Bass traps? (to solve a suck out)

Bob,

Sorry ....not laughing at you but the plots that Ethan shows have huge differences over a few inches in a real listening environment. It has to make one "laugh" and put things in proper perspective when one looks at a Stereophile set of pristine measurements! What are we actually getting at home - even the best of us - and how much 'processing' is the brain doing to compensate for these peaks and troughs.

Certainly Ethan's arguments seem to support the contention that a device that produces modest amounts of additional even harmonic distortion may very much help improve the sound in a typical room with nasty suckouts. As in the case of nasty suckout at a particular fundamental, it will be all the other harmonics that still allow our ears/brain to interprete, fill-in and hear the note with a fundamental that actually isn't there...perhaps this is why even harmonic distortion is often pleasing and adds warmth and detail that we could not appreciate before in our less than adequate surroundings...

I dont run a sub as I run speakers that have usable bass to 16HZ but I may try to add my sub to fill in suck out if nothing else works

If your speakers are very symmetrically placed with respect to the room and listener (as most people) then you can assume they are exciting room modes in much the same way. A sub off to one side will also suffer from the same room modes - no doubt - so you will still have problems but not in quite the same way - especially if the sub is closer to the listening position than the speakers and at a different distance from floor and walls - so the combined effect of the mixing of the bass signals may help a little. Again the abundance of bass means you can use EQ to tame peaks which should better help you hear the troughs - just don't expect miracles as room modes are there whatever you do and they always dominate unless a room is extensively treated acoustically. Since you have bass down to 16 Hz then you can think of the subs role as "fill-in" duty...

one improvement has been achieved as I found one speakers woofers out of phase so it is much better but not as ideal as I hope for. Upon discovering the speaker was internally out of phase now I have a new noticable problem, the bass is behind me and to the sides but at my seat it is way down so again I am lost. I suppose bass traps behind me in corners will tame that but suspect it may further steal bass from my sweetspot.......signed confused and bewildered

Oh, I could have sworn I saw something about a subwoofer in the origional post.

61 Hz has a wavelength about 18.5 ft. 1/4 is about 55 inches. Want to do some measuring of your room and where the speakers are sitting? If the bass drivers are open baffle, the reflections can be either phase.

Yes you did see a sub in original post, I was adding my problems to the thread as I have same issue. Sorry if I hijacked things.