window near my listening point and excessive bass


Hello friends. I have a very small room like 3m(10feet)x2.4m(8feet). I have 12L bookshelf Quads, and Audio refinement amp. My problem is the high level(and boomy) of bass. My speakers are placed at the most desirable place and my listening point is nearly optimum(i dont have many choices since the room is small). One thing that leaves a question mark is that about half area of the wall behind my listening point is window(plain glass:)). There is about 1m between window and my listening point(back of my head).
So is the window creating my bass problem or i have a problem that can not be cured? Also i want to add that wall behind my speakers is completely naked(no damping). Where should i damp? the naked wall behind my speakers or the window behind me or both to decrease bass?

thank you.
128x128parkcaka
Try putting some oversized pillows or blankets on the floor in the corners and see if you hear any difference with the bass. This might lead you to purchase official bass traps (or not if they work and you can live with them). I use a body pillow behind my couch which is almost up against the back wall and another in one corner.
Your bass problem could not be caused by your window and damping behind your listening position is not going to help with the bass (upper mids and highs, yes). Your bass problems are likely inherrent in the size of the room, but could be aggrevated by the speaker placement or the listening position placement. If you can't change their placement (which may or may not help if its the room) then your only pratical solution is am equalizer which you can put into the tape loop of your preamp. This is a very small room, I wouldn't expect too much from it. If you can move stuff about, you might want to get a Radio Shack sound level meter and a test disc to measure bass response as you move things 'til you find the best position..
Your room is almost a cube,so a lot of bass energy is piling on.Small cube like rooms will have lot of standing wave issues.Not good but can be worked with.Since you are not trying to shoe-horn huge towers in there.Try this 1st:
Open the rooms door,window,and closet fully then listen again.
Did it drop the bass level any?If so,did the change make the upper frequencies clearer/more open/more intelligible?
I under stand with maximum dimension being ten feet you are going to be up against one wall and the speakers against the other.But can you move speakers out from wall behind them any?Can you also move your listening seat away from back wall any?If the ceiling is 8'get your ear height low as possible so your definitely closer to floor than ceiling. Average listening height throws you between the ceiling and floors reflected energy.
If any of that helped, I would recommend starting with 2 basstraps in the corners behind each speaker.This should suck up some of that bass energy revealing the mids and highs which you can treat separately as needed.I am not a proffesional but just made some decent diy basstraps which helped in this regard.
If your sub is foward firing put it on a six inch stand. It will help clear it up quite a bit.
I live in a city apartment and, just like you, has a small listening area. The combined dining/living area is 25'L x 9'W x 8'H but the listening area is restricted to 10' along the long wall. I too experienced the excessive bloomy bass that you described before. Through a lot of trial and error, I've reduced a lot of the low frequencies boom, although not completely.

My L speaker (a Mirage M7si) is 10in from a full-height glass window looking out into the city skyline - lots of reflection. No problem with the R speaker because it's about 16' from the side wall.

I found that I achieved best results with speakers at 8.5' apart and 2.5' out from the rear wall, 7' between speakers and listening sweet spot; a thick, large carpet on floor between speakers and listening seat; thick curtains on L to cover the glass windows; two IKEA CD tower racks at the corner behind the L speaker; and a bushy plant behind the R speaker. And the bass really started to tighten and the system became musical when I changed all my power cords, interconnects and speaker cables to Audience AU24 and PowerChord. What a transformation!

It's not perfect yet but going any further such as using bass traps at corners and 4in thick aborption panels behind speakers might achieve the intended results, at the expense of UNFAVOURABLE WAF scores! I prefer to keep my other half happy.

I think in your case, I will go with Mt10425's and Clbeanz's suggestions to open doors and windows to allow the standing waves to escape, hang a thick curtain on the rear wall and/or place bass traps behind the speakers and corners of rooms.

Wait! I was about to submit this post. I have another suggestion. Why don't you swap places between the speakers and listening position such that the rear of the speakers face the (open) windows? I had this setup in my previous apartment (even smaller dimension) without much bass boom problem. However, I had to keep the volume a little lower so as not to disturb the neighbours.
thank you very much, all of you. I will try your advices. Hope they work on me.

cagdas