Advice needed for bass echoing

i would hazard a guess that the woodstocks are placed in the corners on the marble slab and close to the wall. if so then try moving it away from the wall and place it such that the tweeters of the woodstock are at ur ear level. place them on stands if u have to achieve it.
the fact that u have placed them so high contributes to excess bass(i hope i am right, maybe the others can concur on this).
cheers,
Ben

p.s: i have experienced this as i had kept my murphies at 8 feet high in the corners of my room and i heard better bass than my diamonds but once i go thtem on the ground and mounted them on stands te bass deresed hugely.

do you have boom with both set of speakers ?
do post details on the positioning of your speakers with regard to
Distance between them
Distance from back & side walls.
Your listening position.
Any other wooden/cloth furniture or rugs..

Maybe we can help with the above info

Hello Rahul,

You have the infamous "bass boom". Why are you driving two sets of speakers?

The Woodstock speakers have always been designed to be too heavy in the bass. There is nothing you can do to correct this - except to get rid of them.

When you place these speakers close to the room boundaries, walls and floor, you get a further boost upto 6dB in the low frequencies because of reflections of the low frequency waves. The amount of boost can be adjusted by placement of the speakers, generally away from the boundaries. Unfortunately, this may mean pulling them way into the room, driving you out in the process!

In my view, the Woodstock's are unredeemable. Just use the Bose301's. Put them against the wall, to get the bass boost, so that the sound fills out. You'll hear more music that way!

Viren.

Thanks guys for your help. The Woodstocks have been placed right at the corners of the room at a height of 7 feet on a marble slab. Ben I will try and put them on the ground and will let you know but as Viren says there will be no space for them. The distance between the Woodstocks is approx 11 ft at the corner of the room and the Bose are kept between the two just 5 feet apart like below.

W W


B B

AMPLIFIER

I drive 2 sets of speakers since I think they will fill the room evenly with sound since I listen to a lot of JAzz and instrumentals (both Electronic and Paul Mauriat/Other ochestras)

Waiting eagerly for your views. Need your help

Rahul,

Simple question.

Although the 301 is not exactly a speaker to write home about, whilst at the drawing board stage, was it designed to be played along with the Woodstocks? Or vice versa?

Obviously, it was designed to play best, within its limitations, on its own.

Secondly, when you place any speaker in a corner, the corner gives off a horn effect, re-inforcing the lower frequencies, which results in boominess.

Also, the bass of the Woodstocks could be lagging behind that of the 301s, resulting in that "echoing" effect.

I apologise if i sound abrupt, but it is not possible to have a stereo affect with two sets of disparate speakers .
you need to use only one set of speaker at a time.
each speaker has its own phase/time as well as dispersion making it very difficult for a propoer stereo setup.

Keep the speakers pointed straight ahead with the tweeters at ear level. you can play around wit the toe in to adjust the soundstage.

ideally place the speakers on a very stable platform

leave some gap between the side walls as well as the Back wall. the back wall is more inportant for Bose..adjust that in steps of 15 cm till you get min boom.

once u get that try to place absorbing material like furniture, cushions or even cardboard boxes at the floor corners..


I would second Virens recommendation on the woodstocks..ie Lose them !

Absolutely, no place for the second pair in a stereo set-up!

Also Bose, with their hype about direct / reflecting technology imply that the angled face of the 301s be kept on the outer side to allow the mids / highs bounce off the side walls before arriving at the listening position. IMHO however, doing the opposite and keeping the angled face inside gives some semblance of imaging with the vocals coming from somewhere near the centre.

Thanks Guys for all your help.
I detached my Woodstocks and played the with just the Bose 301s but the Bass booming still does not stop on some of the tracks. The speakers are placed on a wooden stand with a wooden board on top. The stand is 5 ft tall and they are kept approx 1.5 ft away from the wall. The speaker stands are 3 feet away from the amp which is in the centre of the room. The amplifier is kept in a closed trolley with the CD player on top. The back of the trolley is open so the amp gets enough air for cooling. Do you think a graphic equaliser will help in controlling the bass?
Looking for answers please.

5 feet tall stands seems to be too much but anyway the other solution seems to be placing enough damping materials in your rooms to absorb the boom e.g carpet, curtains, Some wall hangings, Calendar, furnitures etc..all these if present liberally should keep most of the boom in control. If you already have done all this and still it booms then its.....

5 feet is too high
Wooden stand is not very good and you will not get tight bass with it.
try to keep both the amp as well as the cdp on the floor and check if you get an improvement in the bass ?

also temporarily keep a couple of pillows or even a cradboard box on the 4 lower corners of the room, and then see if you have any improved sound

Guys, the set up is in the living room only which has 2 wall carpets, 2 floor carpets and a complete set of furniture. Will try and keep the amp and CDp on the floor and see if it works. Do you think if I put the speakers on the floor it might help. Also by adding a graphic equaliser will I be able to control the bass even though there is no Bass or treble control on my amp?

Hi Rahul,

Your room setup seems fine. Best thing you can do is move the speakers still further from the wall. You say they are presently 1.5 feet away, try moving them in multiples of 6 inches at a time. Around 3 feet or so away from the wall, you should get some reduction in the bass. Also, make sure that the distance from the side walls is not the same as the distance from the front wall - this will induce a horn effect.

Get the speakers down so that the tweeter is at your ear level.

Don't even think of an equaliser - in the audiophile world such things are taboo...

Sorry to put it so bluntly, but, if I were you, I would soonest look to replacing the 301s. You have a pretty good amp in the Rotel; whatever made you choose the 301s to go with it?

Thanks for your help big ears but I got the Bose 301s from the US 2 years back when the only name I knew in speakers was Bose. It was over there and then when I came back that I got to know that there are a huge number of hi-end speaker manufacturers. Then I bought a Denon which I upgraded to a Rotel and bought a NAD CD player. I know I have to upgrade my speakers but I have no money at the moment. Speakers are going to be my next buy but not in the next 3-4 months.

Sure Rahul, Bose marketing used to be so strong, for a number of years they had everyone believing their's to be the only name in speakers. Many, many years back I too got suckered into jumping onto the Bose bandwagon and went around under the impression that I was the cat's whiskers -until I was introduced to the real world...

With the advent of the internet, things have changed dramatically for the better, and with the free flow of candid information available, even rookie buyers know which is the wheat and which is the chaff...

Your cdp and amp certainly deserve better speakers, and I do apologize if I sounded a little brusque in my earlier post.

wooden stands are not much use if they are not damped properly. my wood stands have sand filing and that makes them quite dead. Stands ought to be rigid and dead be it wood or metal.

and yes, make sure the tweeter is at the height of your ears.

manek.


manek.

Rahul,
Bose speakers are not As bad as they are talked about in the internet..especially the 301, which are much better than the acoustimass series.
hence dont get pressurised into upgrading/buying new one..

try to optimise your setup in the best way possible in order to get the best possible sound from your system..that would be my advise.

things like solid grounding, proper placement, adjusting the room reflections etc can give you great benefits as well.

One suggestion which big ears gave about placing the spekaers such that the reflected sound is minimum should for example be a good starting.
read on the net more and once you know you are doing you can make more effective upgrades later !

Hi Arj,

Internet opinions show the 301s to be supposedly better than the acoustimass series, but then that is not really saying a lot!

Also from personal experience, IMHO, the bass in the 201s / 301s is way overdone. Sure, that may sound fine with lower budget Kenwood / Sansui stuff, but team them up with something even half-decent and their shortcomings do show up.

Rahul's Nad cdp and Rotel amp would give fairly good detailing, which IMHO, the 301s would simply butcher.

So, no question of pressurising anybody, just a sad feeling that justice is not being done to such decent front end / electronics.

Thanks very much guys for all your help. I agree with big ears that the internet has opened up the entire world to us. You guys don't know but I have finished reading more than half of all the topics covered on this forum and read all the opinions by you guys. I have written down so many 'tweaks' that have been discussed on this forum which I am going to try over the weekend. I am going to try and optimize my setup as Arjun has said and will make the best use till I save enough money to upgrade. The bose used to sound very good with the Denon but with the Rotel I have got to hear all of its limitations.
I will try the tweaks over the weekendand will let you guys know what I come up with and ask for your suggestions again.
Thanks very much.

BTW does anybody listen to smooth jazz (contemporary jazz which is very mellow and pleasing to the ears) in this forum?

big-ears schrieb:

Hi Arj, So, no question of pressurising anybody, just a sad feeling that justice is not being done to such decent front end / electronics.

Big-ears, did not mean to be upfront and was not targetting your statement in any way..

My thoughts were along the lines to optimising his setup to the maximum and indentify what he wants to remedy before spending money on something

panditr...
I listen to lot of smooth sweet jazz but from the 50, 60, 70's...I find they were the sweetest years in Jazz

manek.