New room - no bass

I know this is obvious but make sure your speaker cables are not out of phase.

Neville

I've battled with room problems for years and tried all sorts of remedies. My piece of essential advice is:-

DO NOT throw money at the system - it will not fully solve the problem.

Rooms have a critical effect on the performance of a good system and I'm firmly convinced that a modest system in a great sounding room, will make more musical sense, than a more expensive system in an acoustically poor room.

Do you now have a bigger room, that is more sparsely furnished than the previous one?

'Busy' rooms (a good spread of absorptive and diffractive items) tend to make the best sounds. I bought a good quality sofa a while back; which made a hell of a difference to the sound.

No bass at any frequency?

Can you fire down the room? That normally produces more bass.

Don't despair - it often takes a while to get a good sound from a new room. Just try the speakers everywhere you can. Forget any pre-conceptions and experiment with speaker siting and the listening position.

Good luck.

...not a ground floor room and with a springy floor perhaps?

I have a room like this and one night my wife was downstairs and said, "I found your missing bass."

See if you hear bass in rooms above and/or below the room the system is in.

- GregB

Insert Witty Signature Line Here

I think J>N> is pretty much on the money. You should also check the simple things - as Gary mentioned, phase is one, getting L/R channels wrong also screws things up (Ch1=L, Ch2=R).

If you bought new and haven't moved too far away from your dealer see if he will pop round when in the area. A good one should have no trouble sorting any obvious mistakes you are making.

Also remember that when you move things like speakers and racks they can take a couple of days to settle - I find this far obvious in my (difficult) room than if I lug a pair of Kans round to my dealers. Similarly with cold kit.

Regards
Steve

Neville

If you go to the following thread and read thru it you will find lots of web connections to info on rooms for HiFi and things like frequency related standing waves. It may not be relevant but room dimensions can "cancel" certain frequencies.

http://forums.naim-audio.com/eve/forums?a=tpc&s=67019385&f=48019385&m=9821965426

GEOFFP

Have you tried moving your listening position? As Geoff P noted it's quite possible that you're sitting in a standing wave null. As a start, try putting your chair at a odd fraction of the length of the room (1/3L, for example) rather than an even fraction. You might also investigate software for calculating speaker placement such as RPG's Room Optimizer.

Neville,

I had exactlythis problem and it is difficult to solve completely. If you email me your number I can talk you through my solutions which are too long to type here but can be explained very easily

Dev

Cables are all correct.
Room is ground floor, concrete floor covered with carpet, long walls are concete block dry lined with plaster board, one short wall is same construction with a window, other short wall is stud partition pasterboard with glazed double doors.
Quantity of furniture is not excessive or sparse - a sofa plus armchair, a couple of display cabinets, TV, hi-fi rack.

Dev, as soon as I can get Outllok working again I'll email you my number. First I need to do a back-up then some corrective surgery on the PC.

Thanks,
Neville

Neville

Dry lined plasterboard walls will leak bass.

My SBL's work pretty well against a plasterboard/stud partition wall, BUT I had it stuffed with very dense acoustic insulation material when it was built, to stop bass leaking into the void.

Bit tricky for you to do this now I guess?

A friend who was having problems getting his DBL's to sound right in alcoves, either side of a chimney breast; built false walls behind them with thermalite blocks.

Not very pretty if you can't disguise them, but it may help you learn what's happening.

Good luck.