low frequencies


Hey all, Running a pair of Thiel CS2.4 floor standing speakers and the bass is only sounding best when i'm not seated and in a rear corner of the room such as is where the equipment rack is. Is their a tradeoff in other areas of the sound quality to get more low frequency at the seated listening position?   

velocityofhue

Yes, place both speakers against the wall. This offers the best and most even bass. It is called the Allison effect. 

Bass quality is dramatically impacted by the shape and size of the listening room along with the placement of the speakers in the room. That's because bass notes have a long wavelength -- the 42 Hz low bass note on a bass guitar is about 27' long.  That's why sometimes one bass note will sound much louder than another. Square or cubical rooms tend to be worse on this point than rooms where the three dimensions (width, length & height) are all different. 

For no cost, you can try moving the speakers around to different positions and see if you can get a bass quality more to your liking. Moving the speakers closer to the wall behind them will increase bass, as will moving them into corners. However, this may exacerbate room node problems.

You can also experiment with room treatment and bass traps to help even out the bass and reduce the room node effect. 

The tradeoff is that a speaker position that helps improve bass quality may hurt the midrange or highs, or adversely impact stereo imaging or the soundstage.  it can take a lot of experimentation to find out what works best for you, keeping in mind that this sometime gets kickback from your partner who may be more interested in interior design than sound quality. Some people even go so far as to bring in an acoustics professional to help with improve things. 

The nice thing about a lot of the placement experimentation is that it's free. 

I must have been lucky when setting up my system the way that I did. I chose the long wall to be my front wall as there are no windows behind it and I ended up about  8.5' from the front plane of the speakers which are 30" from the front wall (measured from front plane of baffle) with my head less than 1' from the back wall and I get all the bass I need, and then some.

I also found out that not all speakers had great bass. My last two choices were/are great concerning bass response. My old JBL 4319 monitors literally could shake and over load the room and my Atalante 3 monitors have almost the same effect.

Two speakers that I had from Decware were quite weak with the bass and the Tonian Labs speakers were okay as they revealed so much info that my mind could fill in the rest. I concur that moving them around (as much as a PITA that can be) could result in some happy and satisfying results.

All the best,
Nonoise

Try putting the speakers about 3 feet from the back wall and about 8 feet apart with the listening position about 8 feet from the center of the 2 speakers. What size is the room?