I have Vandersteen Fives in a room with a concrete floor partially covered with padded carpet) and the bass is exceptional. The sheetrock walls are judiciously treated with Ecco Tunes and RPG panels. Last night I was recalibrating the Vandy Five subwoofers and using the Radio Shack sound meter (and making adjustments for its non-linearity in the lower registers) measured reasonably smooth response down to 25 hz with a respectable reading at 20 hz.
Bass Response and concrete floors
I was talking to a Dynaudio dealer the other day and asking about the Confidence 5's in comparison to the rest of the Dynaudio line. The 5's are apparently being cancelled with two new models being released in the Confidence line, based on the Evidence technology.
Anyway, he asked what type of flooring the speakers would be on. I said concrete with thick pile carpeting. He said the bass response on a concrete floor, even with carpeting, would be muted, that the Confidence 5's need a floor with give to produce decent bass. He said that the bass would roll off around 50 Hz on a concrete floor.
I've seen so many very positive comments about the 5's, but I suppose that people who are satisfied may well be using them on a main floor built on joists. The dealer indicated that I'd be a lot happier with the 3's on my floor.
Anybody know why this would be? More importantly, is this a common behavior of floor standers on concrete floors? Is it a general "rule" that if you have concrete floors, you'll get better performance from a high quality monitor? Thanks for any info -Kirk