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New room problems?

I've recently moved my system to a new dedicated 2ch/HT room. In the old room (just your everyday living room) I had wide soundstage and deep bass. I had made no real attempt to optimize my speaker placement since I was building the new media room and knew I'd have to move everything soon. At my listening position in the new room, the soundstage is wide but strong bass response is hanging about 3 feet above my head. If I stand up the bass response is perfect as well as the soundstage. If I sit I have wide soundstage but little bass response.

New room: 18'x11.5x8' speakers on short wall with media cabinet and TV in between, room is carpeted, speakers are 8.5' apart, 16" from side walls, 28" out from front wall, 1" toe in to listening position which is 8' from speakers.

System (sorry nothing fancy): Jolida JD100 player into Rotel RSX-1056 surr processor, left and right signal sent to a Rotel RB-1080 amp for 2 channel listening into Von Schweikert VR4-jr speakers. Speakers are biwired. Interconnects are homemade using Chris Venhaus' method. Speaker wire is standard 12 guage braided.

None of the interconnects or cables were changed when I moved from one room to another. I've moved the speakers around quite a bit but have not been able to move the bass response down to my sitting ear level and I loose the nice wide soundstage if I push the speakers back into the corners or closer together.

I assume room treatments are in my future but which ones? Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated.
wrekkah
wrekkah OP
2 posts
 
Thanks everyone for your responses and ideas. I'll try to update with my progress.

Due to the high cost of room treatments I'm going to try the DIY route. There seems to be a lot of info out there. It'll take awhile to digest it all.
mrjstark
1,112 posts
 
2 , 4inch abs. first reflections - side wall.
2 , bass traps rear corners.
2 , skyline diffusers on the ceiling - 1st ref. points.
Good point was made about window treatment, do that.
+ experiment with spks placement and listening position.

(sorry for any typo, i used my s.....t phone to wrighte it)

Cheers
M.Stark
ckoffend
684 posts
 
The idea with the towels, bunched up and hung was purely a temporary test, free! Also, the towels if bunched up with dampen the bass and all sound waves quite a bit - no, not as much as product specific solutions will. But it is free and will/should begin to show what some absorbtion will contribute to the phenomina he is experiencing. Short term - free testing only!
frank_sm
113 posts
 
You may have success with 2-D type diffusors but I would think about diffusion after treating the room with as many bass traps as you can build.
If you want any chance of good frequency response, treat all 4 corners with bass traps (floor to ceiling if possible) and the ceiling/wall junctions if you want even more improvement, but at the very least all 4 corners.
ryder
1,697 posts
 
Yes, the good thing about towels is that they are free short-term solution to test things out. Sorry about that CKoffend as I forgot to mention that.

There are many products out there and some of them are indeed quite costly. Actually, you can try out Auralex products as they are quite reasonably priced. There is another product you could consider -I normally don't recommend this for long-term use as most folks do not endorse it, but if you want to test things out the cheapest way, try this either the 2"-3" wedges or pyramids. Ugly on its own but much more effective in absoprtion levels. For short-term testing only, much more effective than towels, not free but the cheapest.

For aesthetic reasons, these can be framed up and covered with acoustically-transparent fabric, but then again it would cost quite a bit.
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