need more impact

[DIYGuy]

Ok, I have a pair of Klispch Heresy and a 75lt DPL12 sub. I listened to a live band the other night and noticed quite a defference in the impact from the drums. I don't know what freq. the different drums are, but it seams the DPL12 is a little lower. This leads me to believe I need to look at the Heresy. I need something that can reproduce the higher bass freq. Or would a larger 15" sub do the job? maybe two

[richie00boy]

Maybe it's not your speakers, but that fact that recordings are quite compressed and live bands usually are much more dynamic.

[pinkmouse]

The FOH engineer probably just put a peak in at about 80-120Hz. Much easier just to build a little parametric EQ circuit to do that rather than rebuild/replace speakers.

[planet10]

Are your Herseys stock...on the ones i had the bass was really bad -- to a large extent a contribution of the back panel which is effectively a really bad passive radiator.

dave

[Hennie]

DIYGuy,

A bigger sub won't give you that live sound - changing to a new sub may improve matters, but that live sound will remain elusive with closed box speakers. Too much room induced ripple and too much indirect sound. Low efficiency subs also compress, taking the already compressed recording over the edge.

With good live recordings you can get pretty close though with the following recipe:

IB sub below the first room mode.

Huge high efficiency dipole sub and upper bass/lower midrange up to the Schroeder frequency of the room, low compression drivers. Preferably a matched constant directivity design further up the frequency band.

Horn fans may suggest a bass horn instead of the dipole. Its directivity and low compression will take you closer to live performance dynamics. Bill Fitzmaurice sells plans for relatively compact bass horns.

Too much indirect sound kills dynamics. You can try the follwing as remedy for a closed box setup:

Move the sub to a nearfield position if possible. This will reduce room induced ripple. EQ if necessary. Try to get more direct sound from the Klipsch too by moving it forward into the room and decreasing listening distance. I do not know the Klipsch - it may very well sound too bright close up. But try it, and if it gives you better results otherwise but sound too bright you can reduce the horn level.

How about:

Use the Adire below 35 - 40 Hz in a nearfield position. (Nearfield because it is probably just over the first room mode). EQ if necessary.
Build one of Fitzmaurice's compact subs from there up to 150 - 200 Hz.

Put the Klipsch drivers on an open baffle main panel and EQ as necessary.

[GM]

This article explains what it takes to reproduce drums at a live level so get an expander to uncompress the recordings and scale this system's performance parameters to suit your desired peak average SPL/dynamic range based on your room/wallet limitations: http://www.scrounge.org/speak/burwen/index.html

GM

[HiFiNutNut]

Hi,

From a different perspective, I found higher frequencies do impact on the perceptive impacts of the drums. I don't fully understand why and I hope someone can shed some lights on this.

I have tuned a pair of speakers to produce nice and sweet mid range sound. Female voices sounded superb. However, the drums were absolutely weak and messy when playing track 11 of Patricia Barber's Cafe Blue - there was nearly no definition of the drums. I increased the output from my active XO for frequencies below 200Hz and it did not help. I thought this was the compromise I must make in order to get the best mid range sound so I didn't try to fix the bass. 2 months later, interestingly, while I was doing some experiments with my XO all of a sudden I got very good drum sounds with that difficult sound track as well as with other music. This was what I did: I increased the baffle step compensation thus had a 1.5dB increase in the lower mid / bass range, and I actually tuned down the frequencies below 200Hz a bit, and at the same time increased about 1 to 1.5dB in the region from 1k to 6k. I thought it was the latter that made the drums come to life. The drums (and other LF music) were 10 times better, although the lower octave seemed to be gone. The accuracy of the mid range especially female voices did get degraded and the sound became a little bit harsher.

I am thinking that the bass would only create the atmosphere while the definition of a drum would still come from the higher frequencies. Therefore, the impact of the drums not only relies on LF but also HF as well.

Let me know if I am wrong.

Regards,
Bill

[Hennie]

Bill your experience ties in with mine. This also applies to the off axis response. With a speaker like the Klipsch there will be a dip in the off axis response just below the crossover and this will contribute to the problem. Getting more direct sound will help to alleviate it in my perception.