Well, "fortunately" I have a bass null at my only feasible listening position in my family room, so the bass is not too boomy there. Now, if I walk to the sides or back, the bass is about twice as loud and deep.
Speaker With Least Room Interaction
What speaker has the least problem with the type of room up have in regard to bass boom. In other words the least bit of room interaction. Rear bass port, front bass port, bottom bass port, sealed.
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I had the most success using Roon’s DSP EQ. It’s free (if you use Roon) and easy to use. You will also need to acquire software to measure your room to find out where the problem peaks are. The software I used suggested how much to attenuate the peaks and how wide to set the Q. I found it sounded best to use EQ at 300hz and below and to use room treatments and adjusting speaker placement for everything above 300hz. Roon’s EQ (in my system and room) was totally transparent. I’m sure using multiple subs and moving the speakers way into the room would also be a solution but that wasn’t possible for me. |
I would think that if you can a swarm sub system would work great. Duke knows his stuff. I have a small dedicated room and he suggested that large drivers would interact less with the room even though it is counterintuitive. I didn't purchase from him but followed his advice and I am sure I would have been happy with his offerings. Just wound up with a deal I couldn't refuse. Sorry Duke but super thankful for your help! |
Yet another benefit afforded by subs is that, should one elect to employ digital room correction (the DSPeaker Anti-Mode, for instance), the bass portion of the source signal can be digitized without the higher frequencies needing to be. This is easiest to achieve if one runs one set of ic's from the pre-amp to the sub(s), another from the pre to the amp powering the speakers. Not all pre-amps provide dual outputs up to the task, something to consider when choosing one's pre. |
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Well @samgar2, both Ivan and Duke are right. So, do you want the least amount of bass eigenmodes ("standing waves" at the frequencies related to the room dimensions) possible? If so, you want an OB/Dipole woofer/sub (which does not create modes in the side-to-side room dimension). Do you want as little as possible while still getting "thump"? Go with a swarm of sealed subs. |
Amp + speakers + room = a "system within a system". Imo they should all work well together. The speakers are "in the middle" in this paradigm, so they need to work well with the amp (usually not too difficult) and also with the room (often quite difficult). Room-interaction peaks and dips in the bass region are inevitable, and it is the peaks that are the most audible and objectionable. A speaker that puts out less bass energy will have smaller, and therefore less objectionable, peaks. A speaker that puts out no bass energy will no bass peaks, but its tonal balance will suck. So in practice it’s a trade-off, because you want SOME bass energy, just not TOO MUCH. So I typically design speakers with multiple pluggable ports, to allow for some user-adjustability in the bass region. Open baffle (dipole) speakers have inherently smoother in-room bass than box (monopole) speakers, but don't "pressurize" the room at low frequencies so don't deliver that "chest-thump" impact that good box speakers do. Tradeoffs, always tradeoffs. The problem in the bass region is not that we have TOO MANY room-interaction peaks and dips... it is that we have TOO FEW!! Higher up the spectrum the room-interaction peaks and dips are far more numerous because the room is large relative to the wavelengths involved. We have so many peaks and dips bunched up so close together that they effectively form a "continuum", and we do not hear the individual peaks and dips. The larger the room, the lower in frequency this "continuum" behavior holds up. Small rooms are the worst because their peaks and dips are spread so far apart and that trend extends up higher in frequency. So in the bass region the peaks and dips are too few and too far apart to be heard as a "continuum", so they stick out like sore thumbs (the peaks in particular). What we need is, MORE peaks and dips, smaller and bunched up closer together, and this way the room would behave more like a big room and we’d have good in-room bass. One way to do this which imo works fairly well is a distributed multi-sub system. The idea is, spread several (typically four) small subs asymmetrically around the room. Each will produce a different peak-and-dip pattern, and the sum of the four dissimilar peak-and-dip patterns will be fairly smooth, and will approximate the peak-and-dip pattern that we might get in a much larger room. Whether the subs are sealed or ported depends on what works best with that particular room’s acoustics. Duke dealer/manufacturer |
Provided you have enough real estate in your room to bring the speakers out away from the front wall by 3 or 4 ft, then the speaker with the least room interaction by far is going to be open baffle, period...nothing else will come close. Bass nodes and nulls will, comparatively, melt away if the bass is OB. |
http://www.michaelgreenaudio.net/roomtune http://www.michaelgreenaudio.net/tunable-speakers Your room is your speaker and your speakers are your room. Once you tune your recordings, speakers and your room to your ears problem solved. Removing your speakers interaction with the room is never going to happen as long as the speaker is in the room and why would you want it to. Rooms are wonderful amplifiers once in-tune with the music. have fun Michael Green |
I don't fully understand the bass port thing and I don't see the big passive radiators in speakers that much anymore. Having said that, the experience I had as a new audiophile with a pair of fairly nice speakers that were given to me was the opposite from what people were describing above. They were not boomy at all and even felt a little anemic in the bass department at first. The trick, of course, was to move them closer to the back and side walls. I say 'of course' since when back ported speakers are too boomy you move them away from the wall as conventional wisdom says all speakers should be. But not these. Their sweet spot is much closer to the wall than recommended for most room set ups. I've confirmed this with these speakers in two different rooms. So maybe un-ported speakers might meet the OP's quest but if there are issues with placement in regard to proximity to walls it seems clear to me that some speakers might work better than others even if they are rear ported. |
Definitely Spatial Audio. I am using the M4 Triode Masters and have no issues with bass boom. My room is 10' by 20' with an 8' ceiling and the previous box speakers I owned really boomed on the bass notes. Spatial Audio speakers are open baffles and do need to be about 3' from the wall behind them and about 1' from the side walls to work well. |
