Subwoofer placement (a new idea or a stupid one?) (1 Viewer)

[Kyle Schaffer]

Hi all.

Lurking for a month or so, have utilized the collective brainpower to help me set up a new TV room. Speakers and receiver are bought, currently researching DVD player and subwoofer- tv will have to wait.

I converted a screened-in porch to a walled-in full season den. I wired the walls for surround sound and spent a lot of time researching, agonizing, and learning.

The room is 10 x 14. One of the short walls houses the entertainment center. Surround speakers mounted on the side walls. The entertainment center is a built-in that has the TV, all components, and the 3 front speakers.

I made a collossal error and didn't wire any walls to patch in a subwoofer. I now realize this and it's too late to correct. I even had an electrician in this morning and he confirmed that, yes, it would be a major struggle to get a drop behind the entertainment center and to another wall.

The entertainment center is about 6' high, the ceilings are 8' high. There is a 2' gap from the top of the built-in to the ceiling.

I was thinking of putting my subwoofer up there. I could easily drill a hole in the top of the cabinet to run the cords to power and the receiver. It is space that we aren't going to use for anything else and has a very high WAF.

My thinking was that I see all this talk about subwoofers being omnidirectional, and corner placement being good. But I searched as best I could, and saw no discussion of anyone doing anything but putting their subwoofers on the ground. So maybe my 1st ever post will be a laugher.

Will this work? What are the downsides? I assume I should put some sort of rubber mat beneath it. That's no problem, as it will not be visible I believe. Should I use front- or down-firing? Will everything rattle uncontrollably? (The entertainment center is solidly built-in, heavy duty built from scratch wall to wall, no glass shelves, so I don't think everything will vibrate) Will I miss out on the floor-shaking feeling I want? Is eye-level low-freq a good thing?

I suppose the answer I will get is "try it out". We'll see, but if anyone has any thoughts on how best to make this work, I'd love it. If this doesn't work, I'm not sure what plan B is. My speakers definitely need a subwoofer. Just connecting the subwoofer to the receiver by running a cord along the floor and up into the entertainment center is a wifely- no-go. Drilling holes in the front of the entertainment center to get a cord out to the baseboard won't look good either.

Thanks for any responses and thanks more generally for the great community and forum.

 

[Tony Genovese]

You could try it but I think the whole built-in will vibrate like crazy. Not the best solution.

 

[Chu Gai]

If the porch isn't on a slab you could always drill down and snake the wire underneath using grommets to make a weathertite seal. I think Tony's right about the vibration thing and besides that'll create a nice suckout in the FR. Be creative and go for the corner placement.

 

[GarySI]

If the porch is elevated why not try an IB in the floor?

 

[TimMc]

What Tony says. It'll probably shake things out of that wall that you really want to have stay put.

How about another off-the-wall idea? Wireless. Sorry, but I don't have the darned links on hand 'cause we haven't ever done it personally, but you should be able to find gear that would handle the connection for the sub. It actually might be easier to do just a sub than a full-range set of speakers w/ acceptable performance. I know that everyone else is cringing at the thought of this, but you won't have to lurk on the speaker cable & interconnect threads. I've been connecting via wireless on a laptop for quite a while now & the wireless throughput has been exceptional. If that level of signal & throughput works for full-speed broadband downloads it probably has enough bandwidth to handle the signal requirements for a single sub.

Just a thought. If you're gonna die from WAF you might as well consider even the most remote options before going there... BTW - did you happen to wire for CAT5? There is gear that could distribute the signal over LAN cable too and with reasonable bandwidth to meet these requirements. No, none of this is perfect subwoofer cable, but the (digital) truth is that some of these technologies are getting enough quality signal through to satisfy your requirements.