You don't lack bass, you have too much treble


One of the biggest surprises in audio and acoustics is how damping a room with treatments makes small speakers sound so much bigger.  Yes, you get a broader, deeper soundstage but you also seem to get a lot more bass, more power, more extension!!

What's going on? 

What happened is your room was too bright.  The overall balance was too heavy on the mid and treble so as a result your systems balance was off.

For this reason I often suggest before A'goners start chasing bigger and bigger speakers, that  they think about the room first, add damping and diffusion and then go back to thinking about the bass.

Not saying you don't need a bigger speaker, but that some rooms may never have a big enough speaker in them due to the natural reflective properties.

erik_squires

I am not so sure I agree with the premise of the OP. entirely. No doubt the room is hugely important and intelligent use of treatments is paramount, but I dont hear room problems in terms of balance. Mids and highs do nothing to add to or detract from bass. 

 

You can modify the balance between frequencies by room modification easily ... I did it with a grid of tuned resonators...

And room acoustic is way more complex than buying a few panels ...

 

I usually ’go flat’ to start, then tweak above 6Khz to compensate for ears with aids.

Spouses’ ears are OK, so she informs when high hi’s are ’nuff. *G*

Bass is fine: 2 - 10" in 3way driver cabs, mids & tweets disconnected.
A single self-powered 8" in it’s own original cab.
When the Walsh get to harmonize, the upper bass/mid cones are equivalent to a 7" in surface area and make for a nice ’fill’ in the near ’back’ (Just don’t have the floor space for Everything front stage....).

If that ever becomes boring or seeming to be weak....which I can overdrive the space now....

2- 18"s. 1 - 12", and a 10" that has a mag structure as big as a 100’ spool of #12 speaker cable and weighs ’bout 30ish lbs. by itself....all of these desire a cab that I don’t have the room or the amps to do it all some form of injustice....

Oh, and there’s the 2 - 12" Utah’s with their matching expo horns that could punch through all that, even set up like a NY Ohm as they is...done for grins and a way to store them....

If the treble needs more than the pair of large Heil amts’....got another pair. ;)

Yes, Erik....absolutely crazed. *L*

But....Not Insane.👍😎

@minorl And, what level of smoothing are you using? How many speaker systems actually produce sonically accurate bass down to 18 Hz at the listening position? I'll give you a hint. It has a diameter of three mm. There is no such thing as a system that could not benefit from subwoofers if you want a realistic presentation at volumes that will not damage your hearing.

I am a fanatic when it comes to measuring systems. I have been doing it since 1995. However, it helps a bunch if there is something you can do with the measurements, like use them to guide your use of equalization and adjustment of group delays, set up of subwoofers, etc. All this can be done digitally at very high resolution. These tools are so powerful I can make a middling system sound like one 10 times as expensive. There is no other way to integrate subwoofers correctly. Every other method is wishful thinking. Can you take the edge off a bad room? No, not completely as the reflections disturb the imaging. You have to manage the room with the appropriate methods or use speakers with tightly controlled dispersion.  Measure away and get yourself a full function digital preamp.

@erik_squires Give me a break. Treating a room makes speakers sound smaller not bigger. Subwoofers can make a system sound bigger if a two way crossover is used, much bigger.