All subs sound weird in my room..

[Korndog]

well, i made yet another subbox(pics posted soon), it sounds great, better then those 500 dollar MK subs which i wanted to buy. anyways, i still have the same problem though.. bass sounds insanly loud in one corner of the room, the one next to the door, and normal everywhere else. why is that?? even placing the sub in different places didn't make a difference. took the sub out of my room and put it in my friends room (only other guy i know with a reciever) and it was loud and clean everywhere in his room :(. i don't get it... is it the shag carpet??? do i need acoustic panels?? someone help me..

//edit
http://www.ocforums.com/showpost.php?p=3821154&postcount=424
heres some pics to get an idea of where i put it.

[RobxMcCarthy]

It's the standing wave deal.. Try moving the sub around until it sounds good. I have the same problem in my room.

[Vulcan]

well, i made yet another subbox(pics posted soon), it sounds great, better then those 500 dollar MK subs which i wanted to buy. anyways, i still have the same problem though.. bass sounds insanly loud in one corner of the room, the one next to the door, and normal everywhere else. why is that?? even placing the sub in different places didn't make a difference. took the sub out of my room and put it in my friends room (only other guy i know with a reciever) and it was loud and clean everywhere in his room :(. i don't get it... is it the shag carpet??? do i need acoustic panels?? someone help me..

//edit
http://www.ocforums.com/showpost.php?p=3821154&postcount=424
heres some pics to get an idea of where i put it.

if all else fails, build a bass trap.

/I'm not joking

[Nexus Realized]

I was having the same problem until a couple months ago when the light bulb went off in my head, I have about 3 feet of empty wall space on the left hand side of my closet so I shoved my Sub all the way to one corner facing the wall..VIOLA it sounds like a $1000 sub now and its an old 12" powered CV from 1996. I guess its kinda the same concept as sticking it in the trunk of a car accept the closet is the trunk :p This thing gets LOW really low. First song I tested when putting in there a few months ago was Hail Mary since its got some great low end bass, First time since that song came out that I was actually able to hear what it was supposed to sound like instead of alot of speaker and window movement and no sound :cool: GL try the closet thing if you have that option. Its also pretty neat when people think sound like that is coming from 3 1/2" Infinity Satellite speaker I've got mount on all 4 corners of the room.

[RobxMcCarthy]

Well a good way to do it is to put the sub in your seating area.. literally put it in your chair and play a continual sine sweep. I use NCH tone generator. Then walk around your room until you find a spot where the bass sounds even, put the sub in that spot. Works like a charm.

[Mr.Guvernment]

it could be thematerials used to make your walls - insulation not evenly put in - some concrete, some dry walll ?

the closet /door opening in your room could be affecting it - perhaps the sub is simply too powerful for your room size?

[RobxMcCarthy]

Uneven material in the walls would actually be prefered :shrug: .

The more uniform your room is the worse it would be.

Ever notice how venus designed to be accoustically perfect are A) never square B) never even uniform or symmetrical C) never made out of the same materials.

A cubic room is the worst.. Mine's pretty bad 12.5 * 13.5 almost a perfect square. This means that waves bouncing off the walls come back at themselves and cancel out. This is the "standing wave" You can HELP it with accoustic padding / bass traps but in the end proper sub placement has to be done first.

[punkgamingmaste]

thats prolly why bass sounds good and even in my room. i have a really odd shaped room mode out of tons of different matterials. and my room is underground. i have concrete walls, drywalls, normal wood walls with insulation behind and parts where there is no insulation. my floor is concrete and half-way covered in carpet. i have blankets and pillows laying everywhere. and my room isnt square or rectangle or anything else for that matter.

[Korndog]

dang, it makes sense now.. the part i where its not so loud is in the square area of my room, it gets loud when i'm close to the door where its more like a long rectangle. i've tried placing it in different corners of my room as well as in the center and no luck :(.
closet is full and not mine so i can't try that. i dont' think the sub is that strong.. 10" w/ 150w amp.. anyone know a cheap source for accoustic padding / bass traps?

[RobxMcCarthy]

Cheap source? Cheapest would be to throw some pillows in the corners of the rooms.. lol. It's basically the same thing. But I don't think bass traps will help to add sound. Usually they're for absorbing extraneous bass in the corners of the room, usually behind the sub.

Also, try changing the phase of the sub, if you can. Usually you should have it on rev or 180 degrees. But again it all depends on your room. (Should be a switch for it on your amp.)

[Korndog]

i crossed the wires (no switch) i think it sounds a little better.. but not louder. i messed around with some eggshell foam that i have, didn't seem to make a difference either make it a little louder argh, i guess i should just accept it.. thanks for the help though guys, i think i know the problem now atleast.

[Edo]

Hey..
I've got 4x stage speakers with 12 inch subs .. and 2x 10 inch bins in my room lol, i had the same problem at first. This bass distortion that your getting is because your sub ( which looks bloody excellent btw, i love custom work ) is not centered in the room. Basically its like getting 7.1 and only using 4 speakers lol. You have to either center the sub or balance it out with another sub of the same dimension. This probably combined with a weaker area of insulated wall is creating some low distortion.
Having a square room probably isn't the issue, as my room is 5m x 6.5m which is fairly square. Is your whole floor carpetted? If so the thud of the sub should NOT be echoing off walls and ceiling mainly because the first area in which the bass hits is the floor via the shelling of the box.

If your still getting distortion, try placing the sub pretty much halfway between the width of your room but closer to one end of the length of the room ( close to the wall of one length ) and have the sub facing one width of the room. ie stick the sub under you desk if it doesnt rattle to much .. or perhaps even to the left of it as i see its on the right at the moment, not in the center of the room, and fairly close to a bookshelf full of things that can rattle :P.

Get back to me, Edo.

[RobxMcCarthy]

Hmm.. I'm not sure that's true. But one thing you might also want to try is tipping the sub on its side as opposed to having it straight up and down. Also, try facing it towards a wall or a corner. There's so many combinations you can try, and often times it's very difficult to get it to sound great.

I have 2 subs myself and can't get it perfect in my room.

[Korndog]

i'm not getting distortion really. the sub sounds great, even better then great, i wouldn't give it up even for those 500 dollar MK subs in the stores. even with the standing wave problem, it feels like i'm a theater with the deep bass i've never had with even a 15" woofer. the only thing that ticks me off is how it sound louder at one corner of the room and not the other. even putting ur face up against it isn't as loud. but whats nice is as long as you stay in the square part of my room, it sounds even. even if u get closer, it doesn't get louder, i guess thats the way it should be, bass is omnidirectional afterall right, it shouldn't matter if you have 1 or 1000 (i figured this out with car audio a LOONG time ago)

i've tried tipping it over, facing it towards the wall, putting it in the center of the room, nothing changes. you could put wheels and a motor on it and drive it around my room and it wouldn't change. like i said, this box is so dead and tuned perfectly (i used a freakin caliper, i can proudly say its tuned to excatly 24.8, with any ifs on the tenth digit). i could cover up the box and you would have a hard time find it because once u get to the loud corner (other side of the room from the sub) you'll think its there.
now i took my sub to my friends house, and it sounded perfect, volume wise. a lot louder then in my room and had a flatter responce. his house is pretty old and oddly shaped though. its not fair.. :(

[Ryan T]

The corner is really one of the worst places for a subwoofer in a room if sound quality and even bass is the goal. While you do get the biggest boost in bass from having it in the corner it excites more room resonances and modes than any other place if my memory serves me.

For the most even and clean bass its usually best to have the sub midway along a wall in the room. The cleanest bass i've ever been able to achive is having my sub near center of the longest wall in my room. It was also the most even over the whole room. Rob's suggestion about placing the sub in your normal seating area is right on for getting the best bass where you sit. But to get more even bass throughout the room the corner isnt ususally the best option.

Adding a second or third subwoofer can cause more issues that it solves though. If you have two subwoofers in adjacent corners you are exciteing all the resonant frequencies and modes for each corner creating more problems than if you had just one. However if you use multiple subs in the same location you will boost the output an wont be creating any new problems. Heres a very interesting white paper on the subwject of multiple subs or one in a room and how it effects the sound.

http://www.harman.com/wp/pdf/multsubs.pdf

I dont really agree with their conclusions about multiple subs but its very interesting none the less. Here is also a pretty informative discussion about that white paper on home theater forum.

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htforum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=209659&highlight=multiple+subs


But regardless if you havnt tried placing the subwoofer towards the middle of one of the walls then I suggest doing that. Of course every room is different but from what i've seen/heard the middle of the wall is usually the cleanest and most even throughout the room.


Ryan

[Buhammot]

Learning every day... I would almost want to use the sub that i built for my car in my room, but that means getting a plate amp.. which i cant afford at the moment. But even with my little 8" sony sub, i have it playing 100hz and lower. In the upper registers i can tell where its coming from, but it isnt terrible.. Considering that the desk i have is a POS and the right speaker has like no bass due to desk design.

[Ryan T]

If the main goal is loud bass then the corner is the best place by far. It has the most surfaces near the driver to reinforce the bass. But its often the most erratic spot in terms of frequency response and uniform sound levels through out the room.



Ryan

[RobxMcCarthy]

Yeah, I've read that white paper before. But what they don't take into account is what else is in the room. If it's a home theater with four walls and some chairs that's one thing, but if it's a bedroom with desk, bureau, table, computer, double bed, ceiling fan, closet, nook where door is... The subs response is very unpredictable. Of course corners will always be more bloated, but cancellation and even tone are so hard to achieve in odd rooms.

[Korndog]

i think i can put the box under my desk, i used to actually have it this way before in a sealed box, but it was firing up. if i have it firing to the side it'll have about 2" clearance from the wood desk (happens to be 3/4" partical wood) you think it would sound better this way? i've heard some good/bad things about bass reflecting off wood, i'm probably gonna try it this afternoon.

i think my major problem area in my room is the book shelf, its huge and fixed to the wall. i stuck my head in to one while i had the speakers playing and heard weird things. i'm sure thats not helping.. maybe things will change when i take out the shag carpet

[helrazr1586]

to tell you the truth you really should have made it a down firing sub box with the port out the back because you get a more full room sound with down firing sub and the port headed a different direction than forward firing motion of the sub prevents the mixing and killing of a frequency

[Vulcan]

http://www.vulc4n.com/images/room3.jpg
Heres a not so great picture of my setup.. Not to shaby for a bedroom :D I've actualy moved the sub to the corner, I'm thinking about trying it in the closet as sugested before.

[Mr.Guvernment]

what color are youor walls - i like them , need to paint my living room

[Korndog]

to tell you the truth you really should have made it a down firing sub box with the port out the back because you get a more full room sound with down firing sub and the port headed a different direction than forward firing motion of the sub prevents the mixing and killing of a frequency

well the thing is, i like to see the sub, lol. i used to have down firing subs a while back and always ended up flipping them around, can't really tell the difference. its not like i'm disappointed with the sound or how loud it is, just the fact that it gets really loud in one area of the room, like boomy loud, its kind of annoying. It sounds great in this room and sounds better in my other room or my friends room thats why i think changing the sub/box (which i've done 5 times) won't make a difference unless i do something with the room.

[Nexus Realized]

what color are youor walls - i like them , need to paint my living room

I had a color similar to that a few yrs ago that I got from Walmart..."Mushroom Taupe"

EDIT: BTW if you do actually check out the paint at the store...It looks absolutely nothing like it does on the sample. I was a little ****ed at first, however I got over it after awhile since the color that it dried on the wall was pretty nice.

[RobxMcCarthy]

Nice dude, like to see the athenas =). Are those the F1's or F2's, can't tell from the angle/clarity.

I've got a pair of the F2's myself and LOVE them.

[james.miller]

My room is rectangular. After a lot of headache i found the best place for my (first) sub was right in the middle of one of the short walls and as close to the ceiling as i could get it. Which was a pain in the ass, especially as this was right above my bedroom door lol.

Still, thats where i built the box and it soudns ausome, but it was missiong something. It's got a thunderous bottom end but the responce was uneven. I fixed that buy building another sub and placing it on the floor, just to the left of the door. Now its all great:)


You are right though. Subs dont sound 'right' in my room either. Although it does sound outstanding, if i hookup the floorsub downstairs in the livingroom the difference is like night and day. Its probably the wooden flooring in my room that doesnt help.

[RobxMcCarthy]

Consider yourself lucky. I have tile flooring in my room... lol.

[Korndog]

Consider yourself lucky. I have tile flooring in my room... lol.
are those athenas good? i've always looked down at them after hearing some of them at bestbuy, but never heard their high end stuff.

[zabomb4163]

Consider yourself lucky. I have tile flooring in my room... lol.

ouch. my biggest issue is window panes.

[Vulcan]

what color are youor walls - i like them , need to paint my living room
I don't remember what its called, but I like it alot also. It helps keep the room nice and dark too. I don't know if I would paint a living room this color :D I just went and looked at the swatches at sears and picked out the color I liked.

[Vulcan]

Nice dude, like to see the athenas =). Are those the F1's or F2's, can't tell from the angle/clarity.

I've got a pair of the F2's myself and LOVE them.

They are F2s, They are way overkill for a room this size, but hey.. why not? lol.

[Vulcan]

are those athenas good? i've always looked down at them after hearing some of them at bestbuy, but never heard their high end stuff.

Its hard to judge anything at a placel ike Best Buy. I like mine alot. I got a great deal on mien too. I paid 400.00 for the pair including shipping.

[Korndog]

how do u think they compare to the Polk R50, i'm planning on getting them to accompany my R15 monitors for a surround sound system.
yea, i'm not very fond of best buy either, but they did have the MK, boston, ect speakers next to everything eles and they sounded amazing. i think i heard the F1, the tweeter seemed harsh and it didn't look well built so i didn't look a lot into it, plus the company wasn't familiar, but i might look into them now

[RobxMcCarthy]

There have been many mentions of the Athenas being the best buy under $1000 . Look at the stereophile review for more info.