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Carpet Killed High Frequencies In My Music Listening Area

My basement play room is 14’x30’.  My music listening area is 14’x12’ of that. The remainder of that room holds my pool table.  I decided to install new floors.  In the pool table area and the rest of my basement will be “luxury vinyl” flooring.  In my listening area, I went from an area rug to wall-to-wall carpet.  

Now, high frequencies are faint and some music sounds dull. Bass is fine and the mid range sounds better than before.  Vocals and most instruments sound better.  Gone is the cymbal decay, solid ringing of bells, and other percussion sounds are dull.

The carpet is a week old, the rest of the flooring is scheduled to be installed on October 15th.  I’m tempted to have the carpet replaced with luxury vinyl and go back to my area rug.  I’d rather find a way to increase the high frequencies because I like how my system sounds otherwise.

My system,
PS Audio BHK pre amp
PS Audio BHK 250 power amp
PS Audio DSD DAC
PS Audio Stellar phone pre
Innous Zenith MKII streamer
Technics SL-1200G TT
Tannoy DC8 Ti speakers
Transparent super XLR interconnects for my digital gear and Transparent RCA interconnects for my TT
AudioQuest Rocket 88 speaker cables

What can I do to bring out the high frequencies?  

  
128x128oldschool1948
elliottbnewcombjr
5,594 posts
 
L-PADS,

if you had em, you would do exactly what they were intended to do: boost (reduce attenuation) for dull rooms; cut (increase attenuation) for live rooms. Adjust to Individual Tastes.

And keep your comfy gorgeous thick carpet. Better for preventing too early reflections.

Many Vintage Speakers included L-Pads, my Fisher President II Console had all electro-voice drivers, and each had a pair of AT-37 L-Pads: one for the mid horn; 1 for the horn tweeter.

The crossover was designed with mid-attenuation as 'normal', boost or cut from there.

Their Model 6 has a resistor network with 5 specific frequency curves in a graph, selected by rear switch.

I just replaced my 4 L-Pads, and it took me familiar music, then parts of 5 listening test cds to determine/adjust/refine each, then adjust L to R.

Combined with my new six 9's copper speaker wires and new six 9's copper interconnects, my system has never sounded better.
milpai's avatar
milpai
2,420 posts
 
One of the things you NOW need to take care is about the cables lying on the floor. If possible raise them off the carpets. Will definitely sound silly. But makes a big difference, if you don’t take care of this issue. Use paper cups or cheap stuff to give it a shot. There is static in the new carpet. That’s the reason.
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
Wall to wall carpet, beautiful balance. Highs clear as can be. https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367 Can only be due to the cable elevators.
oldschool1948's avatar
oldschool1948 OP
503 posts
 
I appreciate the helpful responses.  Since installing the carpet, I've been tinkering with my system setup.  I placed my speakers on 1" bamboo butcher blocks so that I could move them easier, and I'm still using the stock Tannoy speaker footers.  The speakers are not resting on a completely stable surface as before.  I will remove the footers and the butcher blocks so the speaker spikes are resting on the floor.  Hopefully, this will help.

Because my room is small, I've positioned the speakers (tweeters) 48" from the front wall and 29" from the side walls. The tweeters are 80" apart. My sitting position is 94" perpendicular from the speakers.

Ultimately, I will use  ISOACOUSTICS GAIA III speaker isolators with the speakers, and the speakers sitting on Butcher Block speaker stands with spikes.

I am using cable elevators on my speaker cables and power cords.  I've toed the speakers in where the tweeters are pointing just outside my left and right shoulders.  I will tinker with that a bit and post my findings.

Thanks again for the suggestions.




rsf507
2,347 posts
 
My dealer told me when I was about to install new carpet NOT to use any synthetic material but only natural like a wool based material. When I changed it from the synthetic to a wool tweed what a difference. Highs were so natural and open. 
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