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Speakers VERY close to wall - Cork board useful?

Hi there,

I have a set of Klipsch RP-5's, that have a built in powered sub, and a rear facing port on the bottom of each tower. I have them in a small room (15'x13') with about 6' of separation. Considering the small room dimensions I have them pushed up against the wall because otherwise they'd be in the way. They are at least at a slight angle, but the port for the sub is still only about 4" off the wall. 

Would putting a square of cork board on the wall directly behind the port, cut out so its slightly larger than the port, make any positive difference compared to an ordinary sheetrock wall?  (The cork comes in a roll, so it is maybe 1/8" thick)

Any thoughts, additional suggestions on other common house-hold materials/geometry of cut/ etc, or comments would be appreciated! (other than "move the speakers away from wall" bc unfortunately that's not an option in this room)

:)
thanks!!!
hockey4496
rockadanny
1,226 posts
 
Contact http://gikacoustics.com/ and ask them for assistance. They have excellent acoustical products for affordable prices and will guide you as to the best solution as per your budget. They are experts. They will help. (No affiliation, just a very satisfied customer.)
audiokinesis
2,743 posts
 

Four inches should be plenty of clearance for the ports.  Even a bit less is still functionally fine - as the port gets closer to the wall the effective tuning frequency moves lower, which is the direction you'd want it to go. 

I assume that the controls for the subs should give you a fair amount of adjustability.  If the bass is too boomy and you can't fix it with the controls on the subs, you might try stuffing foam or a rolled-up towel into one or both of the ports. 

Duke

czarivey
5,946 posts
 
I've got about 3...4" from the wall and I use rug on the wall behind speakers. 
hockey4496 OP
104 posts
 
Thanks for the feedback guys. I'll look into gikacoustics, but in the mean time y'all don't think the cork would have any value with the current setup? 

Thankfully the sub output is adjustable via a dial on the back of the speaker. Overall the sound is great, especially with digital sources. What made me wonder about using cork though is when playing vinyl, some records sound perfect with the sub adjusted to say 25%, then on others 25% is loud/boomy and over shadows the treble/mids so I have to continually adjust both speakers up and down between different albums, and occasionally even between songs on the same record. 

Ive tried varying tracking forces on the tone arm and it doesn't have an effect on the bass issue described above so I thought maybe playing around with the surface of the wall could level out the acoutics a bit so the lows aren't so sporadically over powering
williewonka
3,075 posts
 
Hockey4496 - unfortunately cork is not the solution for this problem.

You would achieve better results from carpet or rug as suggested by Czairvey. Underlay under the carpet will also help.

An option that I have tried with great success it to redirect the direction of airflow from the port by installing a Perko Chromalex Cowl Vent over the port.

http://www.jamestowndistributors.com/userportal/show_product.do?pid=11143&familyName=Perko+Chrom...

It worked very well in my case and made the speakers perform so much better across the entire bottom end - almost eliminating the muddiness and booming I had before..

Once installed, moving the speakers out just a couple more inches will improve things further.

Since you have carpet on the floor I would try pointing the vent downwards first.

Crazy Option ??? - maybe, but it worked

And - it's cheaper than new speakers :-)
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