Evaluating bass response of a speaker
Spencer Burt
I don't know much about bass response and I need to know in order to
avoid the purchase of yet another annoying, bass-heavy speaker.
Presently, I own the Infinity sm152 loudspeakers (250 watts/channel).
The woofer is in close proximity to the floor. I am seriously considering
Klipsch Chorus II's with the 15-inch powered sub for expanded hz response.
I realize that adding the sub will add bass; the question is, will it
be overwelming in correspondence to the mid and hi frequencies, or not.
The bass from my infinities covers up everything. I use loudness with
treble and bass neutral (Loudness off is muddy and turning down the bass
with loudness brings out the harsh treble characteristic of my worthless
speakers). My room is 14 X 14 feet. The walls are drywall. I
typically listen to hard rock; Alice in Chains, Smashing Pumpkins, etc.
What is it that constitutes an overwelming bass response, and
would the Klipsch perform better in this environment?
Thanx for reading and responding.
P.S.- Planning on running new speakers with Adcom GFA-555II's.
Dazed and Confused,
Brian (on a friend's account at sb...@nyx.cs.du.edu)
Michael Phillips
>I don't know much about bass response and I need to know in order to
>avoid the purchase of yet another annoying, bass-heavy speaker.
>Presently, I own the Infinity sm152 loudspeakers (250 watts/channel).
>The woofer is in close proximity to the floor. I am seriously considering
>Klipsch Chorus II's with the 15-inch powered sub for expanded hz response.
to the the system you are talking about. The subwoofer has a variable low
frequency crossover and an internal (I think 100 watt) amp. The bass is
TOO much and I would have been better off putting the money I spent on the
subwoofer into better speakers. I'd recommend the same to you....
Lon Stowell
>I don't know much about bass response and I need to know in order to
>avoid the purchase of yet another annoying, bass-heavy speaker.
>Presently, I own the Infinity sm152 loudspeakers (250 watts/channel).
>The woofer is in close proximity to the floor. I am seriously considering
>Klipsch Chorus II's with the 15-inch powered sub for expanded hz response.
>
>I realize that adding the sub will add bass; the question is, will it
>be overwelming in correspondence to the mid and hi frequencies, or not.
turn up the level and xover too high.
>The bass from my infinities covers up everything. I use loudness with
>treble and bass neutral (Loudness off is muddy and turning down the bass
>with loudness brings out the harsh treble characteristic of my worthless
>speakers). My room is 14 X 14 feet. The walls are drywall. I
>typically listen to hard rock; Alice in Chains, Smashing Pumpkins, etc.
Try moving the speakers out into the room, put them on stands a
couple feet off the floor, etc. etc. etc. A bass driver near a
wall or floor boosts bass. A bass driver in a corner boosts bass
even more.
You turn on the loudness control and then complain about too much
bass? That's kinda like saying "doctor, it hurts when I smash
my head with a hammer!"
Your problem isn't your speakers at all. The odds of you liking
the Klipsch any better than the Infinity's you now own are very
very slim. You may have a real bad personality mismatch with
your room and the Infinity, but those are not particularly bad
speakers...probably much smoother than Klipsch would be. Of course
you may not LIKE smooth sound, so get return privileges on any
speakers you change to.
You may want to try a small EQ rather than loudness, but your
description of "muddy" with the loudness off is quite confusing at
best. Muddy is usually a term for poorly controlled bass.
Most rock bass is pretty peaky in the 80-100 Hz region. You may
want to use an EQ. Turn up the 32Hz slider a bit, droop the 120 Hz
slider to get rid of any annoying "BOOM", and maybe add a bit at
200-300 to add a bit of warmth.
If you get Dire Strait's "Brothers In Arms" track on the same album
to sound good, then work on getting "Money for Nothing" to sound
good. Those are fairly neutral tracks. Guns & Roses seems to like
cheap speaker sound--they sound MUCH better with the bass drooped
at 100 Hz by about 4 dB or more...which seems to be the case with
lotsa rock tracks where the EQ guy seems to want good speakers to
always sound like boom-tink Cerwin Vega disco units.
CHARLES M SEATON
>
> I don't know much about bass response and I need to know in order to
> avoid the purchase of yet another annoying, bass-heavy speaker.
> .... My room is 14 X 14 feet. The walls are drywall....
> Dazed and Confused,
> Brian (on a friend's account at sb...@nyx.cs.du.edu)
>
>
A significant part of your problem might be your room. A square is
about the worst possible shape for a music environment. The reason
is that each pair of opposite surfaces creates a resonant frequency:
I'll quote from "Creative Recording vol. 3, Acoustics, Soundproofing
and Monitoring" by Paul White, substituting your room dimensions for
his example room:
"If a sound wave is generated with exactly the same length as the longest
dimension of a room, it will be reflected back and forth from the facing
walls in phase with the original, thus reinforcing it; this phenomena is
known as a standing wave." --For a 14 foot long room, this frequency
would be about 38 Hz, slightly lower than low E on a bass guitar.
"Any music signal played in the room would, therefore, undergo an
artificial reinforcement or colouration of sounds at or around ...(38 Hz
for your room)... but that's not all. Two whole wavelengths at ...(76 Hz)...
also fit neatly into ...(14 feet)... and three at ...(114 Hz)... which will
also cause standing waves, so we have a potential trouble spot for every
...(38 Hz) increase in frequency. And that's only considering one room
dimension... The width and height can also be considered in the same way
and give rise to their own series of standing wave frequencies..."
A big part of acoustic room design is choosing the dimensions to evenly
"scatter" the modes, so that no one frequency area sticks out. But
if two dimensions are equal (like a 14 by 14 foot room) then you
will have identical modes for four of the room surfaces; the result
is double the reinforcement at these frequencies. The cieling height
may result in some interspersed modes that smooth out the room's
response a bit; it's just as likely to have one or more coincident
modes that give you a still worse problem. For instance if the
ceiling was 7 feet you'd have every other mode for that dimension
identical to the modes from the walls. This would be about the worst
room possible short of a perfect cube.
White says: "Above about 300 Hz, the modes become so closely spaced
that we don't need to worry unduly about peaks or gaps (between them)..."
In other words, modes cause peaks throughout the frequency range
but only really cause problems with bass. Modifying
your room to reduce modal peaks is a big-time pain-in-the-ass
project; a graphic EQ would only vaguely help. You really might
want to think about listening somewhere else if that's at all
possible. Good luck with the bass...
--ennead
Mike Ford
What wrong with just using the Forte II? This is a great rock and roll speaker
and goes down to about 30 Hz just fine on its own. Almost nothing in the Rock
genre goes any lower than 40 Hz, so unless you want BOOM BOOM why use a sub?
BTW turn off the loudness control and set the tone controls flat. Just try it
for a few days and see if it really doesn't sound better this way.