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nautilus 801 bass accuracy

calling on 801 owners and anyone with many hours with 801's.... I'm trying to figure out if the lack of definition and boom on bass guitar on some recordings is inherent in the speakers or something I can correct. this quality or, lack of, is enough to want to stop listening. I could be exciting a room mode but at this point I'm not sure. Actually on some recordigs I can identify it as standing waves. other times it appears to be muffled bass from some recordings and it stands out because the rest of the sound is so great? I've noticed some owners on audioreview say if the source equipment is low standard you will get this? I'm running a AI mod 3 through 2 bryston 4bsst bi amped but my cd player is rega planet 2000 and turntable is an old planer 3 with clearaudio cartridge.
Your help is needed. Thank's
cardiomaniac
cytocycle
1,043 posts
 
Room plays a big part as people have already mentioned.

Also the Rega Planet is a single bit dac that starts to get compressed when things get busy on the recording, try borrowing a better CD player.
cardiomaniac OP
8 posts
 
Great responses. The poor bass quality or lack of bass definition has been improved upon over the last two months with speaker placement. I used rives room simulator a month ago and found the results to be the best placement(almost six feet out from the fronts). The set up is symmetrical with nothing in between and my room is 17 x 20 but I can increase the length to 27 feet and planning to do this soon. The bass is amazing on many recordings but not great and not terrible on others.
I will order a test disc and I have a radio shack spl meter.
The bass is much better when the music is not busy which points to Cytocycle comments about the cd player but then it's the same problem with vinyl?

I'll continue to tweak the room and set up and spend more f..king money to get it right.

More comments will be appreciated... Joel
rhljazz
1,255 posts
 
Does your room have thick heavy carpet and are the speakers using the B&W spikes or resting on the stock roller ball feet? The spikes will add increased definition and lighten up the bass. At this point, you may want to tailor the sound a bit by adding some sand bags between the resonant aluminum base plate and the floor if you decide to use the spikes.
asin
33 posts
 
I owned one in 14x20 room. Its bass extension is awesome, it can be felt instead of just heard. The mid bass is not overwhelming unlike typical multi small woofer design. It is better than Revel Ultima, Wilson Puppy for playing loud orchestra music.
jon_5912
605 posts
 
I had the N802s for a long time and the bottom port interacts with the room differently than most speakers.  In my experience it decreases room resonance problems pretty dramatically.  The port bass comes out in all directions under the speaker and this makes a huge difference.  I replaced some N804s with N802s and I was amazed that while the 804s had very large room interaction problems the 802s measured very close to spec.  I've got a Behringer Ultracurve and measurement mic I used to do measurements with.  

I think the downside of the bottom ports is that they are a little bit indistinct.  I'd guess that is just an inherent tradeoff.  
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