Bunged up speakers??

RobinKidderminster

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Advice please. Having just mounted my centre speaker on a wooden closed stand the base is very boomy. Which option should I take?

1 Bung up the rear facing port with foam or something more solid? (Would that damage the drive units?)

2 Extend the port with a plastic tube to vent out of the hole in the back of the cupboard against a wall about 5 inches away?

3 Make a large hole in the back of the cupboard to vent the port?

Any speaker design experts?

Any comments much appreciated.

Cheers
 
A

Anonymous

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1. is good, and many speakers come with foam bungs. Only use foam, mind. Anything else of the more solid variety could cause problems.

2. will completely destroy the balance of the speakers.

3. removing the entire back of the stand would be better. In fact, not using a closed-back wooden stand would be best of all.

Edit: I'm presuming from your post you have the speaker mounted in a cupboard?
 

RobinKidderminster

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Thanks Tarquinh for a rapid response too. I'll try the foam bung approach first - does it have to be thick/dense ? Ive never seen a commercial bung. Surprised about your comment '2. will completely destroy the balance of the speakers.' I thought a larger diameter 'tube' might be a good option.

Any other comments welcome - I can spend hours experimentin' :)
 

Andrew Everard

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RobinKidderminster:Thanks Tarquinh for a rapid response too. I'll try the foam bung approach first - does it have to be thick/dense ? Ive never seen a commercial bung. Surprised about your comment '2. will completely destroy the balance of the speakers.' I thought a larger diameter 'tube' might be a good option.

The larger diameter tube would affect both the frequency at which the port has its effect - in fact it will broaden the band over which it works, thus probably compounding the boom - and the velocity of the air in the port, which would definitely make the sound boomier.

You need a piece of fairly soft open-cell foam to bung the port: might be worth checking whether Acoustic Energyhas one for the speaker, or one for a different model that'd fit.

Or - and this is the cheap way of doing it, as well as a quick and easy way of finding out whether it's going to help - take one clean item of gentleman's sockage (one of the ones that went into the washing machine as a pair, but lost its companion somewhere on the spin-cycle, will do nicely). Roll it up loosely, and insert it in the port. Seriously.
 

RobinKidderminster

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off topic I guess but as well as an avid reader of the mag it is seriously useful to be able to get advice from experts and in good time. So much quicker than waiting in a phone queue to listen to a compter.

Thanks 'mag'.
 

Andrew Everard

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To thank the mag, press one. To complain about a review, press two. To promote your own company's products under a poorly-chosen forum disguise, press six six six. Or for any other enquiry, please hold for an operator...
 

Tom Moreno

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Andrew (or anyone really),

Where would one find commercially available foam bungs? Monitor Audio and other nice manufacturers provide foam bungs with their speakers for optional use, but others don't. I do like to try and do things proper from time to time so tried to find foam plugs as opposed to the hosiery solution, but haven't been successful in my tinterweb searches to find these for retail.

Thanks in advance
 
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Anonymous

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so do we now have a debate on the best type of sponge or which brand of washing up sponge gives the best acoustic results and density my moneys on the special £20 a time gold coloured washing up sponge from a well known kensigton store.

On another forum I remember reading some people saying that a bundle of straws would work as they let the air through but also bung up the port
emotion-8.gif
 

Andrew Everard

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Lightweight packaging foam, of the kind used for light-duty packing in flight cases, etc, would also be suitable: enough for a couple of speakers shouldn't cost you much more than a fiver. But then again a simple small-cell car sponge which you could cut to shape with scissors is probably less than a quid.
 
A

Anonymous

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cheers Andrew

sounds a good idea. Can I ask why it has to be "non-solid" - if the purpose is to stop the air/sound going out of the port, why could anything not be used ?
 

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