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RE: New room, new problems, long

Posted by David Aiken on February 3, 2010 at 22:24:36:
"The bass is so far the problem. When sitting in the listening chair it significantly decreases but once I stand it is present and boomy seeming to fill the room."

The change in bass with height sounds to me like a floor to ceiling mode issue which you may be able to correct by altering your sitting height, either up or down. As you move along any room dimension (up/down, front/back, left/right) you will pass through zones where bass is stronger and zones where it is weaker. That's part of the way in which room modes behave. Since there is a difference between sitting and standing I'd say the issue is the up/down movement with you sitting with your ears in a weak bass zone and standing with your ears in a strong bass zone.

If you are also moving forward or back a bit when you stand, eg moving forward as you stand because the chair stays in the same location, then there may be a bit of movement to the front helping to move you into a stronger bass zone. You could simply try moving the chair forward a bit to see if that helps.

You will have some control over bass by moving the chair forward or back a little and/or changing your sitting height but there are limits to what you can do that way. You may be able to do enough in which case that's the simplest way to work with things.

If you can't do enough that way, then we're starting to talk bass traps and the unfortunate fact is that there really are no small bass traps. Bass traps need to be big to have an effect and you need several to really start to smooth a room's low frequency response. If possible it's recommended to go floor to ceiling with bass traps in all 4 corners. If space in the corner is an issue and mounting a 2' panel diagonally across the corner isn't possible, then you could try mounting a panel on each wall, meeting in the corner. That still leaves a bit of space in the corner that you would lose with the diagonal placement but it also requires twice as many panels.

If space does not permit bass traps then you could try one of the electronic room correction devices. They can produce some reasonable results, depending on the device you choose, but depending on the device you choose you may be limited to correcting things for only one listening position. The Audyssey system, available in some HT gear, allows you to correct over several listening positions and achieves reasonable results in my TV system but it also involves digitising your signal for the processing and you may not want to do that.

I've seen some comments on electronic devices that use an extra speaker which delivers a signal derived from the music but altered so that when it reaches your ear at the same time as the music signal from your normal speakers, it sums with the music from your speakers to produce a smooth response. I've seen mention of "electronic bass traps" designed to do this for a single room mode and systems designed to try and achieve the same result over a wider range but I can't remember names and haven't seen any in use. I do seem to remember Kal Rubinson commenting on an electronic bass trap device in Stereophile probably a couple of years ago now.

There are also people who swear by a parametric equaliser at bass frequencies and a Behringer bass equaliser is often mentioned favourably. I have no experience so I can't comment.

Sadly that's the options I can think of: making listening position adjustments to try and get a better bass balance, using bass traps, or electronic correction of some kind. I use bass traps in my listening room and I'm very happy with the results. I can say I definitely prefer the sound I get from my audio system with physical room treatments to the sound I get from my TV system which relies on electronic EQ but the audio system is considerably higher in quality than the TV system and the room the audio system is in is also a better room than the room the TV system is in so there are other factors at play there than just the difference between physical acoustic treatment and electronic correction.