More bass in 2nd system? Help, please

the way it is;

My basement system consisting of sunfire sig 600, cheap Sherwood 5cd carousel, B&K pro10-mc
Speakers BIC V830's. Wipe the floor with my upstairs system which costs twice as much, and should sound better.

Will the room make that much difference? Basement is much smaller with drop ceiling tiles. 8.5 ft ceiling.

Upstairs has a huge front room with 17-18 foot vaulted ceiling, carpet, and only a small table in the way from my listening position.the. Bass is pretty scarce compared to my basement setup.

Upstairs speakers are energy rc-70's. Maybe they are too small to give the much larger room the bass it needs due to the space they must fill with only dual 6" low freq drivers.

Granted the upstairs system is much more revealing, and does sound much clearer, more accurate, and all that audio garble. But the bass is still lacking. Im at the conclusion the room just sucks up any bass, as it is a much larger room, with the very tall vaulted ceiling. ???

Or maybe my 199? BIC Venturi's are. Just that much better than the energy rc-70's at bass.
The famous Venturi port? I'm at a loss.........

 

Would plugging the rear ports with included foam plugs add bass, or remove more?

 

Remove more. How far are the upstairs speakers from the rear wall ?

D.D.

 

1 foot or less from rear wall. About 8-9 feet apart, same to listening position on couch.

 

I have a problematic "open" room and added subwoofers mid room which helped dramatically. Room modes are a pain to deal with....first step is to download Room EQ Wizard and a Mic (you can get one under $20 on Amazon but might want to spend a few more bucks if you want better results). Run a couple tests and move the speakers a bit...you will see where the energy cancels out fairly quickly in the bass area. Fixing this issue completely will cost you a lot of time and effort via room and corner treatments. I added a few bass traps and placed subwoofers mid room to correct my issues. Might also want to swap speakers just to see if there is an improvement or noticeable change.

 

I'd try this before anything else...

 

Have you tried the BIC's upstairs to see what happens to all the bass they have when they're downstairs ?

D.D.

 

I'm playing my Pat Travers Japanese SHM CDS now in the basement, and it sounds absofreakinlutely tight and wicked.
Upstairs the bass is just gone. It must be the large room, 17 or so foot vaulted ceiling,

Are the energy rc-70's this weak with bass?? Must be the room acoustics, so much room to fill in the front room, compared to basement with its 8 foot ceiling.

 

Bring them downstairs and find out.

D.D.

 

I'm guessing you have room mode cancellation...but swapping the speakers will give you a better idea.

 

Take the RC70s downstairs and I'll bet there's plenty of bass.

edit: D.D. beat me to it

 

Bring the speakers upstairs or other pair downstairs don't matter?

The BIC's are older and have some flaws, so I'll bring. The BIC's upstairs when I have time.

If the bass IS THERE , what do I do? I love the clarity of the energy's.

Maybe buy a small sub for upstairs to compensate for the large room???

 

If you bring the BIC's upstairs and now they have no bass or if you bring the Energy's downstairs and they now have lots of bass, you'll know it's not a speaker shortcoming but more likely a room issue.
Sub(s) or room treatments can help. as can positioning. First, find out where you're at.

D.D.

 

All the answers you need have been pretty much discussed...rule out the problems, then do some scientific experiments

 

If bass is downstairs, then the answer is the room is too large upstairs. It's a large front room , I had this same issue when I switched preamps, the bass seemed to disappear.

I think I need a small sub to get the lower freq. some CDs the energy bass is wicked, some it's gone, in the large room.
It must be. The room is just too open to allow bass to hit you.

 

Why not swap the complete systems around and see if your 'first' system sounds even better downstairs.

JG

 

I don't have. The energy to do such a swap. I'll just swap speakers and if the bass is gone, I know it's. The huge room is causing the bass loss, and get a small sub from Polk for 100$

 

Some recording don't have much bass. There's a limit to what you can expect from a speaker when the recording is flawed. And lots of recordings are flawed....

D.D.

 

Moby, some ministry, autechre, ........oh to hell w it.

I'll mess around and move the speakers tomorrow if I have time.

I think it's the room, it's a large very open room with as mentioned 17 foot high vaulted ceilings.
Bass has to go somewhere........

 

Maybe the speakers are hooked out of phase?

 

Checked, all is ok on the hookups.

 

What is the wall construction? A concrete wall (downstairs probably) will restrict the bass notes within the room. A sheetrock wall (upstairs probably) will allow the bass notes to go through the walls. Remember the bass frequency produces very long (feet) sound waves. A 20hz tone sine wave is 56.4 feet. Upstairs that sound is going outside, similar to what you hear when that hopped up car pulls up net to yoy.

I think a subwoofer is the answer.

 

The right room will make an average system sound incredible and the wrong room make a fabulous system sound average.
Also if your a bass guy like me, the jam with the slam is the one that you dig. In big rooms there is no replacement for displacement to get the same fireworks. Two Fathoms should do the trick, or maybe (I want to try) the Swarm Subwoofer system.
Do the speaker swap that everyone has suggested before we go further.
All is for naught without proper placement and integration of subs or speakers. Peace.

 

I had the same issue. My main system was so disappointing due to no bass at all, though my main speakers sounded full and great in other spaces. I tried my little REL T3 sub and it made no difference whatsoever. I added a big SVS PC13 Ultra cylinder and it's night and say difference. Don't even really have to turn it up much at all. I did tune it with EQ Wizard and a mic, but I had it pretty spot on by ear. (It's not that tough). I figure the sub saved me about ten grand I was ready to drop on other speakers which likely wouldn't have been any different anyway.

Funny thing is that in the same room for TV, the Sonos Playbar/Sub combo produces plenty bass, though I'm not a big boom boom theater guy. Go figure!

 

You don't have to do the speaker swap to start with. Just walk around your upstairs room with a track you know sounds good bass wise in the basement, and listen if the bass sounds good in any place - corners, very back of room, on the floor etc.. You might also listen close up to the speakers (both of them) to hear if anything much is coming out.

If you do get decent bass in some position then it is a case of finding the best position for speaker and your listening chair. You could try, just as an experiment, 'The Thirds' positioning, which is designed to reduce room modes:

Setting up your monitoring environment