Boomy ~180Hz, room reflection?

Hi guys

First of all, my speakers are Edifier R1600T Plus, rear ported, 4.5" glass fiber composite woofer.

I'm using them like this at the moment:

Excuse the ghetto "stands", I plan to get some wood blocks to replace the magazines soon.

Distance to the rear wall is ~15 inches.

...Now onto the problem:

I've noticed there's a pronounced boomy hump at 170~200Hz that doesn't seem to be affected by rear wall distance.

Though I still haven't tried exotic stuff like putting them in the middle of the room or something... I just moved them front and back in the table.

Completely obstructing the rear ports didn't seem to affect this either.

Also, the hump is only there if I'm approximately at the woofer plane or below (though it doesn't reach the ground).

If I go some 10 inches above the speakers, the hump is completely gone.

Ideas? Is this caused by my room? Placement? Or is it probably a property of the woofer itself?

Thanks!

Quote:

Originally Posted by p a t r i c k 

It is difficult to tell from the picture but it looks like you might be quite close to that corner on the left.

 

If so that would be giving you an increase in bass perhaps.

 

I wonder what size your room is? If it is a very small room then an equaliser might be your only hope.

 

It looks like the speakers are in a good location with respect to your seating position. Are the drivers point straight at your ears? This won't help with the unwelcome bass boost, but you will get much better quality if the speakers are pointing straight at your ears. It looks like they probably are.

 

So, all I can suggest for the moment is moving away from that corner, perhaps.

That's not a corner, it's a small corridor that leads to the door.

Yeah it's kinda weird...

I think the room is around 20 m², not sure though, gotta check it later...

Actually the right speaker is a bit close to the corner (you can't see it in the picture), but the hump comes from both speakers, so I believe this is not the problem.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rdr. Seraphim 

Are these near field monitors? Looks and sounds like a placement issue. Are the woofers at ear level? If so, trying placing the speakers so that your ears are mid-way between the woofer and tweeter, or level with the tweeter. 

Yup, nearfield. They're small, 4.5" woofers. Tweeters are at ear level.

Though I'm not sure if I'd call them monitors... More like good quality multimedia speakers, wannabe monitors.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RicHSAD 

I ran into a similar issue with my Energy CB-20 which I also use nearfield. I had to cut about 10db around 120hz with my soundcard's EQ to get proper sound. Really not sure what to do as far as speaker positioning goes to fix the problem. If I move back a little or stand up the hump disappears.

I can EQ it, but it's not an ideal solution, you know... It's a "boomy" hump, so all I'm doing by EQing, is reducing it's volume. But it still sounds wrong...

EDIT: After some experimentation with the foobar EQ, I actually found the hump is around 160Hz, not 180Hz. In the process, I also discovered Realtek's EQ is a complete garbage.

Btw, is there any 3rd party foobar EQ that allows customization of the frequency bands?

Electri-Q + VST Wrapper is not working here for some reason (Windows 7 x64, probably the reason)

It's kinda annoying, because I didn't have this problem with my budget Logitech X-220 (probably because at 160Hz it was already xovering to the "sub", lol ).