need help with boominess

[dmpbyrdwatcher]

Hi,

I have LS70 speakers that I have loved since 1993. These speakers have traveled all over with me as I have moved around the country and have always sounded wonderful....

until my last move. Now I'm having trouble with lots of boominess and 'echo-ey' sounds that I can't figure out how to alleviate.

The speakers have always been placed on carpeted wooden main floors, in houses with basements underneath the main floor. Now they are on carpet over cement floor, ground level without basement. I wonder if this is why I am having trouble - and if so, what do I do to fix it?

Room size is about the same as everywhere I've lived, perhaps a bit larger but not much. Speaker placement within the room is about the same as always - yes, in corners but pulled away from the walls quite a bit. I do have higher ceilings now, can't think of anything else that is different from other places I've lived - I've always lived in houses with very open floor plans and lots of windows and this house is the same.

What could be causing this boominess and 'echoey' sounds? Would speaker feet help or anything like that help? Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

[Face]

Spikes would help.

[dkg999]

Room treatments

[kawizx9r]

Spikes would help.

+1
Spikes have worked VERY well for me in the past for my towers when I had carpeted floors, also I found pulling them away from the back wall some made the bass a little tight as opposed to being close up. Could be a variety of things honestly.

[AudioGenics]

1. might want to add more damping material

2. also dynamat the speaker baskets.

3. modify / upgrade xover components.

4. select , change, upgrade components - source, preamp, amps, cables,

5. isolate and clean power lines

6. analyze and address room dimensions / acoustics

[mystik610]

http://www.auralex.com/sound_isolation_gramma/sound_isolation_gramma.asp

I used an Auralex Gramma to control the boominess in my old HTiB sub, and it really did help to tighten up the bass, give the sub more articulation, and control reverberation in other rooms.

[kevhed72]

If your seating position backs up close to a wall, try treating the back will with traps and if possible, pull seating position away from back wall.

[dmpbyrdwatcher]

thanks for all the responses - I will look into room acoustics more and perhaps some spikes or the interesting Auralex product.

However, I found that I had a faulty cable from the CD player - once I switched that out, the boominess went away.

And, call me an old fogie, but I had to go back and dig out some older music to be sure - is it just me or does much of the newly recorded music seem to be recorded very poorly? ok, just grumbling.... I know my twenty-something kids think low quality ipod music with earbugs sounds 'great'.

[AudioGenics]

i would be interested in what was faulty about the cable.

insulator, conductor, terminator ?

[steveinaz]

Spike them and place them on clay tiles.

[dmpbyrdwatcher]

sorry, jvc - I don't know what was wrong with the cable. it looked ok, although it was pretty old (15 years). I just went over all my wiring and cabling to see if anything would help and as soon as I replaced the CD cable with a different one, there was immediate difference in sound - both boominess and echo sounds stopped.

i wish i could help, but honestly it is all voodoo to me.

[mystik610]

thanks for all the responses - I will look into room acoustics more and perhaps some spikes or the interesting Auralex product.

However, I found that I had a faulty cable from the CD player - once I switched that out, the boominess went away.

And, call me an old fogie, but I had to go back and dig out some older music to be sure - is it just me or does much of the newly recorded music seem to be recorded very poorly? ok, just grumbling.... I know my twenty-something kids think low quality ipod music with earbugs sounds 'great'.

I'm a twenty-something and I agree that new music is recorded poorly. The average person can't hear it, but the amount of detail lost in compressing an audio file to an MP3 bugs the hell out of me. MP3's sounded great when played through my computer speakers when I was 13...but when I finally hooked up one of the first in-dash MP3 CD players in my car (which was heavily polked out too), I started to cringe at the audio quality of MP3's.

Sadly it seems the music industry seems to be conforming to the lower audio quality standards of digital music distribution. They release awful quality recordings that are 'loud' throughout the whole song to compensate for the horrible dynamic range of the MP3 format these songs will be most heavily distributed through.

If you're bored one day, take an SPL meter to your car, put it on a top 40 station, and watch how little the volume levels ever change.