The suspended floor in my hovel has always bothered me. Muddy bass but lots of it! I thought maybe I had just overdone the cabinet tuning, the room couldn't be that bad. Speakerman came over and heard them for the first time and pointed out how bad the bass was. That's a good friend! He put a 16 Ohm resistor on the crossover which helped but I thought it had a bad effect on the mids. Then some discussions of sandbox damping on various forums lately combined with finally acquiring a tablesaw got me into action.
I built 2 boxes from 3/4" MDF 2 inches bigger than my speaker footprints which hold 2" of sand. About 40 lbs each. A top plate sits level with the sides and doesn't touch them.
Major improvement.
I immediately notice song lyrics I never heard before. You know the scene in "Bull Durham" where Tim Robbins sings "Women get ....."? Like that.
Emmy Lou's "Wrecking Ball" album straddles the over-done bass line and is a really good test of clarity of the bass and percussion. Now it's all really well-defined.
Completely different tonal balance that makes the mids seem leaner and may take some getting used to. I'll definitely start working on the crossover issues. I'm certain I will hear changes more easily than before.
"Hand me another Budweiser, Steve......."
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