"Book shelf" speakers put on speaker stands = less bass??

[fas42]

Speakers on stands are less stable - the simple exercise of pushing lightly on the side of the speaker while mounted on the stands shows how precarious it is; close to zero resistance to wobbling around, from the slightest nudge. From experience, the best solution is do something which gives the speaker cabinet enormous effective mass - imagine creating a pillar of several tonnes, and concreting the cabinet to that pillar; no need to actually do that 😉, but the closer you effectively get to that situation, the better.

 

So what do you get doing that? "Big" sound, very authoritative, meaning not boomy, bass, high levels of detail - provided the replay chain is clean, it's a win in every area.

[fas42]

30 minutes ago, botrytis said:

 

Not if the stands are designed properly and weighted. If not then well, it is a crap shoot. There is a lot of nonsense in your statements.

 

I mean, I don't put stacks of papers on mine, talk about unstable.

 

 

Yes, if the stands are designed well, and weighted adequately, then it will work to a decent degree. IME, the way most small speaker sound as normally set up, is, well, small - wind up the volume a bit, and the SQ falls apart; and the bass most certainly doesn't work properly - non-existent, or boomy.

 

A stack of papers is a simple method of increasing effective mass, while allowing it to be readily adjustable. As a long term, aesthetic solution it obviously is a no-go - but it serves to give one answers. It worked 30 years ago, and it still is a simple approach for getting results.

 

I aim to hear the recording, at any volume level that the system can sustain - not, the limitations of the system setup.

[fas42]

Tracked down a YT clip of your model of speakers running, if only for a second or two,

 

 

The smallness of the sound, here, is what one usually gets with this size of cabinet if it's just plunked on a convenient surface - I don't believe the full capability of such units can be realised until the stabilising of the cabinets is thoroughly explored, 😉.

[fas42]

2 hours ago, 992Sam said:

 

 

I got one better... here's a YouTube clip of my exact system...  once I moved the speakers back closer to the rear wall... the bass opened up.  Its a compromise due to my smallish room... but it sounds great! 

 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH5YAbCfDJ8

 

Hope you don't mind, but I would just make a comment about the stands ... very much like the style of construction, the three legged approach - but I find that the top of the legs come too close together - the speaker "hangs over" the platform it's sitting on. If I were to do my own version of what you have I would have a very solid platform at least the size of the base of the speakers, with the legs effectively in line with the bottom of the sides of the speakers. And most importantly, couple the speaker cabinet to the platform it's sitting on only at the most rigid points; for a box, these are obviously the corners, directly under the vertical sides.

 

The point of this is that the vibration of the cabinets is transferred to the stand and floor in the most effective way - I have found the better I do this, the more 'authoritative' is the bass.

[fas42]

3 minutes ago, botrytis said:

 

 

I totally disagree. Bookshelves can sound big, it depends on the speakers and the room acoustics.

 

Room acoustics have nothing to with it, IME ... the presentation of the speakers, and the recording dominates the room totally, if the rig is well sorted. Which means that an intimate capture will sound exactly so, and at the opposite end a massive acoustic will completely overwhelm the listening space.

 

3 minutes ago, botrytis said:

A stack of papers, is just that, a stack of papers. You do realize one of the issues with paper is that if you have a nice wood finish, on the speakers, that paper being a rough surface, can scratch and damage the cabinet. Also, if you are using newspaper, which uses soybean oil based ink, it can leach into the cabinet and ruin it also. Sorry no.

 

If one uses a weighted, stiff stand and then attaches said speaker to the stand, there is no issues.

 

Again, the papers are just a workaround - to get answers. If one wants an aesthetically pleasing look, then purchase massively heavy speakers designed to look good, or build some visually acceptable structure around small speakers that does the same thing as the papers.

 

30 years ago, I used a stand structure at least 10 times heavier and more rigid than what @992Sam has in his clip, and added a huge weight on top as well. Experimentation showed the more massive and rigid the structure, the better the sound ... to be blunt, I find the bass performance of most audio setups to be quite poor; the intensity of the bass line in the music just doesn't get conveyed ...

[fas42]

12 hours ago, GregWormald said:

A couple of little things you might try:

 

Instead of the rubber pad, try a few blobs of blu-tac. They grip the speakers really well and compress so the speakers respond as if they have been screwed/bolted to the stands—i.e. their mass has been increased.

 

The other "mass adding" trick is to fill the legs of the stand with something like dry swimming pool filter sand. This also damps the stands significantly.

 

Nice system, and I do like Benson and Klugh too, among others.

 

Agree with both tweaks - Blu-Tack is a very useful part of the tweaker's kit; cheap, easy to apply, and to remove if it doesn't help - a point I would make is that if you're using this, is to have a decent gob of the stuff, and press whatever you're trying to couple really tightly together; make the 'bond' so strong that you almost pick up the stand, if you try to lift the speaker.

[fas42]

49 minutes ago, botrytis said:

 

Blu-Tack leaches oil into the wood of the cabinet and ruins finishes.

 

Sorry no.

 

It's on the underneath of the speaker, where no-one looks - and is only needed in the corners. If one wants to investigate this seriously, then another method which accomplishes the same thing could be tried, which is guaranteed to not cause harm ... personally, I would have very little time for listening to speakers which are not stabilised properly; the 'blurring' which results from this not being taken care of would irritate me too much ...

[fas42]

3 minutes ago, botrytis said:

 

It still damages the wood and finish and that is part and parcel of the box that makes up the speaker. Kind of like water on wood, HDF, or MDF - it is not good for the speaker.

 

If you want, I will argue chemistry with you but you will lose that battle. I understand wood chemistry (along with varnishes, etc.) very well as it was part of my PhD research.

 

Right, no chemistry with you ... got it!! 😁

 

Friend up the road uses cargo tie down straps, done super tight, with speaker on some cork spacers - to achieve the same effect. No looker, but it means it's easy to test the benefits - if you gain from this type of stabilising, then you can consider a more aesthetic variation ...

[fas42]

8 hours ago, March Audio said:

It's nothing to do with this.  It's the (reduced) effect of boundary reinforcement. Plus you may have a cancellation at a specific frequency dependant on the distance from the boundary(ies).

 

https://www.prosoundtraining.com/2011/08/29/how-boundaries-affect-loudspeakers/

 

 

 

I've been using my method of stabilising for over 3 decades - and I never have problems of bass booming, etc. Until now, with my current active speakers - these can force the whole house to start throbbing from the bass line, on the 'wrong' track and with the volume up. But that's my fault ... I didn't stabilise them as well as I should have, and I used add mass, on top, to help. Just a day ago I adjusted that extra weight, and so far it seems to have helped matters ... more testing today. The long term solution is to redo completely how the speakers are supported - the Round Tuit moment, 😁.

[fas42]

1 hour ago, March Audio said:

That's got nothing to do with you "stabilising" the speakers. It's almost certainly a room mode that is being excited by that particular track.

 

As I've already said, I've been happy with how the bass was being delivered by previous setups of mine - my experience with other setups is that often the bass is poorly presented, or it booms like crazy; that is, they don't have subjectively satisfying integration of the bass line in the music.

 

The current actives are not as stable as they should be - so, before I blame anything else, I would experiment with improving this - and see how much remains which is to do with the house. There are some old tracks which have "bass boom" embedded in the music - my copy of Judy Garland's "Over the Rainbow" is like this.

[fas42]

17 minutes ago, March Audio said:

Oh why did I take you off ignore?

 

Frank, speaker mounting (insecure) won't create boom.  Boom will be a resonance, a peak in amplitude at a certain frequency.  Either a fundamental speaker characteristic, or more likely a room mode.

 

There are some obvious reasons why your previous set ups may not have excited the room mode but I won't go into it as you will no doubt ignore and carry on guessing and fiddling and convincing yourself of improvement.

 

Of course there are room modes - but our hearing adapts to them ... a real grand piano being played by a real person in a real, relatively small room, doesn't sound boomy - when the bass notes are being forcibly played ... at least, I have never heard such an instrument irritate me with 'resonances'.

 

So, a simple question: why is a piano OK - but a recording playback setup needs all this, umm, fiddling?

[fas42]

3 minutes ago, March Audio said:

No it doesn't and no they are not fixed by securing the speaker.

 

Okay, you still haven't answered why a piano is OK, but audio speakers are not ...

[fas42]

2 hours ago, March Audio said:

Back on topic,  Frank, can you explain why you think an audible boom is connected to the security of the speaker mount?

 

How have you tested your theory?

 

You are a difficult chap to interact with, you know 🙂 - this was all sorted out over 35 years ago; spikes were the rage back then, and I experimented with those - definitely improved the sound. Thinking through what they were accomplishing, which was to far more strongly couple the cabinet to the underlying support, it made sense to increase the weight to improve that coupling - which made things better, almost without end. Visiting demo rooms, with enormous speakers set up, which had very nondescript bass, and lack of clarity - and then testing how solidly they were mating to the floor, and finding they were ready to bounce from side to side, with the slightest push - helped to confirm the behaviour.

 

Audio friend and I went through an exercise where we stabilised his tiny Tannoys - using a very different approach ... ahh, proper bass!! How nice you decided to pay us a visit ...

 

Nothing stopping you trying the same things - except your belief that it can't be true; therefore you won't try it ... 😉

[fas42]

Note, we still have no response as to why real instruments in the home don't require "bass compensation" - but audio systems do ...

 

Ah, the bizarre world of the audiophile - ya gotta chuckle, now and again, 😁.

[fas42]

11 minutes ago, Racerxnet said:

The room response to the notes being played on the piano are still being effected. Many musicians will attest that the same performance played in a concert hall will sound great, where as the same songs will sound terrible in a gymnasium. Just because you don't hear the room boundary's interference in your home, does not mean they don't exist. Why do you thing concert halls are engineered a specific way??

 

Yes, there will be a room response - but for the vast majority of rooms the acoustics will be perfectly adequate, for hearing the instruments ... when was the last time someone buying a piano told, that if you don't do a lot to the room to "improve it", that the piano won't sound right?

 

11 minutes ago, Racerxnet said:

https://www.pianobuyer.com/article/how-to-make-a-piano-room-sound-grand/

 

 Thinking that just because the piano is plopped in the room, and what you hear is accurate is incorrect.

 

The piano has to be accurate to sounding like a real piano - because it is! No matter how bizarre you make the acoustics, it's always accurate - by definition. ... It sounds like, 100% correctly, a real piano being played in unusual acoustics ... 🙂

[fas42]

52 minutes ago, Racerxnet said:

Read the link. Adequate for you, but not so for a musician who wants the best. The piano sounds accurate in a room because it "is" the reference. The replay from your disk has no reference to you. You were never there during the mix. It's only a piano sound to us because it sounds like one. 

 

Why is what the musician thinks of it relevant? What matters to me is that I experience the illusion of a piano playing in front of me - if it fails to deliver that, then the fact that there is a resonance in the room for some note has close to zero relevance for that failure ...

[fas42]

13 hours ago, Confused said:

So you have these very complicated interactions between all the room dimensions, which in themselves will naturally lead to resonances, peaks and nulls at different frequencies, and the specific location of the speakers.  It is here that a piano in a room is very different to a stereo system in a room.  With a stereo you quite probably do have your speakers placed identically distanced from the floor, ceiling and back wall, possibly to millimeter perfection., and these speakers are producing the sound almost as two single points in space, which exacerbates these effects in a way that a piano will not.  Consider that a piano is big, and the sound does not come from one point in space, not even close to this.  The sound is created by vibrations of a very long string, the soundboard, and the entire body of the piano acts as a resonator, together with the lid.  This is a huge dispersed area which is working together generating the sound, not the entire sound from one point.

 

This is the most plausible explanation, looking at the situation conventionally.

 

13 hours ago, Confused said:

 

There is perhaps a parallel to this with audio.  One technique for getting very even bass in a given room is to use a large number of subwoofers, or a "subwoofer swarm" as some might call it.  The idea here is not to have lots of subs to get lots of bass, but rather to have the subs located asymmetrically to the room and to each other, so each one will have different interactions and create different peaks and nulls, which will then tend to cancel out, and can be then be brought to a very even bass response, probably with room correction to prevent the overall level of bass being excessive, but at least there will be limited nulls, which are otherwise difficult to "fill" or correct.

 

This is why a piano is less likely to hit a pure room resonance than a stereo speaker, it is effectively generating the same effect as a subwoofer swarm.

 

 

 

If the large body of the instrument is part of the answer, why not make the subwoofer large in effective area too - the Bose 901 concept - lots of small drivers spread over a large surface area? I certainly know it doesn't work in the purely vertical mode - the Steinway Lyngdorf  Model D system I heard once was the most awful rig I had listened to in a long, long time - massive, booming bass, that was quite absurd, of a recording of a piano!

[fas42]

No reason for a subwoofer with many smaller drivers to be symmetrical in that fashion - firing downward, they can be spaced over a large area; say, perfectly mimicking a grand piano lid! 😛. And of course, there are instruments that produce bass notes that are largely vertical; the double bass, say.

 

That Model D was a complete mess - the treble was truly awful - so I suspect the rig had major issues all round - to be assured that it wasn't the recording, I had it played on the Gryphon plus Wilson setup on the other side of the room ... ah, much, much closer to sounding reasonable ...