Vantage Tweek, Beyond All Others!

[Beakman]

Plug those woofer ports! Don't ask why, just do it!

Ok, this is conditional.
Have a small room? Bass reflections on your front wall out of control, mudding up the panel sound, the imaging? Have weird sweet spots in all the wrong places? Can't get your sub to do anything but make noise? Upgraded to disappointment?
Plug those ports!

Use a relatively dense open-cell foam, the type that is in camera and equipment cases that is pre-scored.

Cut it into a 2" x 2" x 11" block for each port and fold it into the port, pressing in the center first. Push it in just enough to be flush with the cabinet.

If you are using a sub, get that off the front wall, as far from the speakers as practically possible.

Next, drop jaw in absolute amazement at initial play of music, play with MINOR speaker position and level changes.
Then finally, listen to what you paid for.

This is no joke, nor do I have faulty equipment. I really urge anyone who thinks their Vantages could do better to try this. I expect no damage to occur to the woofer as the foam still allows pressure equalization for the cabinet.

I think ML should include some foam material for this purpose for this model, Edit: (and it should be installed as the default option) as the 35Hz control is just that - a 35Hz control. As for my sub, I'm going back to using a cabinet without a passive radiator for pretty much the same reason, lack of control. Related to that, in a way, I feel bad for Summit owners.

Plug those ports. Really.

 

[Joey_V]

Plug those woofer ports! Don't ask why, just do it!

I think ML should include some foam material for this purpose for this model, Edit: (and it should be installed as the default option) as the 35Hz control is just that - a 35Hz control. As for my sub, I'm going back to using a cabinet without a passive radiator for pretty much the same reason, lack of control. Related to that, in a way, I feel bad for Summit owners.

Plug those ports. Really.

Beakman,

I have read about plugging ports but I'm not sure if this isn't detrimental to the cabinet/woofer itself. The woofer/cabinet is tuned according to the air it moves and the port included. I wonder if you may be adversely altering your Vantage's bass output.

And why do you feel bad for Summit owners? We're sealed....

But, the important thing is, if it works for you - excellent! In the end, it's about musical enjoyment.

 

[Beakman]

Beekman,

I have read about plugging ports but I'm not sure if this isn't detrimental to the cabinet/woofer itself. The woofer/cabinet is tuned according to the air it moves and the port included. I wonder if you may be adversely altering your Vantage's bass output.

And why do you feel bad for Summit owners? We're sealed....

But, the important thing is, if it works for you - excellent! In the end, it's about musical enjoyment.

Joey, and others:
The important thing is it will work for anybody.
I'll answer your questions best as I can and please don't take my "Summit" comment personally (anyone else either). I was just thinking of my situation if I had a pair of Summits instead of Vantages. Here's why -
When plugging the port on my Vantages, I severely limited an entire source of waves produced by the woofer section. These waves consisted of a multitude of frequencies regardless of "port tuning" and a control pot for just one frequency. These waves were also, unlike from the face of the woofer, not very coherent in their direction or amplitude. Plugging, or more accurately, dampening the port allows the woofer to behave more like a point source, thus bringing more control with the environment, eliminating the source of a multitude of standing waves.
My subwoofer, a mutt of various components I cobbed together, is basically a Velodyne cabinet that has a front firing driver and a bottom facing passive radiator. This cabinet is sealed, and there are controls for frequency and volume. Having these controls is more than handy, it is almost required to have control of the unit. But what I can't control is the radiation pattern of the down firing radiator. It, and all down firing speaker components, radiate a 360 deg pattern, propagating waves where they are not wanted. I find that the interference of that wave produces the very same effect as the uncontrolled waves from the previously undampened Vantage ports. My solution - eliminate the uncontrolled direction of the waves by eliminating the down firing component.
Look at the Summit. It has level controls for specific frequencies, but no overall volume level control AND a down firing driver. There is, unlike my solution of dampening the ports on the vantages and moving / eliminating the sub's radiator, no onboard control of the Summit's 360 deg propagated pressure waves other than 2 specific frequencies. There will still be a surplus of unwanted, uncontrolled pressure waves interacting with each other and the environment. The Fix? Either extensive room treatments or the dreaded equalizer on the rack. Where a relatively simple fix can be had for the Vantage and possibly Vista is not to be so with the Summit.

As for possible damage to either the Vantage driver and / or the cabinet, I offer this explanation / solution:
Open-cell foam, the material I used, allows airflow and thus pressure waves to pass to some degree. the 2" x 2" x 11" foam block I installed is indeed very well compressed but using a block of smaller dimensions will give more pass through of the wave and in itself can be an excellent way of fine tuning this tweak.

What took me so long to notice the problem and deal with it? Easy! - when new, the drivers are not "broken in" and in effect, self restricted. As break-in occoured slowly over time, the situation was not readily noticed until the drivers came into their full glory of having full motion to produce the many frequencies that have become, in my case and I suspect many others, problematic.

I hope this answers any questions you or others may have.
Flambeing is anticipated

 

[Craig]

The Fix? Either extensive room treatments or the dreaded equalizer on the rack.

I tend to disagree.

Room treatments are very effective for correcting room acoustic issues but not very effective for overcoming any speaker deficiencies. Based on my experience listening to the Summits and Vantages in many different systems and rooms including my own, I find they are far from being deficient in the bass department.

If you have to plug the ports on a Vantage then you most likely have a lot of bass resonance (peaks and nulls) occuring within the listening room. I'm willing to bet you'll get much much better results by simply repositioning the speakers and/or addressing the room acoustics instead of plugging the ports.

I suspect your placing fault on the speaker when it's more than likely an issue of room acoustics. But if plugging the ports works for you then go for it. What works for you is what matters the most.

 

[Rich]

I tend to disagree as well. I also disagree with the logic of your argument that a downfiring woofer acts omnidirectionally while a front firing woofer acts more as a point source and that this causes a problem by "propagating waves where they are not wanted." Without proper treatment every room will have numerous bass reflections in every direction from any woofer, which will cause peaks and nulls at different parts of the room resulting in uneven bass response. Certain room modes will also be excited, exacerbating this effect. This is just the nature of bass frequencies.

I understand that for whatever reason plugging your Vantage ports worked for you and that is great. I applaud you for finding a tweak that improves your sound. But I think you are deluding yourself if you think that this somehow takes the place of proper acoustic treatment in your room. You still have bass reflections and standing waves and peaks and nulls and plugging a woofer port isn't going to fix that.

And thanks for your concern, but please don't feel bad for us Summit owners. We are enjoying some of the best bass response we have ever heard from any speaker. And yes, room treatments make them sound even better.

 

[Beakman]

I understand that for whatever reason plugging your Vantage ports worked for you and that is great. I applaud you for finding a tweak that improves your sound. But I think you are deluding yourself if you think that this somehow takes the place of proper acoustic treatment in your room.

But it is an acoustic treatment in my room. It just happens to be in the speaker cabinet.

 

[Craig]

But it is an acoustic treatment in my room. It just happens to be in the speaker cabinet.

Tone controls can help minimize room acoustic problems but addressing the root of the problem such as room acoustics first will produce better results in the long run.

I just think if a speaker performs better with the port plugged then the engineers would have designed it as a sealed enclosure to begin with.

 

[risabet]

Tone controls can help minimize room acoustic problems but addressing the root of the problem such as room acoustics first will produce better results in the long run.

I just think if a speaker performs better with the port plugged then the engineers would have designed it as a sealed enclosure to begin with.

Plugging a port with open-celled foam does not make a sealed enclosure. It changes the acoustic impedance of the port and changes the tuning frequency to a higher freq. IIRC. Regardless, it is a band-aid approach to a problem better addressed by room treatment or maybe DSP.

 

[Beakman]

I just think if a speaker performs better with the port plugged then the engineers would have designed it as a sealed enclosure to begin with.

That may not be the best argument for your case considering manufacturers, including Martin Logan have a neccesity to hit a broad target with their products, and besides, nobody would be changing out the tubes in their amps, now would they?

Regardless, it is a band-aid approach to a problem better addressed by room treatment or maybe DSP.

And a 35Hz potentiometer isn't a band-aid, albiet one applied by the engineering dept.? Room treatments and DSP as add ons fall in the same class.

Hey, I'm willing to take on Randi's challenge about this "enhancement", but somehow $2.98 worth of foam fails the credibility factor in this game.

 

[tonepub]

I've done that with other speakers as a last resort, and the B&W 205's in my small living room actually come from B&W with a plug as the one you mention. (they used to offer the plugs for the 801's as well...)

Really all you are doing is changing the tuning frequency of the woofer, which usually does work well in small rooms, especially in a more square room.

However, if you can afford it and work around it, there is no substitute for room treatment, especially with panel speakers more than any other type.

The biggest improvement I've EVER made in my system has been to treat the room. The couple thousand bucks spent on some panels and bass traps (especially the bass traps) has cleaned up my system more than any other one tweak.

The better the room sounds, the easier you can hear the other stuff you are doing to your system!

 

[DingMac_UK]

plugging a Clarity

Hi All - I'm new to ML with my Clarity's (Clarities?) and currently I haven't got around to re-ordering the a/v end of the lounge to better position them.. anyway, putting a small sponge in the ports has helped with a mid-bass boom for the moment and all I can say is thanks for the tip!

DingMac_UK