I have always used two subs. I find it best for me to have each sub in front of me directly beside each main. It sounds good to me, and it looks normal. Great video, Paul!!
My subwoofer is literally right in front of my left main speaker, firing straight across my main speakers. Sounds strange, but this is where my sub sounds the best. To Paul's point, who cares if it's not the norm.
Your best plan if possible, is to get a 2nd woofer. I have one behind me to the R/H corner and the other at the opposite front corner. Both set at same volumes and gain incidentally.That will even out any standing waves.
Facing a sub into a corner about 3 / 4 feet into the room, makes most subs come to life beautifully, somewhat independent of seating position. Discovered this recently when I remodeled my living room. Second trick is to place the couch a foot from the rear wall and place the sub besides the couch facing backwards into the corner. This way most positions on the couch get deep bass because pressure can build in the alley behind the couch. Don't be shy for some crossover / gain adjustments. Try it for yourself!
Have two REL S/12 subs in the corners behind the listening position. Put them there to get them out of the way - and damn, that’s the best place for them - so far. Works great with FR20’s.
Good advice to try the sub in different locations. Bad advice to put the subwoofer in your listening position, walk around and find the lowest null and put your sub there. Standing audio waves don't work that way - the location of the nulls are a function of the source location and the frequency. The reflections off the wall from the sub located in the null location won't fill in the bass dips at all bass frequencies at your listening location resulting from a weakness in the main speakers or main speaker location (as the mains would now be in a completely different location than the sub) . Just for once, Paul, try doing blind listening tests. Have someone quietly move the sub around while you're in your listening position wearing a blindfold. Find the best location (unknown to you where that is). Then have someone spin you around until you lose your bearings and then lead you around the room wearing the blindfold while the sub is in your listening position. Find the deepest null. Then have your helper tell you if it's the same spot that you previously chose. Hint: it won't be. For me, I've found that if your main speakers need a sub the best approach is dual subs immediately adjacent to the mains. Then to fix room problems move the mains together with the subs (keeping them together). I find that will give you far superior sound to a single sub that will muddy the bass no matter where it's placed.
In my former home and listening room, I moved the pair of 133 pound subs around from spot to spot, to reduce the extraneous bass provided by the room. When I put the subs behind the sofa, the listening position, it reduced the extraneous bass, but the "visceral" bass experience was "disconnected" from the soundstage coming from the main speakers in front of the sofa. I ended up putting about a dozen bass traps in the room to tame the bass sounds.
I always had the belief that sub placement was not quite a particularly issue with placement, but that's due to having fairly standard rectangular/ cuboid rooms. When was rocking a Rel, it wasn't so much about where it was placed in the room to be sounding the best, but where in the room it didn't make shelves of ornaments vibrate.
When placing a sub opposite your main speakers, depending on how it is set up, which direction it is pointing and where you are, you MAY have to reverse the polarity of the output of the sub. A lot of home theater receivers have that option to flip it in the settings. You would be surprised on the difference. You just have to close your eyes and listen to see if changing how it fires makes an audible difference or not. Especially if your main speakers are towers that are quite capable of making their own bass. It could be subtractive / cancelling or additive. Just a thought.
Subwoofer crossover point is more than relevant. If you run small bookshelves your sub crossover point will be higher than running full range mains. The sub can assist your small bookshelves with mid bass as well as the sub bass it was designed for. If all you are requiring your sub to do is reproduce only the lowest bass notes then it matters not where you place it or them (in the room) Conversely if you cross your sub's at say 150hz or higher, placement will matter as mid bass has more directionality than sub bass. Then proximity to the main speaker's will be important. 150hz & up crossover point...use stereo sub's near your main's. 40hz crossover point...do the listening position test to find the optimal spot. IMHO
I set my sub woofer on the left side on the longest wall 4 feet forward of the speakers and 12 inches off the longest wall .it worked the best .Found a better spot to place the sub but it's not aesthetically pleasing to my wife but boy does it work better ..Sometimes you have to compromise a little to keep the peace so you can disturb the peace .She's a little upset I am rattling the crystal in the China cabinet up stairs..She now likes Trick of the Tail Dancing on a Volcano ! Now to get her into some YES
I have 4 sealed subwoofers. Music uses 2 subs at the front of the room. Movies in a 7.4.4 setup uses an additional 2 sealed subwoofers to the left/right of my couch. music source=Apple Music lossless.
Because of many factors,we can't put subs just anywhere. But it would be easier with downward facing subs. The hardest to place are subs with opposing drivers mounted horizontally as one side might fire into a close wall. A better design, as far as placement goes, would be to design the drivers to opposed vertically. German ELAC did this in the past, but I don't see it anywhere now.
The "subwoofer crawl" method is highly flawed and can never result in the best placement, because room modes (peaks and nulls) exist in 3 DIMENSIONS, not two. You would have to place the subwoofer at EAR HEIGHT in your chair, not set it on the cushion. Otherwise you're ignoring the vertical modes. And yes, the subwoofer(s) can go anywhere in the room where they produce the smoothest response at the listening positions. Two or more subs are better, and using analysis software such as REW will also produce better results than just using your ears. In my room, both of my subs are behind me, one of them in the left rear corner and the right one between the corner and center of the back wall. It is impossible to tell that the bass isn't coming from the speakers in the front of the room. That's the goal.
B.S., reminds me of the old joke about the politician that went to speak on the reservation. After every comment, those in attendance would shout "HOYA! HOYA!" The politician was impressed with the response. After the speech, he was speaking with the Chief while walking through the cow pasture and the Chief said "Don't step in the hoya." Now you have a new word...
He always says a lot, but doesn't make a point. So vague and cursory. Hardly a truly technical input that ever comes. Here for example, it should have been that please check if the subwoofer suffers from any noise such a mechanical or port noise. If yes, then do not keep it close to you. Yes, subwoofers being slower can be closer to the listener than the speakers. But then there is phase switch/control that can allow one to keep them in odd positions and still get good summation. A DSP can help time align things. A free software with decent mic and a few hours of RU-vid learning can teach basic skills of subwoofer alignment. More than one sub helps even out the bass response. Having slightly higher crossover point may relieve extra burden off the amp for power deliverance and may finally yield cleaner sound overall when a subwoofer comes to its aid. Corner is quantity, edge if quantity vs quality and free standing sub is all quantity but you may need four! Who will tell all this to a novice? So much to add and so much to guide. But we always get an over-simplified (making it half-truth, semi-relevant that it almost becomes wrong) narrative from him. When a novice asks a question he cannot be just said try and see if it sounds great - that way you're putting him into million options and not helping him. Yes, those who try and spend multi-millions on reference grade studio and systems are fools!
Paul talks about the physics. Unfortunately, many of us do not want to accept what he says at face value. I personally know that microphones do not "listen" like ears do and that blindly using measurements is mostly a recipe for crap sound.
@@Rowuk2024 The main problem with measurements isn't that microphones aren't the same as our ears, it's that most people don't know how to properly interpret the data. Not that it's not understandable since acoustics isn't a simple subject, but then again the quite technical hobby also has a surprising amount of science averse people.
@@storkfletcher821 The main problem is that we can not measure in a way that reflects what our ears hear. You can try to interpret your MLSSA, REW, Holm Impulse results all day. The final subwoofer setup (if sound quality and integration are important) is by trained ear - not a pretty curve for facebook. In this respect, I will disagree with you. In my room, at the sweet spot, I have a 15dB suckout around 60 Hz according to the measurements. On musical material, that dip is simply NOT audible. Even a pipe organ playing a two octave scale from 32HZ (sub contra C) to 128 Hz (low C) does not demonstrate this. I believe that there are too many "copy/paste" comments about certain people not being in the club of being able to interpret - when the real problem is simple lack of musical not technical training. Go to a live concert and listen to the string basses in a symphony orchestra. Then go home and try and get that. Frequency response curves are of NO HELP.
@@Rowuk2024 I disagree, you need both measurements and your ears to get the best result. For example, I'd never even consider hiring a room acoustics company that didn't use measurements (then again I've never heard about any that didn't). People that say that measurements are irrelevant tend to be the same kind of people that refuse to believe that they can be subject to bias and placebo, despite that there's an entire field in psychology dedicated to that. Ironically you're probably more likely to be affected by it if you think your senses are infallible.
A free subwoofer hack is to apply a 2nd order (12db/octave) low pass your sub one octave below the (2nd order) high-pass value of the main speakers, then run the sub out of phase. For example, low passing a sub at 40 hz with the mains high passed at 80hz amounts to a +9db boost at 40hz and +12db below 40hz. This may cause too much deep bass but it's basically a free hack if your sub has a 40hz LP and you can run the mains in "small speaker" mode.
