I live in a small aprtment in Japan. My room has huge dips between 80Hz and 100Hz, confirmed with REW measurement. I can’t install large number of bass traps because

  • Installing bass traps to the left rear corner blocks the way to the hallway.
  • There are windows on the right side of the room.
  • There is a sliding door behind MLP.
  • The walls near the right speaker is located have an outlet and a ventilation hole, preventing me from installing bass traps very close to the floor. The walls near the left speaker don’t have outlets or ventilation holes, though I want to install same number of traps symetrically.
  • The ceiling is little lower around front corners (about 2.0m. other places have 2.4m ceiling)

Item: ATS Acoustic Bass Trap - 24 x 36 x 4
Quantity: 2
Choose your fabric color: Ivory; Bass Trap Installation Hardware: Corner Installation Hardware; Desired Absorption Range: Full-Range; Desired edge profile: Square

Item: ATS Acoustic Bass Trap - 24 x 24 x 4
Quantity: 2
Choose your fabric color: Ivory; Bass Trap Installation Hardware: Corner Installation Hardware; Desired Absorption Range: Full-Range; Desired edge profile: Square

I’m thinking of importing those ATS acoustic bass traps to Japan via MyUS because bass traps sold in Japan are poor quality, or prohibitively expensive. DIY could be cheaper but requires some time and effort.

If more traps are really needed I could mount more traps on higher places on the wall this way, but I’m afraid that installing many traps in this way make me feel I’m in a even narrower room.

I’ve also seen claims that dual subs could solve standing waves, but is that true? Even if that’s true, could that be very annoying for my neighbors (even with very low subwoofer volume)? I currently only have front speakers (ELAC DBR62).

https://gearspace.com/board/studio-building-acoustics/1301752-spare-bass-traps-worth-putting-directly-behind-monitors.html#post14632464

https://preview.redd.it/5fokipag283c1.png?width=1096&format=png&auto=webp&s=51b97d7123f09aa498ac17c94360fba27439f435

  • mourning_wood_again@alien.topB
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    10 months ago

    Bass traps behind speakers can help with dips…you will need an air gap equal to thickness of panels….GIK has bass traps with scatter plates so you don’t deaden that small room too much.

    Multiple subs would need DSP help for delays and integration…and aren’t effective above crossover.

    PEQ can lower peaked frequencies, making nulls less obvious.

    In small home studios they put the speakers right up against the wall to minimize speaker boundary interference…or at least to push the problems to higher frequencies that are easier treated

    Try sitting closer to speakers for more even bass.

    You will probably need 4 larger bass traps to make much difference

  • audioen@alien.topB
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    10 months ago

    Bass traps are most likely to reduce the height of the peaks, but do little to the valleys. The valleys are result of speaker-boundary interference, the reflected waveform from a wall – usually the front wall – mixing in with the speaker’s direct radiation, and canceling it. If you had very thick and large panels behind the speakers, that would reduce the level of this reflection. Dip of 20 dB suggests that the wall is bare and reflection unattenuated, and the frequency 100 Hz suggests that distance between speaker’s front baffle and the wall is about 86 cm. Halving that distance would move the cancellation up to 200 Hz which is far less objectionable.

    • vroad_x@alien.topOPB
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      10 months ago

      Halving distance? really?

      I already moved the speaker away from the wall slightly because I read somewhere that causes bass to be stronger even for front-ported speaker like DBR62. If I remember correctly moving speakers away from the walls didn’t shift problematic frequencies.

      I ran room mode simulator in the past, the result suggest that I’m going to have problems in frequencies I showed in OP.

    • vroad_x@alien.topOPB
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      10 months ago

      I see that you edited the comment. As I said in another comment, I don’t want to move the front speakers further away from the walls for maintaining aesthetics. Adding a subwoofer and tweaking its placement seems like a only viable option for me.

      > You can also try measuring l+r simultaneous sound because bass is often mixed in mono.

      Do you mean that those dips may decrease if I measure both speakers at once? (It’s not that bad as it seems?) Maybe worth trying.

      • BroadbandEng@alien.topB
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        10 months ago

        > Do you mean that those dips may decrease if I measure both speakers at once? (It’s not that bad as it seems?)

        Yes, for bass frequencies for most music the mix is mono, so an L+R measurement will be more representative of the listening experience. Since your dips are at two different frequencies the impact could be quite significant - lazy style, if the sound from one speaker is cancelled perfectly at the dip (say a 20dB deep notch), with a second speaker at a different location providing half the total signal power will mean that the total SPL at that frequency only dips 3dB.

  • BroadbandEng@alien.topB
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    10 months ago

    I suspect that those narrow dips are due to first reflections off the side wall opposite each speaker (or perhaps the ceiling). So for the right speaker, there is a primary reflection off the left side wall that arrives at the MLP with a 5msec delay, which is a half wavelength at 100Hz, so the reflected wave cancels the primary wave. I had an issue like this in my listening space that was due to a ceiling reflection. If this is the case, you will get a better improvement by placing the traps at the first reflection point. As an example, I shared pictures of my installation here.

  • SunRev@alien.topB
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    10 months ago

    Add 1 or 2 more subwoofers in different locations (if moving your subwoofer doesn’t help).

  • BroadbandEng@alien.topB
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    10 months ago

    One more comment. Since the discussion started with standing waves; the front to back standing waves in this room will be at multiples of 67 Hz. The presence of the reflection induced dip is tuning the first mode a bit, so L and R look different. The two peaks at about 134 Hz and 201 Hz in both the L and R response curves are a result of this mode. Mounting panels on the wall behind the speakers should help tame these peaks - see the photo in the post I linked in another comment for how I have my room set up. (The black panels behind the speakers are GIK monster traps. The big panel on the left wall is an Acoustimac 2" art panel.) It will also help with decay times, which will improve the listening experience.

    Generally speaking, in a room this small I would focus on treating first reflection points with the panels, rather than going after corner placed traps. The wall behind the speakers is both a first reflection point and a big contributor to long decay times.

  • jerrolds@alien.topB
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    10 months ago

    I have full height bass traps. The best way to control bass is to get multiple subs If your room is small consider kc62s or svs micro 3000

    • vroad_x@alien.topOPB
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      10 months ago

      Moving front speakrers to the walls slightly changes the dip frequency and the amount of the dip, but not that much (probably because the speakers are already very close to the walls?).

      I can hear the bass much better when I’m in another room (one separeted by a sliding door), but I don’t always listen in that position. I want the speakers to sound good even when I’m in the living room.

  • misterflappypants@alien.topB
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    10 months ago

    I actually think you’re working with an overall pretty useable room.

    1. Your response has a slight downward trend as you go higher in frequency. For in-room response, this is generally accepted or preferred for two (2) reasons: your ears naturally want more bass to hear it “evenly,” and your flat side and flat rear wall sum reflections will be full of >1-2k and up, so the blurred sum will add to your SPL and let you hear a flatter overall response, albeit blurred by reverberation.

    2. I marked up this screenshot of your room response to show you what I feel like are your problem room modes: approximately 120hz*, 150hz, and 200hz.

    • The 120hz could very likely be from your ceiling. Sitting over a very thick couch can help this. Or cloud absorbers directly overhead of your listening position.
    • The 150 and 200 Hz are grouped-yet-separate in a way that makes me think it is 2 more boundary-reinforced (wall-amplified) room modes. These 2 can be DSP’d easily and without much adverse effect

    edit: whatever you do, don’t go throwing -15db notch filters on servere room modes, especially if you “measure loudly and mix/listen quietly.” room EQ is volume dependent, and to do it properly you really should be EQ’ing to fixed volume and staging positions.

  • sgtwo@alien.topB
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    10 months ago

    You can’t fix this with any form of absorber, filling a dip would rather require selectively amplifying these frequencies, which is also unrealistic.

    The only realistic approach is to use a parametric equalizer to attenuate all ther frequencies, by say 10dB to keep it realistic.

    • vroad_x@alien.topOPB
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      10 months ago

      The amount of the dip changes a lot depending on where I sit in the room.

      Fixing dip with EQ in one location causes problems in other locations, that’s my understanding of why EQ can’t be replacement of proper room treatment.

      • sgtwo@alien.topB
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        10 months ago

        Dips (and nodes) being localized is an intrinsic property of standing waves, and their frequencies and positions are exclusively defined by your room’s geometry. Absorbing requires at least 1/4 of the frequency ‘s wavelength ; in your case, it takes meters of absorbant. Plus, it only fixes peaks, not dips. Once you admit this physical reality, you understand that there an only be a compromise, which is linearizing as much as possible the respinse curve, for one seat at listening position (or averaging two or three seats), using parametric equalization. This is exactly what the commercial room correction solutions do (audyssey, dirac etc). And it is only useful below 200 hz.

  • Professional-Jelly39@alien.topB
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    10 months ago

    The size and amount of traps ud need isn’t realistic(especially for these frequencies)for a living space, id recommend smaller somewhat aestheticly pleesing sub with some boundary mode active or just one that doesn’t extended too deep to address the neighbors “issue” or just turn it down/off in the evenings

  • not2rad@alien.topB
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    10 months ago

    This is certainly a room mode cancellation (and is extremely common for smaller rooms). It’s a function of the speaker positions in the room as well as the listening position.

    If you’re unwilling to move them out into the room, you can try moving them left/right as well as move the listening position left/right/forward/back to see what it does.

    Bass traps will certainly help, but they’re not going to magically fix a 30dB null.