Bass resonance question

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Hi. I've had a problem with bass resonance in both my current and previous flats. I managed to reduce the problem quite well in my last flat by rotating the lounge furniture round 90deg. i.e. putting the hifi against a different wall. This isn't really practical where I currently live unfortunately.

The problem is that some notes sound very boomy and hang round a lot longer than they should, colouring the rest of the music. I've got a few speakers on home demo at the moment and the ones I like best all round, Neat Motive 1, are unfortunately the worst offenders. Perhaps because they have more bass power than the others. An example is the very first note in Jack Johnson's F-Stop Blues (Brushfire Fairytales). This sounds pretty terrible on the Motive 1s. Some would say it sounds terrible on any hifi, but that's a different matter!

Is there anything I can do to reduce the problem, short of knocking down walls? I've heard about sticking plants in the corners of rooms, hanging rugs on the wall, etc. Does any of this actually help?

 

[Anonymous]

To answer your question regarding rugs and plants to tame the bass, the answer is no. You really need bass traps for the 4 corners of the room. But first you really need to find the freq causing the problems. Broadband absorption 125Hz downwards will help.

 

[Anonymous]

From that song, I would think you are looking at about 85hz-ish...not too bad to correct, in the middle of the bass, but it would require some money to be spent on sorting out the room accoustics - more importantly, bass traps are hardly nice looking objects but unless you've a boss to be considering, I'm sure you won't mind!

 

[Craig M.]

for resonance problems, rugs and plants won't have much effect. a bookcase full of books in each corner behind the speakers can soak up quite a bit of bass.

i'm assuming you have played a lot with toe-in to see if this can help? my room would boom like hell if i didn't have them toed in about 40 degrees. when i had a big crt tv, changing the angle of the screen in the corner of the room also made a slight difference. if you can't get close to curing it with toe-in, i would guess you need to look at proper room treatment products. i have been thinking about treating my room and recently decided i am definitely getting some. i bought a radio controlled plane last week, and right now the large box full of foam plane positioned in a corner of the room has really reduced the level of bass and tightened things up. i would imagine professional room treatment products will have a much bigger effect.

jack johnson used to trigger a resonant frequency in my room also, i managed to cure it by moving a speaker further from a corner and toeing them in. good luck.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for all the replies. I don't know who would complain more about installing bass traps - my girlfriend or my landlord!

I haven't played around with toe-in all that much so I'll have a good go at that today. One of the speakers is quite close to a corner so I'll try moving it away from there a bit as well.

 

[Anonymous]

Craig M.:
jack johnson used to trigger a resonant frequency in my room also, i managed to cure it by moving a speaker further from a corner and toeing them in. good luck.

Toeing in didn't make a lot of difference for me, but I found that moving the speaker that was near a corner well forward into the room drastically reduces the problem. On the downside it looks pretty silly positioned like that. To move the speaker sideways further from the wall without pulling it into the room is tricky because my TV cabinet is there. I'll try moving the cabinet later (it's not a one man job). At least it does look like I will be able to cut down the boomy bass quite a bit by moving things around.

 

[Anonymous]

Craig M.:
jack johnson used to trigger a resonant frequency in my room also, i managed to cure it by moving a speaker further from a corner and toeing them in. good luck.

Not listening to Jack Johnson would be my solution.

 

[Anonymous]

If you can be botherd? You could get a "beringer feedback destroyer" some graph paper and an spl meter and some test tone wavs, figure out which frequencies are peaking then rain them in using the BFD. im not sure how this would effect the sound quality as its a treatment usally reseverd for subs