Straws in bass port......

[Vladimir]

I don't think straws are a better solution than foam bungs. Ulitmately the problem is rear ported design in the typical livingroom. This is why its much better to use insulation foam pipe and shape it to go forward or at least up and not boom against the wall. It is very simple and easy tweak and I agree manufacturers should supply U and L shaped foam pipes.

 

[MrReaper182]

I'm glad I am very happy with the bass my speakers give me so I don't have to do silly things to my speakers with staws.

 

[Neptune_Twilight]

I'm glad I am very happy with the bass my speakers give me so I don't have to do silly things to my speakers with staws.

Well bully for you!

(have you Partington stands remained unfilled too?)

 

[MrReaper182]

I'm glad I am very happy with the bass my speakers give me so I don't have to do silly things to my speakers with staws.

Well bully for you!

(have you Partington stands remained unfilled too?)

I've not done any modifications to my Partington dreadnought speakersstands as I'm very happy with them if that's what your getting at.

 

[Covenanter]

I don't think straws are a better solution than foam bungs. Ulitmately the problem is rear ported design in the typical livingroom. This is why its much better to use insulation foam pipe and shape it to go forward or at least up and not boom against the wall. It is very simple and easy tweak and I agree manufacturers should supply U and L shaped foam pipes.

I'm not sure I really buy this but I will accept that you are correct. My question then is why do people buy speakers that aren't suitable for their rooms!?

Chris

 

[davedotco]

I don't think straws are a better solution than foam bungs. Ulitmately the problem is rear ported design in the typical livingroom. This is why its much better to use insulation foam pipe and shape it to go forward or at least up and not boom against the wall. It is very simple and easy tweak and I agree manufacturers should supply U and L shaped foam pipes.

I'm not sure I really buy this but I will accept that you are correct. My question then is why do people buy speakers that aren't suitable for their rooms!?

Chris

Good question.

I hinted at this in an earlier post in this thread. The mass market is obsessed with bass and a fair number of speaker manufacturers that should know better pander to this obsession. It is a design choice, more bass or better bass...?

We know the answer to this, it is obvious just from reading this forum.

 

[Neptune_Twilight]

I'm not sure I really buy this but I will accept that you are correct. My question then is why do people buy speakers that aren't suitable for their rooms!?

I was quite happy with the RX2's when I bought them, & even happier when I bought better stands & filled them, some people are happy to buy gear set it in place and that's it, others like to faff around with their gear sometimes for no good reason other than curiosity?

Personally I think it's difficult to get a system that's perfect for all music, some albums will often sound better on some systems than others & vice-versa - I can never leave well alone with anything & never have been able too, I dismantled things (clocks, watches & much more) from an early age & could not always put them back together, but usually I can now - If people had never experimented bookshelf speakers would still be on bookshelves & not stands, if I'd not tried streaming from my PC I would still be using CD's I'm not now & happier for it etc - We are all different. *biggrin*

 

[Crocodile]

I like the idea of speaker manufacturers making what people want/need. But it does then beg the question why so many keep producing designs that not only can't be used close to boundary walls, but demand totally unrealistic amounts of clearance. I appreciate that the UK is densely populated & has the smallest houses & therefore rooms in Europe, but is the rest of Europe really blessed with rooms so large that having speakers a metre into the room is no problem? And why do UK reviewers fawn over such designs when so few can accommodate them?

 

[Neptune_Twilight]

I like the idea of speaker manufacturers making what people want/need. But it does then beg the question why so many keep producing designs that not only can't be used close to boundary walls, but demand totally unrealistic amounts of clearance. I appreciate that the UK is densely populated & has the smallest houses & therefore rooms in Europe, but is the rest of Europe really blessed with rooms so large that having speakers a metre into the room is no problem? And why do UK reviewers fawn over such designs when so few can accommodate them?

I agree totally, & in the 21's century one would think that modern loudspeakers ought to be able to be fine tuned with something other than stuffing a piece of foam in a port, it a very old idea & it's really an all or nothing approach which was in the feedback I sent back to Monitor Audio.

Back in the late 60's some loudspeakers did have pots of then to decrease the levels of the drivers, surely in 2014 something other than two bits of foam could be deployed to adjust loudspeakers as people living in the real world move house, have furnishing & floor changes, even have to move the speakers from the original intended position, not everyone can plan their house around where the loudspeakers go like me.

IMO it's time speakers manufactures made some changes as they really haven’t changed much in the last 50, years paper was used in the 60's & earlier & although there are other more esoteric materials used now often some rather good speakers still use the same material & design that's been used for decades. Some sort of electronic inexpensive & none detrimental adjustment when you pay many £100’s for speakers shouldn’t really be out of the question but who does it?

Looking at the SOA What Hi-Fi listening room on this site the other day bluntly are quite unlike the real life sitations the majority (though not all) of speaker buyers will end up using them in, I thought that when I looked at the photographs.

 

[davedotco]

I wonder, is this the place to point out that many active designs, made for studio use have excellent controls to allign the bass response to suit the positioning. One of my favourites has this......

The combination of low cut (high pass filters) and acoustic space (bass shelving) are very useful when matching the speaker's bass performance to a room. If you have hard floors the mid frequency control might help with floor reflections.

Combine this with the direct coupling of the bass amp to bass speaker and some pretty serious yet very tight bass can be produced at a very modest cost.

 

[Electro]

The PMC Fact range that are passive speakers have low and high frequency adjustment pots on the back panel to adjust for room acoustics and placement . *smile*

 

[davedotco]

The PMC Fact range that are passive speakers have low and high frequency adjustment pots on the back panel to adjust for room acoustics and placement . *smile*

Very nice, but also very rare. Seen hf and mid level controls on speakers before, can't remember seeinf a bass control.

Slight price differential too, even if you exclude power amp the PMC setup would be comfortably 10 x the cost of the Presonus Eris 8 in my post above. Having had hands on a fair few pro monitor types in recent times, I find the adjustments very useful indeed.

Any affordable speakers that have this.....?

 

[Coll]

I think straws or bungs are fine, basically y=by using either you end up with a semi sealed cabinet cross between infinite baffle and ported design.

Dont forget some people like lots of bass even if it is overblown so rear port near wall is just what some people want. Manufacturers sell hundreds if not thousands of speakers so why would they want to reduce the profit margin to suit a few people. The manufacturers who do look after the true hi fi enthusiasts charge a fortune for minor design features but they have to because they dont sell many and have to make their profit to cover costs.

The difference between say Monitor Audio Silver 6 speakers and say PMC floorstanders in listening terms is minor to most listeners and to some they cannot hear the difference. But look at the price difference.

To be honest I have been around a long time and am getting a bit fed up with high priced gear that barely sound different to low price gear. I'm the one who just purchased a 300 watt pc pro amp for £ 267 instead of £2000 for something that I could not tell any difference. In fact thats not quite true I think the pro amp sounds better.