Boomy Bass with Polk Rt20p

scottym

My Rt20's have always had too much boominess in the bass so I keep the amp control on the back of the enclosure turned way down, in about the 3 o'clock position. My system is a B&K Ref 20 and I don't have the capability to adjust the treble or bass. The way you control the sound is by selecting large or small
speakers. In small the the drivers don't receive the bass and those lower freqs go to your subs. I have the subs hooked up directly to processor output which is an improvement in overall sound but did not solve the boomy problem. Has anyone else experienced this problem and if so did you manage to fix it.

For home theater this bass might be OK for the special effects in some movies but it is pretty annoying for good music listening which is mostly what we do.

Thanks everyone

[Deleted User]

Hello,
When you say the, "3 o'clock" position, do you mean turned past the "12:00 o'clock" straight up position, pointing to the right? If so, that is much too high for a relatively flat frequency response. On that speaker the bass amplifier should be set around 9:00 or 10:00 o'clock if the speaker is out away from nearby walls. If it is fairly close to a wall or corner the bass amp should be set at 9:00 o'clock or lower.
Regards, Ken

tonyb

The subs in those 2000p's were never ment to do HT style bass. I suggest you adjust them for music and leave it be seeing thats the majority of what you use them for. Don't hook up to the receivers sub out, just speaker connections, run them as large, and adjust the volume on the back of the speaker for the low end. Start at about the 12 o'clock position....3 o'clock seems too high imho. Also play around with positioning, farther out from the wall.

I've had these speakers in the past, and was never satisfied with the low end in my listening environment, but many seem to dig them so it may be just my room or positioning I had them in.


Darn Ken,your quick....

mantis

tonyb wrote: »

The subs in those 2000p's were never ment to do HT style bass. I suggest you adjust them for music and leave it be seeing thats the majority of what you use them for. Don't hook up to the receivers sub out, just speaker connections, run them as large, and adjust the volume on the back of the speaker for the low end. Start at about the 12 o'clock position....3 o'clock seems too high imho. Also play around with positioning, farther out from the wall.

I've had these speakers in the past, and was never satisfied with the low end in my listening environment, but many seem to dig them so it may be just my room or positioning I had them in.


Darn Ken,your quick....

RT20p's
Built-in powered subwoofers for ground shaking music and home theater performance. By eliminating the need for a separate powered subwoofer, you'll save money and floor space too!

They are intended for theater use without a external sub. They have to be calibrated into your system. I suggest the following to set them up.

Run your front speakers in small and use LFE out to each sub in the RT20p's. Test tone your system using the rev20's generator and balance everything to 75db. You can unplug one sub and calibrate one at a time for a more acurate room filling bass experience. How you do this is get one sub balanced at 75 leaving test tone output to 0db. Adjust the left sub while the right is unplugged. Then unplug the left sub and plug in the right , get it to 75db with the volume knob on the back. Now plug both subs in together and take another reading at your seating location and adjust them together using the ref20's line level adjustment.

You can however run the rt20p's in large which take more setup so I suggest small and allow line level to supply the with all the low end they need.

The suggestion to position them away from the walls is a excellent suggestion. They tend to "load up "when to close to a wall.

Powered Towers are not easy to setup. Once you use my technic's you will find it will get easier to do so.
Good luck you have nice speakers.

tonyb

What I meant Dan, was they are not intended to take the place of a dedicated sub, nor could they ever keep up with one. If you expect the same performance from the built in sub in the 2000's and a dedicated sub, you will be sadly disappointed.
That said, the lower end in movies such as Tron, is not even close to being properly produced by the 2000's alone. They have their limits, and with the dynamic range in todays hd master audio, they'll struggle on the more hefty sound tracks.
....and that being said, thats excellent advice in setting them up properly.

scottym

Gosh, Thanks everyone for the excellent replies. Definitely you have all given me some input to work with. I have been afraid to run the speakers in Large but that seems to give me a much fuller sound. I'll try each of your suggestions.

Thanks very much again everyone.

Scotty

Uilleann

Sigh...

Would be nice if we were able to return to the days when sealed enclosures, musicality and flat responses were the goal and not Hollywood bass bloat, boom and the louder, louder, louder mindset wasn't the only thing at the forefront of the sound engineer's mind.

It's not a Polk thing of course (the ports) as just about all of the easily available speakers in the modest to mid-range price brackets are...but I, for one, would love to see a return to the roots of accuracy and impact, and could stand to loose the boom boom a bit... YMMV of course.

scottym

Well, I've had the chance to play with some of the ideas put forth by you guys and they have worked wonders. First, I need to clarify when I said i had the speaker volume at three o'clock that was everyone else 9 o'clock, so I had them turned way down. Between 9 and 10 o'clock seems to be about right. I tried the 75 db approach but that was too thumpy. Incidentally, at75db the control was in the 12 o'clock position.

What I like about these speakers is the crisp bright sounding highs. It just seemed that there is this gap between the mid ranges and the bass but I think that problem is solved with the advice I've gotten here. I need to listen to a lot of different music to be sure but at least with Eric Clapton it sounds really good now.

I agree about the sealed enclosure. An old set of JBL's or AR3's as I remember, sure sounded good. I have just helped a friend build a set of 4 tapped horn subs to augment his line array speakers he had built himself from pvc fence post stock and 16 three inch speakers wired in series and parallel to give 8 ohms. The sound from this system is unbelievable, even in a huge 10000 sq ft ballroom.

Well, thanks again and enjoy your weekend everyone.