Fixing a boomy (bed)room?

[SkylineFiver]

This is one of the reasons I bought a
PJB Double 4

 

[Deleted member 271037]

Thanks so much for all the responses! Consistently blown away out how helpful TalkBass is!

A couple of notes if these are at all applicable:

• As many have mentioned, the room is basically a cube, with one exception. On one wall there is a built in wardrobe and built in "desk" and shelves. If you removed the desk and sliding mirror doors of the wardrobe, you'd end up with a cube room that has a weird little wall that just out 50cm or so. Not sure if that matters?
• I called it a bedroom, but I don't use it as one. Its essentially my bass/music/office room, but it's designed as a bedroom. The room has many hard surfaces (book shelves, desks, etc). I am guessing these aren't really enough to dampen anything.
• The resonance is quite intense and overwhelming. It's not like the note is a bit boomy, it quite literally "fills" your ears. I assume this is because of the standing wave effect others have mentioned and the cube room as opposed to a square room exasperating the problem.

Hopefully when I can scrounge up the dosh to buy a place I can take this into consideration. For now I may investigate some DYI bass traps and other surfaces to try and reduce the effect.

A cube is unfortunately the worst possible scenario. If the room is an exact cube you will have the same standing waves in three dimensions.

Hard surfaces aren't necessarily a bad thing. Book shelves filled with books can be a good thing as they can work as diffusors. They won't do much with the lows though. You might get a slight improvement if you get more soft furniture into the room. Pillows and such. Especially if you stuff them into the corners where they can work as rudimentary bass traps, although normal pillows/furniture won't have the density to really have much effect on the lowest frequencies. They'll be more effective dampening highs and mids.

Moving your amp out from the walls and up from the floor might help a bit with general boominess but not with standing waves. You can try moving the amp around the room, although from your description I don't think it will help much to be honest.

From your description I don't think you will ever get completely rid of this problem in this particular room. At least not without doing far more intrusive work (like moving walls) than you're probably prepared to do.

 

[dr doofie]

Post #8 will 99% do the trick
If the amp is off the floor and the room is small, it’s gotta be the 9ft of ceiling above you
Blankets drapes
Pillows
Save your money

 

[JimmyM]

Turn the bass down and the volume, too. Done.

 

[briandavismurph]

Practice with headphones. That resonant sound must be very annoying to your housemates or neighbors.

this is sage advice.

 

[Mr_McBride]

Here is what I use. The high pass filter allows me to *eq* any unwanted frequency in any room. The low pass filter allows me to dial out the clank of brand new strings (unless you like that sound).

https://www.broughtonaudio.com/product-page/low-high-pass-filter

Turning the volume down is good advice, but that *might* not resolve unwanted resonant frequencies. The pedal will.

Also, since so many venues have moved to amp-less stages, get yourself a good pair of IEMs and then play as loud as you want. This *might* lead to hearing loss, blah, blah, blah, but I most definitely understand the desire to play at *live* volumes.

I don't want to stray off topic too much, but I know that I am not the only one that feels that, at least some, of the live music vibe is lost when you move to IEMs. I mean the guitar is meant to be heard and the bass is meant to be felt. LOL.

 

[DavidEdenAria]

A few people have said to get the cab off the floor.

It's currently sitting on casters. Is this sufficient or are we talking torso height?

I also did some further testing and it seems like the resonant frequency is between an A and an A#. From a low A on the E string all the way to a high A on the G.

I moved the can off the wall about a foot or two and while it reduced the effect somewhat, it wasn't enough to have it sticking out in the room like that.

I also tried changing the orientation of the cab to little success.

Completely gutting my low end by EQing all the way down on my amp and my Alpha Omega Ultra pedal also seemed to help slightly, but I feel this had more to do with just reducing the volume than anything and it's obviously not realistic to play like that.

Would bass traps do any good here?
What else can I try other than the aforementioned living the cab 3 ft in the air?

Most amp or EQ wont do what an HPF does which is adjusting the very low end out and is usually adjustable.

 

[DavidEdenAria]

Ive encountered small cube rooms, i would try having the cabinet at ear level either standing or sitting.....resulting in turning the volume down but still easily heard sitting a few feet from the cabinet....a 2x10 would be great but ive done it with a single EV15L cabinet at ear level.

 

[Dadum]

I wonder if an inverted phase signal would help cancel some of the signal?

If the direct out of the current amp was sent to another amp/cab (invert the signal) and boost the inverted signal using a parametric EQ at the resonant frequency, could there be wave cancellation at a specific frequency range.

When buying another amp/cab on the used market at a good price, selling it would yield about the same amount back even a few years later.

 

[Dust2Dust]

Every room has resonance frequencies (square- or even cube-dimensioned rooms are the worst), and the easiest way to dial them out is with a parametric EQ.

Here's how you do it:

Take one band, make the bandwidth narrow (aka "high Q"), turn the boost/cut to full boost, play a low note and sweep the frequency control up and down. When you find the one note that blooms out uncontrollably, turn the boost cut down to -3db. Play some more, and turn it down further if necessary, but it usually doesn't take much more than -3db.

As an aside, this approach is way more precise (and tone-friendly) than using an HPF, which really isn't the right tool for this job.

I just learned something, Thanks

 

[Zbysek]

Notch filter and HPF
Lower your volume
Headphones

 

[Stylee Mousse]

Wanting to play a 410 cab at any volume ina 10’ cube is a non starter. I have a bigger and better shaped room I play in and I use an old ampeg sb12, 20 watts/112 and keep the volume low enough to not excite the room modes. Sounds great, and is fun.

you may get small improvements but physics is definitely not on your side. If headphones are out try a small, quality amp at significantly less vol

 

[Dadum]

A short “hallway” within the room could help. That is, a plywood hallway (with ceiling) about 1 meter wide and two meters tall and two meters long. The amp blasts into the hallway at one end. The player is inside the hallway. The back end can have materials that absorb and distort the sound waves leaving the hallway. If it is angled so that what comes our hits the wall at an odd angle, it could reflect in a new manner and not resonate as before. If the user is in the smaller hallway area, they are better able to hear the amp so the volume can be lower. Plus the body is blocking much of the hallway.