Tweakers' Asylum Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ.

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Gaining extension

Posted by David Aiken (A) on August 14, 2003 at 17:06:22

In Reply to: Re: 'amount' of bass posted by pburke on August 14, 2003 at 07:57:32:

Gaining extension is a strange process in a couple of ways. For a start, as I said above, it usually comes at the cost of some bass 'quantity' a bit higher up. Educating yourself to appreciate a flatter response takes a bit of time but does yield a lot more enjoyment when you no longer miss the weight a bit higher up in the frequency range. It's also strange when you start to notice just what can gain you a bit more extension.

Vibration control definitely helps. My experience is that getting stands as rigid as possible and applying any isolation immediately below a component is best. What is surprising is just where the vibration can get it, and even cables seem to be able to transmit vibration. Try raising speaker cables off the floor with raisers of some kind, and keep your interconnects to the amps, and even the amp power cords raised. You may not notice some of these things initially but they can add up, and as you start to reduce overall vibration levels affecting your system you will start to notice things where you didn't notice anything before. Be prepared to look at everything in your system as a potential source of vibration.

Cable hygiene is important for other reasons. Run power close to other cables and the electromagnetic field from the power cord can modulate the signal in the other cables. This can be another source of premature bass roll off.

Room acoustics, especially absorption and the reduction in room reverberation time, will also gain you some extension. It lowers the 'noise floor' of the room, allowing you to hear some lower bass that was previously masked by the reverberation. This also gives you a better sense of dynamics and a lot of other goodies as well.

And finally there's power. Bass response is always more demanding on amps, regardless of whether we're discussing extension or quantity or both. If you can use a dedicated line for the audio equipment you may well be surprised at the results. Good shielded power cords and a bit of power filtration can help a lot also.

None of these will turn your Maggies, or my Dyn Contour 1.3 SEs into speakers that shake your chest at 20 Hz, but I think you will be surprised at just what paying attention to a pile of little things can do to imporve your sound overall, including gaining a bit of bass extension you never dreamed your speakers were capable of. I'm convinced very very few people ever hear what their speakers, and system, are really capable of. Putting in the care and attention to the little details needn't cost a lot and it certainly can and will yield quite significant improvements. I can virtually guarantee your system will surprise you, no matter how well you think you know its sound.

David Aiken

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