Baby, baby. Where did our bass go?

Perhaps you're expecting too much from a standmount?  Your room is quite large.

Possibly... and if that's the reality of it, the system will go back into the smaller room. The room isn't much bigger than my dealers', however, and I've heard standmounts create satisfying bass in that room. Unless they have a sub hidden somewhere!? (I've known him for 20 years, he doesn't) I've also noticed that the position of acoustic panels, speakers and listener have a huge effect on the sound - balance and quality. That's why I'd be interested if anyone has had similar issues and solved them.

Obviously a different class to the Sopra, but FWIW I tried the Focal 1008be in my relative small room and what I got was quite agile and tuneful bass, but it didn't really go very low. The floor mount S20's I eventually chose do a much better job of the bass - but even then it's not earth-shaking.

let them sing, need time till get optimal,   but u don't need to panic, 250 with sopra its a "factory" system, if you feel like something is missing after few hundreds hours burn in, call your dealer to help find their position.

Seth posted:

... had anybody had experiences similar to this ... ?

Yes, when I inadvertently connect one speaker out of phase...

Sorry, I can't help.

Best thread title though since an amplifier thread, 'Baby you can drive my Kans'.

C.

I've got their lesser cousins 806W SE in a room of similar dimensions. Fine balance, enough bass proportion if somewhat lacking in the lowest registers and discrimination (as it should be for the price!) I tried them in the bedroom (same size) and they were far too bassy, probably due to the house construction, ported design etc. It may be that you have become used to too much bass, after the flab everything seems 'absent'? Can you get them into the corners as much as possible? The trouble with setup advice is it is usual to be looking to flatten an excessive bass hump or shelf, not get some! Shove 'em tight in the corners and stand in an opposing corner; if no bass then maybe there is a speaker, crossover or wiring problem.

Try using the <Room Simulation> of REW; that will check to see if it's a speaker positioning issue.

If it is and you also get problems with peaks at the room resonance (aka room modes), then a sub can be used to regain the bass while being positioned better to not excite the room resonances so much.

bluedog posted:

Perhaps you're expecting too much from a standmount?  Your room is quite large.

+1

You can't expect low bass at similar output as higher frequencies from a small speaker like that - however i agree that experimenting with speaker and listening position may help. A tip I have heard is if you put a speake in apreferred listening position both side by sie, or only connect the one) play music and walk around to see where it sounds best - those places may be the best positions for speakers with that listening position. Repeat with other practical  listening positions.

in my 7m x. 7m  oddly shaped room I found the best listening position to be a bit under 3m from one wall. speaker front face about 0.6m forward of that wall. (I used REW to help find the best position) 

Huge posted:

Try using the <Room Simulation> of REW; that will check to see if it's a speaker positioning issue.

If it is and you also get problems with peaks at the room resonance (aka room modes), then a sub can be used to regain the bass while being positioned better to not excite the room resonances so much.

Fantastic suggestion! Thanks Huge (and Innocent Bystander)

I'm sightly too  long in the tooth to not think to check polarity!  It's fine.  I do think I may have become a bit of a bass-junkie in that little room, but this is a bass drum sounding like it has all the volume of a shoebox.  

Room interaction is a strange science. I have a lareger room than yours and have had ample bass from AE1's, no bass from S600's and 'just right' bass from S400's.

G

I don't think room treatments are going to help bring back the missing bass. They will clean up the bass but won't add more bass, in my experience. Something else must be at play here. Just like few others here, my stand mount speakers are producing ample bass in a large living room, much larger than your room. 

Since you are getting satisfactory bass in the bedroom, that rules out the need of breaking in new speakers. It is very likely the speaker room interaction that is the culprit. I would suggest moving the speakers around for starters. Perhaps try them at a completely different position in the room if possible. The recommendation of the software by Huge is a good one but you can always try the old school method by shifting the speakers around. If the sound quality does not change much with various placement configurations by trial and error, the software won't help much as it is essentially a tool that does the same thing.

Just out of curiosity, what is the distance from centre to centre of speakers? Pushing the speakers closer to the front wall didn't help boost the bass? 

Seth posted:

I'm fairly aware that I need more room treatment. It's approximately 6-7 x 5 meters, wood floor, one glass wall and the kitchen at the opposite end. 

There's no doubt that the bass performance is closely related to the size of the room, which in this case is a fairly large room (30-35 sqm) and is very, very difficult for standmount speakers to perform well in the bass section. Unless you use some speakers like Dynaudio Contour which can ouput a lot of bass, I think you will be better off with a couple of floorstanders.

In the mean time there are some possible treatments like putting the speakers near the walls, you sitting closer to the rear wall, absorption of HF so that you can perceive more LF. You can also try using some tube gears in the system.

The 400s and Sopras are similar in efficiency but the Sopras are rated to 45 Hz whereas the 400s go down to 36 Hz. Granted, that's only a 9 Hz difference, but there's a lot of room-filling, bottom-end energy to be experienced in those deeper 9 Hz. Speaker location will play a big role in bass perception/quality and occurrence of bass modes in the room, so exhaust all options there while keeping in mind that you should simultaneously vary the listening position to get a valid assessment of any given speaker location.

Did your dealer not offer you the option to demo at home? Had you done this then an expensive mistake could have been avoided. Just sayin'.

GraemeH posted:

Room interaction is a strange science. I have a lareger room than yours and have had ample bass from AE1's, no bass from S600's and 'just right' bass from S400's.

G

I agree, I suspect it's speaker / listening position related, and there is a great big null or dip in the lower frequencies and if this is the case I would address before you using software to eq the sound. The latter can help to fine tune, but if you have severe issues then you are simply going to be pushing your amp and speakers harder than they should to compensate, and I suspect the overall result will be somewhat compromised.

Stand types can make a difference, but not extreme as the OP appears to have. Also I would persevere, you don't neccessarily need a floor stander to fill a larger room, larger standmounts can be just as capable and tend to position better ... but they can be harder to setup well than floor standers, but I think the effort is usually worth it.

Thank you for all of the input. Opinions seem to be in two main camps;

• The No.1s aren't big enough for the room or I'm expecting more from them than I should.
• There are room challenges that might be mitigated (or reduced) through speaker placement and attention to room nodes and reflections.

In all honesty, the first option is partly why I'd lived with my system in a bedroom, but I really want to challenge that, as I suspect the system could perform well in the living room with some effort (the amount remains to be seen!).  Also bare in mind that the Ovators had no bass in the living room either, which is why I'm fairly sure this isn't about the speaker, but rather the room.  So, perhaps unclear, my question really is about whether anyone can offer practical set-up suggestions to help make my pain a little less - these Sopras are around 40kg each with huge spikes above an expensive wood floor; moving them is jeopardy!

Both Ryder and Roland150 suggested moving the speakers closer to the front wall.  I've tried that (there's only 3-4 cm between the speaker and wall now) and results are encouraging, with a better balance across the spectrum.  It's still not quite where I'd like it to be, but then I've only really plonked the speakers ~2m apart, either side of the centre of the longest wall (the shortest wall is all glass, hence this choice).  Simon, I'm encouraged by your opinion; I have no intention of using EQ for room correction, as I have read that I will only amplify the nulls, but were you also suggesting that the stand can make a difference?  I assume you mean pillar / open frame / filled, etc?

What I can take from everything above is that I have my work cut-out.  I'm going to take Huge et al's suggestion to try the REW software to ascertain what the most sensible positioning options might be and then try them. Does anyone know much about bass traps? I read a suggestion that, somewhat counter-intuitively, they could help because they will trap the reflections causing nulls. Is this BS designed to get me to buy something or a viable option?

Thanks all, Seth

Yes, regarding stands. High mass stands seem to provide a more dominant but often slower bass, but lighter, open frame stands are faster, more tuneful in the bass but leaner... in my experience..

regarding bass traps, I have found them reasonably effective at handling booms and resonances, no experience in using them for minimising nulls etc

The Sopra come with what might be accurately described as a 'high mass' stand. A huge chunk of wood as a pillar and a very heavy glass bass... I guess that could be good, given my predicament!?  Thanks for your help, Simon.

Hi, wooden stands are not in my experience genereally  high mass, but it's worth a try.

If you play the speakers, is there bass anywhere in the room - try the corners? If not then the speakers are simply not putting enough out, and I can't see how bass traps could help. If there is bass in the corners then playing with positioning is still the first thing before considering treatment.

Taken to a theoretical extreme, making the room completely unrefkective -i.e an anechoic chamber - you will hear exactly what comes out of the speaker direct at you, and there can be no cancellation: but I doubt that your speakers have a flat response in anechoic conditions down to the 45Hz Joerand quoted, probably considerably rolled off by then, guessing they were designed to rely on bass reinforcement from the room and that the quoted response will be "in room" - but not necessarily a room any purchaser will have. 

If it is possible I suggest removing the spikes from the speakers to facilitate moving without causing damage, and maybe place on a rug or blanket enabling them to be slid around - the difference made by spikes is small compared to having or not having bass, and will make no difference at all to which location sounds best.

Likewise I doubt the type of stands will be very significant in terms of the observed major lack of bass, so I wouldn't worry about them at this stage.

If playing with location of speakers and listening position doesn't reveal any bass anywhere then it is probably not worth playing with room treatment, and you'll need to accept that it is a limitation of the speakers. Several reviews have commented on the relative lack of low end, this from hometheatrereview: Much like all bookshelf speakers at any price, if bass below 60 Hz is a must-have, then you must add a subwoofer". And the bigger the room the more noticeable it is likely to be.

Bass traps can sometimes deal with nulls, but it's all about placement and speaker placement.  Without the bass traps, my room gives a massive, uneven bass cancellation (-6dB to -15dB) from 210Hz to 90Hz, a +9dB boost centered at 80Hz, and a lesser cancellation (-6dB) 72Hz to 50Hz.  Below this the main speakers start to roll off.  A +18dB boost is centered at 42Hz but the speakers are about -6dB (anechoic) here so the net result is +12dB relative to the main response level.

The bass traps improve the bass cancellation by about 3dB (from -15db to about -12dB), and also reduce the two resonance peaks by 12dB (to -3db and +0dB net response).

Correct positioning of the sub eliminates the bass cancellation (leaving just -2dB at 120Hz), but reintroduces lesser peaks at the 80Hz and 43Hz room resonances (+6dB and +12dB).  Applying digital filtering to the sub removes the remaining resonance peaks.

The result is +-2.5dB 15Hz to 210Hz and 215Hz to 500Hz.  There's a very sharp null still at 212Hz, but this doesn't meet minimum phase criteria and so can't be corrected electronically.  It's a relatively minor problem in reality, but some day I'll work it out and disrupt the destructive interference pattern causing it.

Even rooms with absolutely awful bass alignment problems can be cured.  Also, bass alignment of rooms can have a vastly greater influence on the sound than the bass output of the speaker (unless the speaker is a mini-monitor that can't get down to the room resonance frequencies).

Christopher_M posted:

Sorry, I can't help.

Best thread title though since an amplifier thread, 'Baby you can drive my Kans'.

C.

Years ago, I was a member of a usenet group about craft beer, and I wished to share my experiences of the 'Beer of the Month' by mail that I had subscribed to. After much deliberation I chose the title as 'Sipping of the Bock of the Day' which I thought pretty witty, but nobody seemed to pick up on the wordplay. 

With thanks to everyone for their ideas and suggestions. I spent a very unscientific hour with REW's "room simulation" to get a feel for what effect speaker placement might have in my room.  Managed to find an interesting compromise using corner reinforcement, with a lot of promise... I had to move the system, so it's a little off due to the power-down,  but I have very consistent bass performance (all of the notes appear to have a consistent volume) that's loud enough. I can hear that the speakers are stuggling with very low bass, as a few suggested I would, but it's what I expected these little guys to sound like from demos. What is lovely is that music appears to be more emotionally involving than they were in the smaller room - a big plus for me.

Thanks again. 

PS; I've never had a strong, dark German, Ron.