you!

 

[Old_School_Brad]

How do you listen to music? Streaming? Multiple sources?

The reason I’m asking is that you could consider using a Wiim and your phone as a microphone to identify problematic room modes and address them this way.

 

[Connor1a]

How do you listen to music? Streaming? Multiple sources?

The reason I’m asking is that you could consider using a Wiim and your phone as a microphone to identify problematic room modes and address them this way.

I stream from my WiiM Ultra about 40% of the time, then I use my TT about 30% of the time and finally I stream from my Sonos Port about 10% of the time. However, my WiiM is also my preamp so everything is flowing through it before hitting my amps…

 

[Old_School_Brad]

I stream from my WiiM Ultra about 40% of the time, then I use my TT about 30% of the time and finally I stream from my Sonos Port about 10% of the time. However, my WiiM is also my preamp so everything is flowing through it before hitting my amps…

Alright, I’d suggest trying the built-in room correction guide it offers. This way, you can check if it improves the sound to your ears.

 

[Hear Here]

I have a set of rear firing Warfendale Heritage Lintons that are in the corner of my listening room with limited space behind them.

Let's see more "heritage" style speakers if it means the return of decent sized woofer in main speakers!

The Lintons were always a stand-mount, but Wharfedale were renowned also for their floor-standers. I had a pair of their top-of-the-range, big (4.5 cu ft), 6-sided Airedale model, that could be corner placed - complete with 15" bass drivers. This model had a number of back-panel slots instead of a simple round port, a design favoured by Gilbert Briggs as a less troublesome alternative. Because this speaker was intended for corner placement or close to a rear wall, the slots were perhaps better than a single port when speakers are close to walls.

Times and fashions have changed and drivers and enclosure designs have improved hugely since those days, but those old Airedales would still sound better than many modern under-spec'd speakers with their puny 6.5 or 7" bass drivers! Your Linton use a pretty respectable (for these days) 8" woofer.

For your Lintons, you could place a thick sheet of a semi-transparent (acoustically) material over the port and try single, double or triple thicknesses. Whether there will be any sound improvement, I can't guess, but it's a cheap enough exercise. Or even try plugging the port completely.

As others have said, the better solution is to move the speakers further from adjacent walls (you can't), or to change to different speakers that are likely to be much happier in a corner - maybe non-ported or front-ported. The obvious choice, though probably impractical, is possibly horn speakers as they are typically much more tolerant of nearby walls.

Good luck with your tests.

 

[Chazz6]

I found stuffing the port tames boomy bass but at the expense of the overall sound. An alternative is adjustment by parametric equalizer. This can be done by trial and error without getting into room correction, which seems to be difficult to do with accuracy. For files and streams, there are nearly free software equalizers, for example, ffmpeg implemented during playback by Minimstreamer.

 

[Waxx]

you can make the speaker aperiodic with filling it with felt. Glass or rockwool would also damp it, but is bad for your health. Then the bass becomes less boomy (more a roll off like a sealed, but lower). But it's very tricky to do it right. It may be easier to use the eq of your WiIm to correct that sound

 

[krabapple]

I dunno, given corner placement (maximum SBIR, pressure zones for all modes) isn't fussing with ports like hunting tiger with a popgun?