[Nick77]

I have a question about what effect bass traps have on bass fatigue. I have a 15" driver feed almost a 1000 watts and like any good bass head like to crank it up a good bit for music and especially HT. The problem is after a movie or after 30 min or so of music the bass has a very fatigueing effect (slight headache). Mind you this is a high quality driver in a heavily braced sealed box and without any room treatments is very impressive. Point being is this isnt fault due to poor quality bass.

Question: Do bass traps clean up the bass fatigue effect? Or is the only benifit going to be in bass sound clairity?

Thanks

[richidoo]

fwiw: Listening fatigue is caused when your mind closes itself to an unnatural sound. That takes energy and causes mental fatigue and headache. High order distortion from power amplifier is often the culprit.

You'll have to experiment with tone quality, volume level, amp distortion, room reflections, whatever else you can think of to find the cause. Or maybe it's actually the mids or highs, they are harder to shut out so they more often cause the fatigue.

Your own health status can make the response worse, making headache and stress levels more sensitive to external irritation.  To reduce stress in general, drink more water, get natural alkaline minerals in your diet and get more sleep. When you are relaxed and alert, you will be able to pick out what it is about the sound that bothers you. .02

[Jon L]

I have a 15" driver feed almost a 1000 watts and like any good bass head like to crank it up a good bit for music and especially HT... Point being is this isnt fault due to poor quality bass.
Thanks

Most likely, you have your bass turned up too high to sound "impressive."  Who wouldn't want to do that with a good 15" with 1000 watts.  Still, the bass is unnaturally high, causing fatigue.  Home theater tracks are the worst since they have unnatural bass levels on purpose.

For me personally, my test for subs is to listen to my favorite vocal tracks while turning the sub on and off.  If the sub muddies up the midrange AT ALL, it's set too high.  All this, of course, is done after the sub placement/cables, etc are optimized. 

No listening fatigue at all here

[bunnyma357]

For me Bass Traps helped a ton with fatigue. My room is close to a cube, so the same same frequencies were getting boosted in all directions, so I had a really strong resonant peak, that ended up sounding like a cheap 1 note boomy sub. The bass trapping will let you hear the quality sound you're sub is putting out, rather than room artifacts.

Of course, your room may not be as bad as mine, but room treatments have been my best bang for the buck improvement - and greatly helped minimize fatigue.

Jim C

[Russell Dawkins]

I remember reading around 35 years ago, so I can't cite the source, that prolonged exposure to high levels of bass and even infra-sonic bass (under 20Hz, not discernible as sound, but certainly measurable, as in a car from wind or road noise) causes significant levels of fatigue and anger in the listener.

A high quality driver in a strong box (especially one box/mono sub) is not the slightest guarantee of bass "quality", unfortunately. High quality bass is more accurately described as linear, low distortion (in the conventional sense of intermodulation and harmonic), non-resonant (stops and starts quickly - not "one note") and evenly dispersed throughout the room.

[Nick77]

For me Bass Traps helped a ton with fatigue. My room is close to a cube, so the same same frequencies were getting boosted in all directions, so I had a really strong resonant peak, that ended up sounding like a cheap 1 note boomy sub. The bass trapping will let you hear the quality sound you're sub is putting out, rather than room artifacts.

Of course, your room may not be as bad as mine, but room treatments have been my best bang for the buck improvement - and greatly helped minimize fatigue.

Jim C

Thanks for the replies. Jim your experience is very refreshing, thanks for sharing. I was hoping bass traps would help, of course I also realize that turning down the bass stupid also applies. But feeling explosions and special effects is priceless. I am looking forward to room treatments. Thanks

[WGH]

Any small animals having "accidents" while you are watching a movie?

"After about 30 minutes of tweaking the subs I went into the kitchen for a victory beverage and noticed that all three kittens had vomited all over their toys and cage floor."
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=61239.msg547819#msg547819

 

[Watson]

Any small animals having "accidents" while you are watching a movie?

"After about 30 minutes of tweaking the subs I went into the kitchen for a victory beverage and noticed that all three kittens had vomited all over their toys and cage floor."
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=61239.msg547819#msg547819

 

My dog starts making digging motions into the hardwood floors when I'm playing low test tones on my sub. My guess is it's some sort of innate panic response related to sensing earthquakes.

[Ethan Winer]

My room is close to a cube, so the same same frequencies were getting boosted in all directions, so I had a really strong resonant peak

This makes a lot of sense. Especially when the key of the music aligns with the resonant peaks. No matter what note the bass is really playing, the same resonant note keeps pounding you over and over. So it makes send that this will get very tiring quickly. And bass traps will indeed reduce the problem.

--Ethan

[bummrush]

Maybe go with Jon L,do you have to much bass,quality is always better then quantity and if you turn it down you might be able to appreciate just how good it really is.