SourcePoint 888 owners – low-end bass in open rooms?

@mcashiola, a few further thoughts.

My room is carpeted but not extra thick.  Construction is engineered wood I-beams with plywood sub flooring.  The front wall behind the speakers is load bearing over a wall in the lower level.  Overall not as substantial as concrete but no sense of flex.

Like most, the room has good and poor issues.  It is not a pure rectangle, but has adjacent openings on both side walls.  The ceiling has two coffered areas.  The downside is lots of glass along one side.  I agree with the comment of avoiding nearly square dimensions if possible.

With a 4.5-6 ohm maximum load my >100 wpc has proven adequate with no sense of inadequate power.  But I don't listen to overly loud levels, typically up to around 80 dB.  In my experience Parasound offers very good amplification so I don't believe that is a problem.

One of the multiple sonic tests I use is the opening to the soundtrack recording of Ken Burns' "The Civil War".  There are two drums played in a large open area, one is a snare, the other a small bass.  On many systems there is not a clear and clean discrimination in the pitch of these instruments.  They can somewhat blur together.  Form the beginning my 888s produced clear definition with those pitches.  But after installing the IsoAcoustic footers their differentiation became even greater.  Opposite your experience my bass is full and sometimes surprisingly present, depending on recording quality.

Anyway, good luck in sorting this out.  They are great speakers and hopefully you will bring them up to their potential.

Thank you all! I DO NOT wanna get away from the original music. I’m not looking for fake or exaggerated bass. I want my system to reveal in true fashion. I’ve just recently gotten concerned that there were some records that weren’t properly revealing the low end. And I definitely hear the comments from @tablejockey and others about the particular recording and pressing. For example, last night I played Blues and roots by Charles Mingus. I really thought it sounded fantastic. I had no complaints about low end while listening to that album. But, I’ve recently had a couple of folks comment to me on certain albums (albums they claim to know well) that my system wasn’t presenting the low end well and was too irritating in the mids and highs. And frankly, for the records I was listening to with them, all of that seemed true.  But then I play a record like blues and roots last night and I’m just blown away. It’s not that it had an insane amount of low end or big bass response, or anything like that. it just felt very real and balanced, and the low end was definitely present.  So I do think the particular pressing and style of music has a lot to do with it. I’ve been listening to lots of rock music, big band and jazz/blues btw.

@pryso @jrareform — I was all excited about getting to a more square room that was enclosed with carpet. I thought that would give me even more low end and overall better acoustics. Now y’all and others have me concerned that it will be an issue. But Oh well, there’s nothing I can do to change the layout of the room it’s fixed. Once we have the work complete I may be back on here looking for suggestions on how to enhance the acoustics of the new room. That’s for another day.

I also forgot to mention that I have felt sliders underneath the feet of the speakers so that I can slide them back-and-forth on the wood floor easily for speaker placement. After reading comments from some of you, I removed those to see if it would make a difference. I can’t imagine why it would because they’re pretty thin, but it seems like it’s actually helped somewhat. anyway, just wanted to mention that. When I get to carpeted flooring I may have to try the iso acoustic footers

If you think about it mcashiola, whether it be acoustic feet for your speakers, room treatments, understanding the scope of your sonics that make up your listening habits, cables, cleaning up the electrical signal that feeds your gear...all of that.. the minuteau!..is where you should explore before going the route of installing subs, which if deployed in a room without those things, will cause more problems than it would provide solutions.

If you had a pair of bookshelf speakers that are designed to pair with a sub for low-end, than that would alter the remedy, but your current speakers should  - in the end - provide adequate and pleasing bass for your music. 

Area rugs will work just as good as carpeting the entire floor. I would try the Acoustic feet for your speakers first. At the least, that would clean up the bass and help make it more pronounced in your room. This would help you understand where the bass emanates into your room via a bass crawl.

@mcashiola, Mingus played an acoustic 4-string bass.  The open E string on that is around 42 Hz.  As a jazz fan I've long used that frequency as a minimal requirement for any speakers I've considered.  With that it has worked well for me with all the various music I listen to.

The problem with square or nearly square rooms is each dimension affects standing waves at a given frequency..  When those dimensions are repeated (wall to wall, wall to floor/ceiling) that doubles the impact on that frequency..  That can produce greater emphasis or suck outs.  In my experience the smoothest in-room response is best.

Rooms can be affected in three ways - reflection, dispersion, and absorption.  It will require experimentation so you'll need to try combinations of those in your new room.  Maybe added absorption on one or opposite walls to reduce the doubling.  But a problem comes from thicker material being necessary for lower frequency.  Also suspending the absorption panel out from the wall can increase effectiveness.  Good information can be found online at a few particular sites.