Many of you are listening to speakers with direct dampening. How do you know? Look inside and you will find either poly fill, wool or foam.

would you like to voice your drivers to your rooms pressure?

You can tune your speaker to your room and get more dynamic range, detail and bigger stage. You will also help with that "in your speaker" sound.

Speaker designers build their products to fit in a large range of rooms, and tend to over do it when it comes to stuffing. They also use stuffing that is not acoustically linear. Right around 1.5khz to 3.5khz then again from 5khz up there is a suck out with foam and fill that dulls the dynamics. Don't need test equipment if you don't have it, put your face up to the foam or fill and you will hear it.

If you would like to experiment and see how much better your speakers can sound in your particular room, go to your store and get some housing insulation with the plastic or paper backing. Some companies have the fiberglass completely covered in plastic now and you may like this the best, I like putting the fiberglass in a bag or getting a little more tweaky. Just incase you get into this go ahead and buy a ceiling tile with the plastic on one side and the compressed fiber glass on the other (the tweaky part).

When you get your new stuffing, set it off to the side and put on a recording that you like to reference and spend a little time listening. Once you got it in your head good, take out the woofer, reach inside and pull out some of the fill right behind the woofer. Do this with both and keep it even. Listen, and see if you hear the difference. If your feeling comfortable, keep going and go ahead and take out the filler. Do a listen. Let's start with the loosly batted fiber glass. Place it in the cabinet with the paper or plastic facing the back of the driver. You might start by putting in half or even less of the amount that was in there to begin with. Do a listen. Try to keep the fiberglass away from cables and the cabinet walls. This will give you a cleaner sound, or if you do have the plastic bag type of insulation try it with the bag completely covering the fiberglass. If you want you can even put the fiberglass in paper bags and set them inside. The fiberglass is going to burn the energy so it doesn't need to be exposed. You will probably like it best in the bags, but play around till your speakers sound the best for your room.

What your doing is allowing the woofer to work better with the rooms pressure. It might take a bit to get it right but once you do your going to love it.

I mentioned getting the ceiling tiles. You might be surprised at how much you like the speakers closer to empty. If thats the case put the ceiling panels in instead of the batted. If your going to get really into this just ask and I'll recommend a couple of other steps you can try. If you look at any of my room diagrams on TuneLand you'll get some placement ideas.

Also one last thing you might be into. Most speakers today are CNC machined so the driver baskets don't have the problem of leakage like they use to. There's a rubber gasket between the driver and the cabinet. You might want to try listening to the driver direct coupled to the cabinet without the gasket.

If you have questions ask away, but keep in mind I'm here for the sound not audio debates on theory. If your going to do it I'll help but if your going to talk about why you need the fill, gasket and all that with no intentions of listening don't be mad if I pass you by.

happy listening campers

michael green
MGA/RoomTune