I find the overall sound very bass heavy.....anyone else?
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@mig I actually liked the Spark a little better but I could probably equal the PR more to my liking. I have no problem with my Spark tones. I notice you have them both on a table out in the open. My Spark is not backed against a wall or in a corner, about a foot and a half out. I think it was discussed early on some complaining about too bassy had them low and backed against walls.
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After using it for a month or so, I've noticed that the tones when playing the guitar are fine. You can adjust the bass, mid and treble and get a great sound. The problem for me comes in when playing music through the Spark, which sounds horrible and muddy. Others have mentioned this so I'm late to the party on this one, but using an equalizer app on your phone totally solves this issue. You can tone down the muddy bass and bump up the high frequencies and it sounds great. (Disclaimer, I replaced the speakers and added some speaker batting internally) But I'm guessing the biggest bang for you buck to fix the muddy, bass heavy sound on an unmodified Spark is just to use an EQ app on your phone. Seems to me like the devs could fix this issue so maybe they will at some point. Until then, an easy solution to get a nice sound is just an EQ app to tone down the lows and boost the highs. I'm VERY happy with the sound now.
Edit: Forgot to mention the app I'm using on Android is called "Bass Boost". Based on the issue I was having with excessive bass, I was leery about trying it, but it does have a simple standard EQ and you can turn off the bass boost. Also, when you get it sounding good via the speakers using an EQ, be prepared to turn the EQ back off when using head phones. There's no consistency between the speakers and the headphone out jack at all. What sounds good on one, sounds horrible on the other.
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Here's another observation that I am just noticing. when using the Spark as a USB speaker for my PC, the first time I use it, the sound if very muddy/bass heavy. But then if I don't send any sound to the Spark for a little while (not sure how long) and then send some sound to it, the sound is completely different. The muddy/bass heavy sound is gone and the sound is much cleaner. This seems like a bug to me so I'll create a support ticket on it. It's possible that when sending sound via bluetooth, the sound never get reinitialized and maintains the bass heavy setting the entire time. I suppose this could be an issue with certain units only, but this seems more like a firmware issue than a hardware issue to me.
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@cbrandst said in I find the overall sound very bass heavy.....anyone else?:
Here's another observation that I am just noticing. when using the Spark as a USB speaker for my PC, the first time I use it, the sound if very muddy/bass heavy. But then if I don't send any sound to the Spark for a little while (not sure how long) and then send some sound to it, the sound is completely different. The muddy/bass heavy sound is gone and the sound is much cleaner. This seems like a bug to me so I'll create a support ticket on it. It's possible that when sending sound via bluetooth, the sound never get reinitialized and maintains the bass heavy setting the entire time. I suppose this could be an issue with certain units only, but this seems more like a firmware issue than a hardware issue to me.
I’ve had an instance where I went into Bluetooth settings and hit forget my Bluetooth connection (to the Spark). After that there seemed to be much less bass. Everything sounded great. I assumed as long as I didn’t make that Bluetooth connection I would be golden, but the next time I used the amp, the heavy bass was back. Started to think maybe it was my imagination, but it could be related to what you are saying.
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@stinger0625 Yea I think placement is important. Most of the YouTube reviews I watched had it sitting out on a chair or desk and point at the person. I sit just a little offset from mine at ear level and have no problem with the sound or eq'ing it. Maybe everyone should check the settings on the phones or tablets and make sure they don't have the bass eq'd up or the bass enhancements on.
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@stinger0625 I agree that placement is important, but there is a CLEAR difference in the bass that's being output from one example to the other. I'm not sure why, but I noticed it most when listening to a youtube video with a guy that had a deeper than average voice. It was so bass heavy at first that the guy was difficult to hear in some instances, but after I paused for 30 seconds to a minute and then hit play, it magically cleared up. I replicated that scenario twice by rebooting and starting over. There's something wrong with the firmware. I'm pretty convinced of that.
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@cbrandst be sure to report your findings, in as much detail as you can provide, through the Contact Support link at the top of this page. The more the developers know about specific instances of problems, the better they will be able to improve things.
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I've been using a third party EQ app to reduce the bass on streamed backing tracks and jam tracks, and streaming audio: Music Volume EQ on Google play - not sure about the App Store... but this solved the problem for me. Hope that helps. *it's the only app I found that had saves for presets and also was stable and worked with bluetooth streaming audio. They need to build an eq into the Spark app for streaming content.
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They need to build an eq into the Spark app for streaming content.
Yes, exactly ... and that would seem trivial given the eq pedals they already have built in.
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The amp seems "pre scooped" as it if was just designed for shredders. There is very little in the high midrange - which makes it tough to get a real good crunchy style tone.
Lack of tweeters should not be an issue. Smaller speakers typically reproduce "highs" better than "lows" anyway. Plus since this was designed to play music via Bluetooth, they likely chose a fairly "full range flat response" speaker, and rely on digital modeling to get the guitar to sound good in it's frequency ranges.
I really think this issue must be due to some internal EQ-ing going on. If they would simply provide some access to the EQ I really think we'd be able to solve this issue.
If somebody on the forum has a scope and a white noise generator we could diagnose this.
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Agree. Tone is horrible. My Blackstar idCore Beam is far superior in tone. Very disappointed.
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I just got my amp a few hours ago, and after playing it for an hour or so I googled Positive Grid Spark too dark and came to this thread. Glad that I'm not the only one. I'm playing a Les Paul with vintage type PAFs through it. It's almost unusable it's so dark.
And then I thought of all the gorgeous sound I heard in the YouTube demos. Surprised that none of the people that demoed them mentioned it.
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@rb-0 "Too dark" is in the ear of the individual listening. I have a Epiphone Les Paul and I love the sound from my Spark. But then again I have always liked music which has more bass and less treble to it. I love the sound of the mp3 files played through the Spark using it as a bluetooth speaker, too. I wish there was better tone control so that everybody could get the sound they're happiest with. An eq pedal has been requested often, but it wouldn't hurt to add your request to those others, so use the Contact Support link at the top of this page to submit a feature request asking for an EQ (graphic or parametric, or both) to be added to the pedals. In the meantime one thing you can do to help reduce the boominess is to pull the grill cover off (it's only held on with velcro strips and is easy to remove) and create some sort of plug using either high-density foam or dense cloth to plug the bass port hole. Other recommendations are to raise the amp up off the floor and not have it sitting flat on a hard surface. You can buy a pair of door stop wedges cheaply at a hardware store to angle the amp up so that any bass sounds aren't reflected off the surface the amp rests on.
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No doubt every ear, and everyone's taste, is different. And if you love the sound, more power to you. But based on this thread there appear to be a lot of people with very different ears. Ideally, the EQ in the amp would be able to satisfy almost everyone.
I have strats and teles too - they all sound dark.
I normally play through a tube amp (Mesa Boogie Lonestar Special), and while it would be silly to expect this to sound like that, I need to practice with EQ that is at least in the ball park, but at much lower volume.
I don't have any foam handy, but I shoved a washcloth into the hole and it actually made a huge difference. At least now with the treble way up the bass doesn't overwhelm everything and I can practice.
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@rb-0 I'm glad you've gotten it to a barely acceptable level. Remember that this amp is marketed for rock guitarists, jazz guitarists, acoustic guitarists and bassists. So they had to build in a way that would accommodate all those different styles and instruments. Nothing's ever gonna please everybody when it's built to do all that.
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I’ve also had a few issues with the sound and tone being very bassy/muddy sounding. Like others it sounds better with headphones, and recording into my MacBook directly with the USB it sounds great and none of the bass issues appear when I play back the recordings. So I guess this would make the speakers the main reason for the muddy/bassy sound.
I find Clean tones sound better and respond a bit better if I tweak the bass, middle and treble, but if I throw almost any of the drive pedals onto any of the clean channels I just lose any real clarity, even if I turn the drive down it still sounds muddy.
I also find it worse on my guitar that has humbuckers and slightly better on my single coil guitar. I have a BOSS equaliser GE7 pedal and it does help boost the high end and lower the bass tones. I agree with others who would like an EQ setting/pedal built into the spark app.
I still think it’s great value for money and good fun, I have more expensive valve/tube amps and still have to put the Boss EQ pedal on my other amps but not at the levels on the Spark.
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@mattpearce79 Here’s a thread that mentions using different speakers, the Visaton FR10:
https://forum.positivegrid.com/topic/4523/anyone-know-the-impedance-of-the-4-speakers/20?page=1 -
I replaced the speakers and that was only a marginal improvement at best. I think there is something wrong with the firmware. When I have the Spark plugged into a PC and I use it for a speaker, the first time I play something the sound is overdriven and boomy/muffled. If I pause the audio for roughly 30 seconds and start it again, the sound comes out at a reduced level and is much cleaner. I suspect the firmware has issues that is causing something to be driven harder than it should be, but there's no way to "pause" the audio that's coming from the guitar to reset the audio levels. I've opened a ticket about this but it went into a black hole so I just deal with it and use headphones when I want better audio on anything other than a clean signal. But you'd have a hard time convincing me there's not some type of firmware issue.
Try this for yourself:
Plug the USB cable from the Spark to a PC.
Load the driver onto the PC for the Spark.
Start the PC.
After the PC boots up, turn on the Spark (The PC will not see the Spark unless it's turned on after the PC boots.)
Bring up a Youtube video and take note of how crappy the sound is.
Pause the video for 30 seconds, making sure you don't have anything else using the audio.
Press play on the video and notice how the sound is at a much lower volume and also how it's not boomy/distorted.It's possible that I had some kind of issue with my Spark Amp that only affects me, but based on how consistent this behavior is and the fact that I'm not having any other issues, I'm convinced they all pretty much behave this way due to some firmware bug that hasn't been discovered/payed attention to by the devs. And the thing is, I feel like they would sell more of the amps if they fixed the issue. Most of the videos that give an unbiased review of the amp mention how the sound through the speakers is not that great. Plus, I've seen a lot of other people selling them because they are not happy with the sound. Although a lot of people think the way it sounds is a feature and not a bug. I'm just not convinced.
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Hello cbrandst,
please help me to understand the behaviour.
with the amp there are 3 possibilities to hear audio from another source (in your scenario from PC youtube video).- via USB cable
- via stereo cable to aux connector on the back of the amp
- via bluetooth connected ("Spark 40 Audio" BT Profile)
is the sound issue the same in all 3 cases?
maybe using another scenario than USB can be a workaround.
I use the bluetooth connection and it sounds very good for me.Thanks and Best Regards,
guitarman -
I've been a Spark user from the very beginning and have had my amp for nine months.
I think it sounds fantastic.
I was one of the first to report on the hum problem. Power supply exchanged for a grounded one and the problem was solved. The hiss problem is also omnipresent with my Spark.
Fortunately, I never had the problem with too much bass that has been discussed here for a long time. I think the tuning is perfect as it is and I never have to reduce the bass. On the contrary, I often want something more, which is difficult to do with the small speakers.
How can it be that some love the sound while others fight against too much bass.
Could it be that PG did not always use the same loudspeakers, but delivered their Sparks with different ones?
For me that would be the only plausible explanation.