Riaan
Guys
I've been playing around with some really low bass sounds on my keyboard (Absynth's True Bass) and find that at various low notes, there are all kinds of annoying buzzy vibrations in my room. I tracked a few of them down and fixed it, for example a loose screw on my wall mounted speaker racks and so on. But it seems that for every low note there is something else buzzing somewhere in the room. I did not yet do the acoustic treatment of my room so there are no bass traps yet. Which brings me to my question: is this what bass traps do apart from preventing that boomy bass sound, will it stop those vibrations and buzzes too, or should I just try to track every buzz down? Lower volumes is not an option... ?
AlanRatcliffe
LOL! Some of the Absynth patches are monsters! I know True Bass well and it's not subtle - a real dance producer's (or Taxi Driver's ?) wet dream that one and goes well below subsonic on the lower registers. At volume it is going to make anything that is not nailed down shake and rattle. Track down and eliminate the bad ones, but otherwise, don't worry too much, it's rare that you're going to be using sounds that extreme.
Bass trapping will help a little, but there's only so much that can be done with sounds that low. The main thing with bass trapping is it tightens up the bass and reduces unevenness in different listening positions around the room. Depending on where you stand, it can even make the bass louder.
Riaan
Thanks Alan, yes there are some real monsters there...I now realise that the only things that kept me out of serious trouble as a kid was that (1) Mythbusters was not yet on TV and (2) I didn't have Absynth and a decent set of speakers yet... ?...
Gearhead
Before starting to worry about buzzes and before 'acoustically treating' the room, I would try to get a feel for the acoustics/speakers combination by doing a sweep and just listening to the volume changes. If you can hear it straight away, it must be dealt with first. Then, you can measure the input of a mike in some directions with nothing but a VU indication before working your way down to the last dB.
I bet you would pick up some resonance frequencies (length of the room, for instance) quite easily.
Neps
Riaan, your bass problem sounds like my brothers car.. hahaha.. he's car just rattles when music plays. Bass traping will help to an extent. The problem with bass is that, if you dont actualy rebuild the place with the right cavities and bass managment systems you're going to have problems with bass.. But at home that is not always possible. You can get it under control though (to a point) and that will help quite a bit.
Gearhead has the right idea with playing a sinewave tone that sweeps through the system, and then recording that through a very flat mic. Theoreticaly the recorded signal should have the same level through out regardless of the Hz playing through the system.
You can also have a look at your monitor setup. Try and keep the monitors about 1.5m away from the sidewalls, also dont have them too close to your front wall. Corners are big bass build up areas.
Are you using a Sub?
