Head to squarespace.com/cheapaudioman to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code cheapaudioman Support the Channel by Shopping on Amazon amzn.to/3W8vsgK Cheap Audio Man Store Front shop.howl.me/cam Join the best hifi community out there! www.patreon.com/cheapaudioman TRY ROON roonlabs.com/r/RTmYWdCP9kitqouBa5pcIw Tidal Deal bit.ly/3siuqSF Amazon Unlimited Music Trial amzn.to/3DRAVj9 Crutchfield shop-links.co/cguPK8XEGmt Best Buy Deals shop-links.co/cf9yDZeYtUH amzn.to/3GkNaop CAM Store (New Products!) bit.ly/30Lgu4K apos.audio?sca_ref=552340.TY98BPcZ6P massdrop.7eer.net/qnOye5
Hanging towels in your living room actually does help improve the sound. Once your partner sees a bunch of towels on the wall and leaves you, all the ambient noise they make disappears.
LMAO. Had a similar reaction when i put up black blackout curtains all over our TV room. After the initial "hell no" reaction , she calmed down and doesn't say anything anymore. Stay strong.
Randy- this video was a game changer for me. I 've gone from a standard stereo set up to having two speakers next to each other in the center of the room, one facing forward and the other facing back. Both speaker ports have been plugged with argyle socks (argyle seems to bring out the complexity of even the simplest of songs). I have a beach towel draped over my head and I circle the speakers trotting at exactly 33 and a third rpm to coincide with my turntable speed. What a revelation! I hear things in songs I never heard before: at the end of one cut I heard a band member yell "Quit stomping around up there or I'm calling the cops!". Vertical soundstage! Caveat- Use CD's at your own risk, as they spin considerably faster than your vinyl. My girlfriend suggests cutting eyeholes in the beach towel if you insist on being a digital daredevil. Seriously, Randy I've enjoyed your channel from the beginning and you are the go to audio guy for myself and my friends...it's great to grow along with you. Oh---and thank you for your service.
My son tried to plug the subwoofer port with toys and remotes, when he was still a toddler. We only found the missing remotes after removing the back panel, years later...
My wife gave me a hard time yesterday. I asked about the location of the coffee and she said this is the third time she has told me. She then said - "But when it comes to the cheapaudioman you remember everything he says." After buying the SSCS5's over the weekend since they dropped to 98 bucks, she told me I can no longer watch your channel and she is going to start hauling boxes of speakers to the thrift store. She is kidding, I hope.
My room was a little dark (figuratively and literally) after I hung towels over everything. So I put some tin foil over the windows. Works the treat and keeps the feds mind control rays away. Dual purpose!
Porting a speaker actually makes the bass louder while restricting the lowest frequency possible. Ports don’t add deeper bass, they make bass louder. When you have a loudspeaker that is acoustic suspension (sealed) they add several tones of lower bass to the same loudspeaker that is ported. Porting also improves efficiency, making the overall speaker louder for the same speaker box air volume. Many drivers are not designed for sealed operation and will overheat quickly.
Another hack: listen to music off a cell phone (not headset/earbuds) for 30min. Then turn on and listen to music on your hifi setup. Will sound amazing by comparison, lol
I couldn’t afford the Isoacustic stands and they were not WAF approved. I cut out a piece of camping sleeping mat and placed under the speaker. Works fine. Neoprene are even better.
I think room treatment is very important, especially in small spaces. I've lived in 3 different apartments and all of them sounded extremely harsh without room treatment... the sound would "ring". I put up these 1'x1'x1/4" absorption panels behind the speakers and behind my listening position, and in the ceiling corners touching the wall behind my listening position. Of course, bass management via traps is a whole other thing, and that's where money is the issue. Hence why powering via an AVR is so nice, because you'll get Audyssey XT, etc.
I can't wait to see new Sith Audio products: The Bass Port Plug and the "Room Treatment". Both socks and towel "infused with unobtainium" for the best sound reproduction. Offered at, of course, a ridiculously expensive price.
I have a set of Focal bookshelves on top of my Wharfedale towers and I use 1 inch diameter rubber gaskets to isolate them and to bring the back end up so they have a slight downward angle.
That's a new product! Sith Audio Felt Isolation Pads - only $199 per sheet. Reusable unless you have cats. Come in two sizes, a little too small, and wayyyyy too big. Available in audiophile black, or retro silver. Do not taunt felt isolation pads. Do not use if you are allergic to felt isolation pads. 7 day limited warranty (with exceptions.)
I have a set of Cerwin Vega SL12s. They were too boomy sounding. What I did was 1. I bought a rubber floor mat and cut it down to 14X14 Inch and set one on top of each speaker. The speakers are 14x14 inch. 2. Then I used 4 brick 12x12 pavers and placed two on top of the rubber on each speaker and centered them. It made one heck of a difference and cut down the boomy sound and just brought the high, mid and lows more into line. I know a lot of people do not like Cerwins but they can sound really good by experimenting. Total coast of doing this was $18 before tax.
Nothing wrong with a good set of Cerwin Vegas. For the price they just had so much more bass slam than others. They were the stereo gateway drug for a lot of people in the 1980s and 1990s. My nephew had a pair in his apartment when he was attending college and those things drove many crazy parties. I helped him put them up on some milk crates we "borrowed" from behind a local grocery store to get them up off the floor. Enjoy them!
Those southwestern woven rugs are often used on walls for decoration, and are easy to hold straight by first putting a strip of carpet tack board on your wall, then press the carpet onto it, Bingo.
Speaker placement. Yup the number ONE thing to do with room acoustic treatment. Even AMPs comes after that and can have to say even before buying new speakers, do those. Cos those can make your 500$ speakers sound better than poorly placed 1500$ speakers in bad and plain room. My sub 1800€ Genelec G3 + 900€ sub with accurate placement and good room treatment sound better than almost any 5000€ speaker, easily.
Randy, this video serves to remind of the "little' things that can improve or enhance the sound you get from your current systems. I use 2 Receivers/ Amps in my Finished Basement COVID Hibernation created sound /mancave room. I use 4 different Bookshelf Speakers , 2 speakers paired together to one Receiver and 2 different Speakers paired to a IOTA SA3 / PA3 / Emotiva A300 Stack. I used 14 Gauge Copper speaker wiring for all. I Mixed and Matched each of the speakers for weeks - seeking the Optimum Sound. I play each system separately usually, but on occassion, I play both simultaneously - WOW, Like a Concert Hall. Yes, it is an Audiophiliac No-No, to play 4 different speakers (@ pairs of different Elacs, 1 pair of Fluances, and 1 Pair of KEF Q350s), but The sound is fantastic. The experiment yielded that The Fluances & Elac Debut Reference 6.2s play well together (and after getting a tip from an AV forum poster, to recalibrate my Denon DRA-800H Receiver to play the 2 pairs at 6 OHM settings [it cn be adjusted from 4 to 6 to 8 Ohms], reduced the heat), the Elac Debut 6.2s and the KEFs play very well together on the IOTA /Emotiva Stack. Lesson : listen to Randy. 1 Thing tht can help enhance the sound for a couple of Bucks is to add a Schiit LOKI or LOKIUS to your system - in essence a simple 4 or 6 band Equalizer with a decibel Boost !
I have some vintage Pioneer CS-811 5-way speakers with non working tweeters, so I put some bookshelf speakers on top. Sounds much better with all 4. Nothing wrong with trying, and ignore rules.
I know this definitely isn’t free, but one thing that is high on my list for my HiFi system is Iso Acoustics Aperta speaker stands. Sometimes depending on where your speakers are sitting, it can cause an upward reflection which can result in soundstage smear. The Aperta stands cleans that right up, and can also give you more tighter and controlled bass, as it also helps to eliminate resonances from having your speakers sitting in a shelf or on a entertainment unit, I mean let’s face it, I’m guessing that’s how a lot of us here would have our bookshelf speakers set up (ignore that last remark if you actually do use proper speaker stands!) Or some people can’t put their bookshelf speakers on proper stands and have them pulled into the room, because they have young kids and it might be a knock/fall hazard. One thing I love about these stands, is that they are fully adjustable up to 3” in height, and the back or front can be tilted for a more precise setup. Many who have tried these stands say they are very happy with how much of a difference they have made to their system!
Excellent, cheap room treatment: Dropped ceiling tiles are engineered to absorb sound. They come in 2' x 4' and 2' x 2' and can be painted to match the walls (they may already match the ceiling fairly well, just paint the sides). I'd mount them with thick double sided tape (4 corners and one in the center).
I stream all my music digitally from ripped CDs held locally on a laptop. My preamp doesn't have a balance control, but my free streaming app, AIMP, (latest version sounds as good to my ears as Audirvana, which after the trial I didn't buy) does. With AIMP, I can alter the balance. It needs to be a little to the right, where oddly, there's a nearby wall, whereas on the left, the speaker is in open space. You'd think the balance would need to be the other way round, but it doesn't. Can't figure out why, but there you go. The balance slider is on the DSP tab (accessible from preferences), as is the "stereo enhancer" slider -- I find that moving this about 1/5 - 1/4 from the left definitely adds an extra something. Not sure how, but it may involve some kind of equalisation. Leaving it at zero definitely "dulls" (makes less interesting) the sound by comparison. Just my tuppence worth when it comes to free tweaks.
Many great points here - one being the learning process and some basic hands-on adjustments. Speaker placement has a bunch of large effects - for me getting closer to a good tonal balance is key. And the most dramatic changes can be in the bass; because the lower frequencies are able to be "lifted" by where the speakers are placed in relation to the front and side walls. Closer to the wall will increase the level of bass you will hear, and farther away will lower it. Learned knowledge is free - and is THE most important for getting better sound, from *any* system.
As a person with a hearing imbalance it is really frustrating that companies don't add a balance knob to their headphone amplifiers. Some do but they are very few and far between.
As far as speaker placement and listening distance: I once read an instruction manual from Fisher (had a really good sounding all-in-one stereo unit when I was a teenager) that said you should be listening from at least 2.5 times the distance your speakers are apart. I've never lived anywhere (until now) that I had that much space to do it.
Those manuals are usually useless lol. There are too many different room shapes and sizes to make such a blanket statement like that. Did it at least suggest pulling them away from the wall?
@@spamcan9208 I don't recall that but I would think that it would instead tell me not to place them too far apart to guard against over-spacialization (not a word) and phasing problems.
Fisher had a great reputation back when I was a teenager. My 1st "Hi Fi" was a budget Hitachi separates system in a horizontal cabinet. (£279 Inc 2 way bookshelf speakers - FORTY years ago 😲) 25 wpc with really good "tonality" 😊
I think I have messed with every hack that you have mentioned at one time or another. I even had a spurious resonance that turned out to be decoupling screws on my speaker stands. That was embarrassing. I found the resonance eventually, but not before returning a set of speakers. Funny that it sounded like a bad tweeter that I had in a speaker many years ago. I currently have a sock in my sub port.
Coffee check…… …..Help life is good enough. More coffee time. Btw. 43 year old of a retired genius mechanic/engineer. Toe in on speakers……not tires. Lol.
One thing I use for headphones on Andriod devices is an app call 'Wavelet' the free version has basic graphic EQ and also an extensive list of headphone EQ profiles from the AutoEq people, Ive used this with some little bit of extra manual EQ with a set of Beyerdynamic DT770 pros and they sound to harsh initially to me, but with the wavelet app, you can really dial in in the sound an make them sound really good, it also works for bluetooth wireless headphone output.
I actually just bought a pair of DT770's for $89 on Woot so I'll have to try that app when I get them. I don't have an external dac, or amp yet so I'm curious to hear how they'll sound just running off of my LG V50 phone
@@Timewaits4no1 part of it depends on the ohms rating of the headphones they have 3 types, 32, 80 and 250, the less ohms the more sensitive and can driven better by low powered output such as mobiles. Ive got the 80 ohms version and they worked pretty well. You should be alright though, LG phones tend to use decent DACs. It is easy to go loud with them once the sound is dialed in.
Free Room Treatment: hang a dowel on the wall in the first reflection spot, hang it like a curtain rod, drape an extra blanket, quilt or tapestry one the rod. Use whatever looks good to your two eyes. Voila! Bob really is your uncle!
Cool list and good advice. I used a tone generator to locate some dishes and objects on a shelf that would vibrate obnoxiously when playing certain albums. I also used it to figure out I had 8KHz tinnitus. One word of caution: The rated power for speakers is for playing a multi-toned "musical" signal, not pure tones. So don't play your speakers near their maximum when using a tone generator or you might blow your tweeter. A good old rule of thumb is to "de-rate" your power handling by 50% and not exceed that while doing some vibration/resonance tests. Just be careful.
Hanging towels will do pretty much nothing to be honest. Just cut the absolute highest of frequencies, but won't do anything in the mids or let alone bass. If you have a super bright speaker or like muffled sound you might still get satisfactory results I guess.
I like your attitude to room treatment. Try taking 2 tall step ladders. Drape a duvet cover or blanket over each. Then sit down in your listening position and have a spouse or friend move them around the room. Repeat the procedure, vut this time shut your eyes, and don’t cheat. I think you’ll be surprisingly underwhelmed!
I use to work in radio, and some of the smaller stations, on tight budgets, would use egg cartons on the walls to provide sound deadening. They worked remarkably well to prevent reflections from the walls.
Great video - totally agree on speaker/sub and seating placement as a key to getting the best out of your system and IMO by far the most important. Sound performance is dependent on the room, the characteristics of the speaker/equipment and your seating position as a total system - understanding how these relate and how you can manipulate the sound to eliminate big problems like nulls and large FR imbalance while also tuning the music to your liking - stage width, center image, bass, treble, depth etc etc. it is step one before jumping to eq or doing anything including room treatments, new speakers and gear IMO - once you have established that this is the best you can do moving stuff around and only then would I look at the other options to address the limitations within the system (room,gear,seating)
When I worked in a high school, a tone generator was one of my favorite tools. Play a 16k-20k tone at max volume in the halls and watch the kids cover their ears and run!
If the speaker has similar frequency and phase response off axis...that reflection point should not be damped. See floyd tooles research at NRC for why that is.
Plugging ports. The mechanical resonance of the bass driver, the volume of air in the speaker cabinet and the volume of air in the port itself are all designed to be interrelated to lower the bass frequency that the speaker can reproduce. Stuffing damping material in the port will often simply result in removing the port from that equation and raising the natural resonance frequency of the driver and cabinet thereby reducing its ability to reproduce lower frequency bass sounds.
That is true, ports are supposed to be tuned to let the speaker play "lower". But that (reducing bass output) is precisely what some are wanting to do. Some don't have the luxury of pulling speakers 3 feet or more out into a room, so tamping down some of the bass that is enhanced by corner placement or near a wall really can help clean them up. I know I've seen some 3-ported speakers that come with, you guessed it, two port plugs. You can experiment with no plugs, 1-plug, or 2-plugs. Seems they wanted at least ONE port free because the speaker was not designed to be sealed completely. Some are though. My old AR9 speakers are acoustic suspension and go down to 28 Hz with a smooth roll off to 18 Hz. The "new" KLH Model 5 is acoustic suspension. The problem with acoustic suspension speakers is that they usually aren't nearly as efficient as a ported design so you have to use a higher-powered amp. The problem with ported speakers is that they don't have a smooth roll off below the turned port frequency but often just stop right there. Ah, design tradeoffs... In ported speaker design, it would be nice if the ports could be on the front baffle (like the JBL L100), but then it would take up room there. I've often wondered if ports could be put on the sides instead of the rear? I know Golden Ear uses passive radiators on the sides of some models, but I can't recall any speaker with ports on the sides. I love my AR9 but they don't play well at lower volumes. You have to crank them a bit to "wake them up", but now that I'm older I want to get some speakers that will play better at lower volumes.
Thanks, Randy. Funny enough, I completely changed my speaker and component arrangement yesterday (I went from the speakers along a narrow wall of our room to a long wall), and I need to re-tweak everything now in the bass department because everything has changed, but the increase in soundstage is dramatic. I still need to play around with distance from the front wall and possibly port plugging (I have a nasty 60hz peak now; I’m using ‘full range’ NHT speakers with side firing 10” woofers with big rear vents). I’m also using your suggested WiiM Mini EQ to take out some of the bass peak. Your video was very timely for me.
I’ve played around with plugging ports with various materials and quantities of them used to plug. Even for speakers right against the wall I found i always felt like it sucked all the life and soul out of the speaker. I’m sure some people have great results with port plugging but not me. I’ve never liked the results in any of my 4 audio systems
This is great information and suggestions, but unlike a lot of viewers here I'm not an avid Audiophile, more of a Music Appreciater who has no time to listen to anything for any length of time to justify all the fiddling with nuances to get the "perfect" listening environment (if you have kids forget it! And unless you have a partner that's on the same page as you forget! 🤣) ... me? Any music I want to listen has to be relegated to the background, there's no time for a dedicated "listening" experience....but if ya'll audiophiles can then more power to ya!!
Coming from 300lb speakers that are placed and the room setup around them, never to be moved again, to tiny Celestion Model A compacts that I have experimented with extensively in all axis placements, even as little as an inch positional adjustment can make a difference you can hear. After spending time , in my case over 2 years, with these Model A's, I have the most absolutely pleasing sound quality overall of my 60 plus years in audio. Of course tiny speakers need help with bottom end. It's just physics. But let me share something I came up with that I never heard anyone else speak of. In 2 channel stereo we deal a lot in center image, and width of sound stage. I am also a believer in 2 speakers, 2 subs. I also place the subs as close to the line of sight of the mains as is practical. Now assuming that you have no bass nulls or blooms in this sub placement, you need to balance those subs just like the mains. But subs below 80hz have little to no directionality. So I turn the subs crossover points to at least 120-150hz. Then play a test record or use the mono switch, if you have one, and adjust for a perfect center sound on just the subs. Reset them back to your desired cross point and adjust the mains to blend well with them. My detail and center image improved so much I scarcely believed it. So I pulled one sub for a week and optimized for a single sub. Never got it to sound as good as 2 subs balanced as I described. Even minor volume differences in gain between the subs had audible detractions in sound. Maybe it will help you. Good Luck. And thank you Randy for bringing up these great points in setup .Edit...I forgot to mention this will not matter quite as much if you are driving both subs from a single "sub out" connection. I use left/right channel source to the powered subs.
ALL valid points. I knew nearly all of them, but it was worth saying to newbees in the field of HiFi and might just be an accoustic revelation to some people who have been putting up with sound that is one tweak away from perfection. Oh, BTW:- it is possible to grab a cup of tea and watch these videos. I've tried it. You try it. Take a recommendation from a Brit.
Try putting an obsidian crystal near the wall plug. The grounding effects are strong enough to hear a humongous difference. I found obsidian online for $5 a small pyramid.
I use bamboo bread boards on my speaker stands also to add a little more height as my Mission QX2 Mk 2 have inverted tweeters I've never tried using the speakers "upside down" so the tweeters would be above the bass midrange like normal speakers !!! 🤔
Pool noodles and pipe insulation are good for plugging ports. Slice into 1” or more pieces and you can isolate speakers and components. An electric carving knife works great!!! Yep, I’m cheap, too!
Hi there, careful with shoving that diaper in the bass port...i had a pair of Monitor Audio Silver 5i, guessing they were from around the year 2000-2003, the port was close to the mid driver on the back and when de-ported the mid sounded a little restricted, possibly my imagination but didn't sound as dynamic? needed room to breathe? seemed to sound a little compressed might be the terminology to use. Also when put closer than 15c.m to the wall had the same restrictive effect. From new subscriber, love your work so far.
all i want is buy 2 - 3 ways crossovers so i can build me two floor speakers. i already have the speakers. are there any plug and play crossover? i can solder. i just need some help finding crossovers...!! at least 350 RMS
Great list, question on port plugging. I have always been told not to plug ports on subs unless they are designed to be plugged as it can cause damage. Do the same rules apply for speakers? Is it possible to damage a ported speaker if it is plugged? Love the content!
