What's wrong with my room?

Bloodyhell

New Member
I recently assembled a system in my family room consisting of a Denon turntable, Stax preamp, Denon power amp and some ADS 910s. It sounded really nice, I thought, so I figured I would move it into a room I use as a theater since it was cluttering up the family room. The same system in my theater room sounds pretty bad.
Here are the stats: the theater is 13x23 with a ceiling just under 8'. It has sheetrock on three walls, wood on the other, and it's carpeted with carpet tiles (pretty thin). There is pseudo acoustic tile on the ceiling.
To try to fix the situation I have experimented hanging heavy comforters at the first reflection points on the side walls. This fixed much of imaging and clarity of the mids and highs, still not as good as the other room, but better.
The biggest problem remains, though, and that's a lack of bass. The 910s aren't known to struggle in this department and I haven't had this issue in other rooms, but maybe this one is just too long??
I'm trying to imagine a treatment that would punch up the bass, but I'm not sure what to try. This system has no tone controls, and I'd like to keep it that way if I can, particularly since it sounded so good in the other room.
Any suggestions?
 
Wouldn't a powered sub or two make a huge difference?
No doubt. In fact I have one in that room for the theater system that knocks things off of shelves upstairs. I'd rather not go down that road for this system, though. I'd like to see if I can get to a point where I hear in this room what I was hearing in the other.
 
No doubt. In fact I have one in that room for the theater system that knocks things off of shelves upstairs. I'd rather not go down that road for this system, though. I'd like to see if I can get to a point where I hear in this room what I was hearing in the other.
BOL, hope you get it to your liking and welcome to AK.
 
My advice is you won’t know for sure unless you measure. Once you measure you will know the issue and then make a plan to fix it. I would recommend REW with a umik to measure the room It isn’t the most friendly of programs, but what you learn along the way is very valuable. You can get an idea of possible room mode issues with a room mode calculator. For example:
http://www.hunecke.de/en/calculators/room-eigenmodes.html
Not sure if possible, but if you can change your seating distance from your speakers this can have a huge affect on bass. For example, often times if you are sitting it the middle of a room you could be in a null at say 40-80hz which would have a huge impact on bass. What is your seating distance from the front wall in your room? To start with the easiest thing to do would be to keep moving your seating positing back until you hear more bass. Sometimes just 2-3 feet will make a difference.
 
My advice is you won’t know for sure unless you measure. Once you measure you will know the issue and then make a plan to fix it. I would recommend REW with a umik to measure the room It isn’t the most friendly of programs, but what you learn along the way is very valuable. You can get an idea of possible room mode issues with a room mode calculator. For example:
http://www.hunecke.de/en/calculators/room-eigenmodes.html
Not sure if possible, but if you can change your seating distance from your speakers this can have a huge affect on bass. For example, often times if you are sitting it the middle of a room you could be in a null at say 40-80hz which would have a huge impact on bass. What is your seating distance from the front wall in your room? To start with the easiest thing to do would be to keep moving your seating positing back until you hear more bass. Sometimes just 2-3 feet will make a difference.
I know what you mean about the bass. In the other room it was quite strong right behind the speakers, then reasonable 7 feet in front where I sat. Interestingly in the theater room I can find no bass hot spots anywhere. It’s not really such a large room, so I find this surprising. I’ve had these speakers for a long time and they’ve lived in a number of different rooms, some of them pretty big. I don’t recall having this issue before.
 
Try sitting on the back wall. Bass should collect against the back wall. Also, you could double check your speaker wiring to make sure the positive/negative are correct on the amp and speakers. If one is inverted/incorrect that might be an issue. Room mode issues will only be in particular listening locations. It wouldn't cause there to be no base in the entire room.
If repositioning speakers/listening position don't work, you may really to measure or you could try room correction such as Dirac, Audissey etc.
 
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Try sitting on the back wall. Bass should collect against the back wall. Also, you could double check your speaker wiring to make sure the positive/negative are correct on the amp and speakers. If one is inverted/incorrect that might be an issue. Room mode issues will only be in particular listening locations. It wouldn't cause there to be no base in the entire room.
The phase is ok. I should be careful not to overstate the bass issue. The system doesn’t have the same punch in this room, which I’m interpreting as energy in the lower bass. Moving the speakers away from the wall, moving the listening position closer and deadening first reflections on the side walls greatly improved imaging and clarity. I’m just missing some of the excitement on the low end. It might be that an equalization tweak would fix it, I don’t know. I have no EQ on the Stax and the other preamps I have available don’t sound as satisfying overall, so it’s hard to make a comparison.
 
The phase is ok. I should be careful not to overstate the bass issue. The system doesn’t have the same punch in this room, which I’m interpreting as energy in the lower bass. Moving the speakers away from the wall, moving the listening position closer and deadening first reflections on the side walls greatly improved imaging and clarity. I’m just missing some of the excitement on the low end. It might be that an equalization tweak would fix it, I don’t know. I have no EQ on the Stax and the other preamps I have available don’t sound as satisfying overall, so it’s hard to make a comparison.
I should also add that making these “adjustments” has turned the room into a place I don’t really want to spend any time, which is a disappointment since it would be the perfect solution otherwise. My alternative is to reclutter the family room with this set up. Phooey.
 
So I have to ask the obvious question .. Why are so many of the "listening spaces" I've seen caves... ? Even McGowans room is a drywalled mausoleum. What is the optimum space, vaulted ceilings, wide narrow, square. I'm new to this so my ability to actually hear all of the different nuances has yet to be developed, my set up sounds awesome to me in my living room, but the room is huge, 22' vaulted ceiling and it's 18x22 with 4 corner entrances. How is a guy supposed to figure out how to tune it for optimum sound, or put a different way how do I get it to sound the best it can with what I have?
 
To truly know the why the sound isn't satisfying you will need to measure your frequency response etc. There are of course a lot of differing opinions on room correction, I have had fantastic results with Dirac (Currently using Minidsp SHD). The other would be Room Perfect (either from McIntosh or Lyngdorf). Both are very adjustable in creating specific room curves to achieve the sound you like. It is really interesting to me how important the room is to overall sound. It really can't be underestimated. For challenging rooms you would either need some or all of the following: experimenting with speaker/listening position, room treatments/bass traps, room correction. Often times it takes combination of all 3 in my opinion.
 
So I have to ask the obvious question .. Why are so many of the "listening spaces" I've seen caves... ? Even McGowans room is a drywalled mausoleum. What is the optimum space, vaulted ceilings, wide narrow, square. I'm new to this so my ability to actually hear all of the different nuances has yet to be developed, my set up sounds awesome to me in my living room, but the room is huge, 22' vaulted ceiling and it's 18x22 with 4 corner entrances. How is a guy supposed to figure out how to tune it for optimum sound, or put a different way how do I get it to sound the best it can with what I have?

You're not getting the "cave" scenario correct. It's never a good thing for SQ to shoot down a long narrow passage unless ultimate volume is your goal.

Square boxes aren't much better, that's why I suggested moving the equipment to the long wall.

Now if keeping the setup on the short wall is a must then consider the space as two rooms with the seating position setup accordingly, IE equal to the distance between the speakers. So if leaving 2' between the sidewalls and the speakers the distance between would be 9', I would start there.
 
Does the bass sound any better with the door(s) to the room open?

+1 for trying the setup on the long wall...
 
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