Poly Fill for Bookshelf speakers??

[Dom80]

Hi all, I just registered with Audioreview.com and look forward to being an active member here. I just set up my first "real" stereo system and I am very happy with it. Of course, this is my first setup and my gear may seem "entry-level" to some, but for me, I am now hearing instruments in my music which I have never heard before. To me, this is definitely an upgrade. Anyway, here is the thing. I have a pair of Yamaha 6490 bookshelf speakers and they sound great, the only thing is that I really need to crank up the volume in order to get the woofers to move. I also attached my dad's eq (for testing purposes only) to my receiver and turned up the level on the low frequencies. Doing this I got my woofers to move at a lower volume levels while producing much more bass I am guessing due to more movement with the woofer. I know my receiver has enough juice to power the speakers, so I don't think power is my problem. Don't get me wrong, the Yamaha's sound good and I can definitely hear clear highs and clear lows, the low's are there, it's just that I feel the woofers should be moving a bit more when producing them. I was wondering if stuffing the enclosure with Poly FIll would help the woofer movement at all. Any comments or advice?

[sgt bass08]

lol thats funny poly fill lol i dont no about using that try get a small plastic bag and fill it up with dry sand to fill it up thats what i did with my speakers but they were tall floorstands but your speakers are small so i dont know you could use foam, pillow stuffing, long fibre wool, fiberglass but them speakers you got are only small 8 inch woofers would really make any differents to bookshelfs speakers if you want more action try and get some floorstands or the best thing to do is get a subwoofer

[emorphien]

I have no idea what sgt bass08 just said, but poly-fill is used to absorb some sound energy inside the speaker cabinet that would otherwise bounce around and color the overall representation of your speakers.

You are right that woofer movement is what produces the sound. Bass requires considerable amounts of air to be moved to produce reasonable SPLs that can be heard or felt. A smaller driver has to move further back and forth to produce the same bass as a larger driver. 8 inches is pretty big for a bookshelf driver, and in general I wouldn't expect 8" woofers to be moving too much on most bookshelf speakers used at the levels they are intended for. Are you actually lacking bass output, do you want more? Or do you just want to see the woofers move? The woofers will only move more when they are asked to produce more sound. You can make them do that by turning up the bass levels or overall volume, but they won't move more than is necessary (hopefully).

If you want more bass, turn it up. If you want to see the woofers move more while producing the bass, use speakers with smaller woofers and longer throw/excursion.

[sgt bass08]

[QUOTE=emorphien]I have no idea what sgt bass08 just said, but poly-fill is used to absorb some sound energy inside the speaker cabinet that would otherwise bounce around and color the overall representation of your speakers.

what do you mean emorphien

[emorphien]

What are you asking about?

[sgt bass08]

What are you asking about?

poly fil i thought he meant the stuff we have in the uk cause that stuff is used to fill in gaps and holes on walls and celling like a concrete mix

[emorphien]

AFAIK the poly-fill he's talking about is polyester fibers. You can get it in a bag and it's just a big pile of loose fibers that can be stuffed in a speaker.

[kexodusc]

Polyfil isn't going to do much for woofer movement. It is used as damping material and will reduce the internal reflections and standing waves resulting in less cabinet resonance. It might make the bass a bit deeper sounding. But it won't change the woofer movement much.

[Florian]

I thought this could be helpful to some members:

What is a comma -- >

A punctuation mark (,) indicating a pause between parts of a sentence. It is also used to separate items in a list and to mark the place of thousands in a large numeral.

Greetings and a better understanding for next year.

Flo

[hermanv]

Poly Fill will slightly increase the apparent volume of a woofer enclosure, so there is a chance it would add some low frequency extension.

The problem is that any competent designer (let's assume Yamaha is one of those) isn't going to throw away speaker performance. It is quite likely that the cabinet internal volume is more or less correct for that driver.

Rarely does a modern speaker design lend itself to improvement with a small change. designing speakers involves making a number of decisions about trade offs, it is a complex art and any increase in some behavior is most likely to result in a decrease of some other behavior.

Two way bookshelf speakers will almost always be bass shy. To fix this usually results in them not being bookshelf speakers anymore. A sub woofer can help, but most audiophiles dislike that solution as compared to a speaker with more inherent low frequency extension.

Having said all that, there is this other rule: Do what sounds good to you, you are the only valid judge of how your system sounds or should sound.

[Dom80]

Thanks for all the helpful comments guys. I understand I would never get true low end from an 8" bookshelf woofer, but I thought I would have gotten a bit more than what I have. It's not so much that I want to see the movement of the woofer, but I have never come across a woofer that didn't move. Due to the comments from this thread, I don't think that stuffing the cabinet with POLY FILL :cornut: will make matters better, so I won't be doing that. I will however incorporate a powered subwoofer to help out with the low end. I am not a huge fan of boomy bass in music, so I will have to keep the subwoofer level low. I will let you know how things work out. Thanks again.

[sgt bass08]

I thought this could be helpful to some members:

What is a comma -- >

A punctuation mark (,) indicating a pause between parts of a sentence. It is also used to separate items in a list and to mark the place of thousands in a large numeral.

Greetings and a better understanding for next year.

Flo

was that aimed at me ???

[Florian]

Yes, it was. But i hope you take it as a constructive criticism. Please try to separate your sentences, because i honestly can not read what you wrote.

Happy new year

Flo

[sgt bass08]

Yes, it was. But i hope you take it as a constructive criticism. Please try to separate your sentences, because i honestly can not read what you wrote.

Happy new year

Flo


yes i will try my best to add better grammar.but come on guys you can still read what i type.

[basite]

Happy new year

Flo


happy newyear to you too :)

Sgt. Bass, if it's one long sentence, it's no problem for me to read it, with or without punctuation marks. If it's a whole text, however, it's getting pretty hard for us, also do mind that we're on a public forum, so most of us have English as their main language, but other members like me and Flo for example don't. I speak Dutch, and Flo is German. Our English is above average here, so it's not a real problem for me or Flo to (I think), but always remember that other people also read this, who find it very difficult to read and type English. These people get an even harder time reading messages when someone types a message without any punctuation marks, too much unknown abbrevations, dialects... (and not only yours, I type this for every member and future member). This is less worse in off topic threads, but please, in helpful theads, mind a little about spelling and grammar.

Thanks,
Bert.

[emorphien]

yes i will try my best to add better grammar.but come on guys you can still read what i type.
It's actually very hard to interpret what you were trying to say since there was no sentence structure or separation between thoughts. Punctuation will help, but you may need to take even more care than that when writing your posts.

So yes, we can read it, but we don't understand any of it!

[sgt bass08]

It's actually very hard to interpret what you were trying to say since there was no sentence structure or separation between thoughts. Punctuation will help, but you may need to take even more care than that when writing your posts.

So yes, we can read it, but we don't understand any of it!




Mybad.

[hermanv]

It's hard to know how much criticism is valuable, but since you guys brought it up for those trying to improve their English grammar:

basite, you said "too much unknown abbreviations", the correct English would be: "too many unknown abbreviations"

emorphien you said "since there was no sentence structure", the correct English would be: "since there wasn't any sentence structure".

I too am not a native English speaker so perhaps you can forgive the criticism. It can be a confounding language since, in essence, it is distilled from many European base languages.

[sgt bass08]

yer i understand what you guys mean .but its unfair i was never good with english and iam from the uk but i dont need to be told how to use grammar. at the end of the day u can still read what i type we all dont have to be nerds .

[Florian]

Guys, please!

We are not in the need for Oxford university grammar here, but a freaking comma here and there is not difficult at all.

Cheers

Flo

[audio amateur]

Dom80: Why the heck do you want your woofer to move more?

Sgtbass08: Where did you learn to write? You're giving a poor image to the UK population

[sgt bass08]

Dom80: Why the heck do you want your woofer to move more?

Sgtbass08: Where did you learn to write? You're giving a poor image to the UK population


you guys take grammar to seriously. the way i type is the way i type. if you guys dont like it then i wont reply or even come on ere .

[basite]

please don't leave just yet...

If you search for my first threads and posts here (about one and a half year ago...), you'll see that my knowledge was somewhat limited too, but I learned quick (both for audio, as for my English...).

all you are asked is to place a point and a comma or two somewhere, like Flo said, this ain't no Oxford university :cornut:

Keep them spinning,
Bert.

[emorphien]

basite, you said "too much unknown abbreviations", the correct English would be: "too many unknown abbreviations"
this i would agree with


emorphien you said "since there was no sentence structure", the correct English would be: "since there wasn't any sentence structure".
Depends on where you are from perhaps, but that wouldn't bother anyone I know.

The point is not that we all speak with perfect, textbook English. To be fair it can be quite a regional matter what form or style of English is correct. But if you don't take care in clearly wording your sentences and using some proper punctuation, not only is it hard to read what you write, sometimes it's impossible to understand.

I'm not asking for perfect English sgt bass but I really had no idea what you were on about in your first post in this thread.

[hermanv]

OK enough oneupmanship.

Dom80: I at least am unclear on what you want, louder bass with the current low frequency extension, a lower extension, both? By extension I of course mean lower frequency reproduction. Do you want to change the "color" or "voicing" of your speakers, that is; increase the ratio of bass to mid/tweet levels or do you want everything to be louder?

2 way speakers can be made to play fairly loud or they can have reasonable extension. Usually it's impossible to accomplish both. If two way's could do the whole job there would be very few three, four or more way speakers sold. The two way designs would have a price advantage the more complex designs could hardly match.

Please clarify your needs, you have expanded somewhat, but I at least, do not understand where you want to go. Once we all know, there will most likely be a number of suggestions to help you move the system's sound in the desired direction.

Also please mention the gauge of the speaker wire you are currently using.

[emorphien]

OK enough oneupmanship.
Hardly the case here. It's basic "netiquette" to try to type in a clear enough manner so people can read it.


Dom80: I at least am unclear on what you want, louder bass with the current low frequency extension, a lower extension, both? By extension I of course mean lower frequency reproduction. Do you want to change the "color" or "voicing" of your speakers, that is; increase the ratio of bass to mid/tweet levels or do you want everything to be louder?At first I wasn't sure either but it sounds as though he does want more bass. I agree more clarification would help us though since it's still not clear.