I agree. By all means, follow Ernie's advice!

See, it's not just me!!

The hilarious thing is that I was going to suggest exactly that, saw that Larry already did, and figured I wouldn't even bother to say he stole my superduperlowbass thunder. But you guys made it so much better!

I love suggesting that because it is just so incredibly low-tech. Determining a speaker position by crawling, I mean. And it makes so much sense!

Be ready with a high tech retort when the client appears in the room while you are fully laid out in his house.

Well, thanks for all of the responses.

I was aware of the "crawl" method... but have to admit that I didn't think to pull that one our of the bag-o-tricks. Unfortunately, there aren't many suitable sub locations at this time.

As for adding gear, room treatments etc, modeling, better subs etc.... these are all ideas I use with new clients now. However, I'm not comfortable suggesting major changes with THIS particular client.

I was very surprised that adding a second sub (and experimenting with positioning) didn't help much. Naturally, more time to try more locations would have been helpful.

I need to look at the room again one more time and see if we can try breaking up the seating arrangment to create a better sweet spot, away from the "null-of-death".

Its certainly NOT a sub or amplifier issue. There is LOTS of bass in the room, just not where I need it. Yes, I could create more bass, tighter bass, and deeper bass with a better sub etc.... but the issue at hand is to "move" the audible bass into the main seating area. I'll have to have another go at it.

I had a wierd shaped theater once where we had a similar problem, and our solution was counter-intuitive, but successful. We actually moved the sub out of the room and fired in from behind the stereo rack in the utility room. Worked like a charm... Don't ask me why ;]

This is exactly when the crawl method is best; you're not lacking bass, it's just not where you need it.


Thanx, Ernie!

Why did it work?

Oops!

A basic but very successful rule of thumb for many rooms is - two subs exactly half-way along two adjacent walls to reduce your standing waves.

Any chance of a scale drawing of the room, including ceiling height, open doorways, windows, etc. and so forth?
P.S. Always good advice from Ernie, even when he claims to be Larry.
Jeff

The crawl trick works very well for 2 channel listening where thers is generally a single listener in a single sweet spot.

For a home theater application where there are multiple seating locations you would need to do that with the sub at seated ear height for each of the seats and then pick the best sub location that sucks the least for ALL of the seating locations from the sub locations that you selected as best for the INDIVIDUAL seating locations...
(sounds like a fun WEEK of testing and charting!!)

Room mode analysis is a way to do this on paper. Here is a thread where I helped outline room mode analysis for another member...
[Link: remotecentral.com]

If you want, you can still double check the results with the crawl test!!

Here are more threads from the past that deal with room mode modeling and bass issues:
[Link: remotecentral.com]
and
[Link: remotecentral.com]

Here is the link to the infamous Harman white paper:
[Link: harman.com]

Hope this helps.

This message was edited by 2nd rick on 10/28/05 23:34 ET.

I only said that because I don't know...

(face turning red)

I emailed the harman white paper to fluid-druid.

I will send it to anyone else that needs it or to someone that has space to host the file for others to download. It is 816kb in pdf and 790 in zip format. I am in between hosting space, so forgive me for not hosting it myself.

Hmm, someone uploaded this whitepaper... but I don't exactly have a category set up for generic Home Theater files (at least not those unrelated to remotes). Does anyone have an interest in such a section on RC?

Count me as a yes!