Subwoofer Placement (1 Viewer)

[Matthew Perry]

I am looking for some experts knowledge .
My theater room will be 25' long x 9.5' wide with an 8' ceiling. I don't have any room at the front of the room for my sub, I was wondering what the best placement in a room of these dimensions would be.
Thanks in advance.
Matt

 

[Bob McElfresh]

There are some different theories on sub placment. Let me try to summarize:
HT Placement - A system used for movies tend to have the sub placed in a corner with the longest un-broken walls. This gives you the longest length walls to reflect from.
Music Placement - Using the walls to enhance some sounds is a bit un-natural. A system used for music will pull the sub along the longest wall 1/3 or 2/5's of the length.
Try this: go to Radio Shack and buy a 25' CATV coax cable with the "F" connectors already installed. Buy 2 of the "F-to-RCA Male" adaptors. This should run you about $12. You can now use this as a really long subwoofer cable to play around with different positions.
Go home and put your sub in place of where you sit (Yes, move the couch/chair out of the way). Disconnect all the speakers except the sub, and fire up a bass-heavy movie or CD. (Opening chapter of Toy Story 2 is a good one).
With the sound playing in a A-B loop at "normal" volume for your system, crawl around in the corner/against the wall where you might place your sub.
As you move along the wall, the sub sounds should get tighter at some spots, looser/duller at others. Mark the spots with tight bass on the floor with masking tape/can of beer.
Once you have 2/3 spots marked, figure out the most spousally-acceptiable one. Relocate the sub here.
Put your chair/couch back and listen to just the sub. It should still sound tight. If not, go move the sub an inch or so and re-listen.
Eventually, you will find the best spot. Reconnect the speakers, adjust the sub level to match the speakers and enjoy.
Hope this helps.

 

[Matthew Perry]

Bob

This is an excellent description to a resolution. Thanks a lot. I will be testing out you're theory in the near future.

Regards,

Matt

 

[PaulG]

Bob,
I had heard of this theory before and was wondering how to work it. Is it OK to give my wife your name when she catches me crawling around from beer can to beer can? Just kidding, she is used to me doing that.
Seriously though, Thanks for the help.

 

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

Matthew,

You can save yourself a lot of crawling and put the sub in the corner. This will give you the most volume and extension, and in most cases the smoothest response. You can expect a few response peaks, but you can use a parametric equalizer to take care of them.

After EQing you will have the best all-around performance: The highest SPL, the lowest extension and the smoothest response. A properly EQ’d sub is optimal for music and movies.

If you search down on the Forum you will see numerous posts from people who have successfully EQ’d their subs. Not a single one has ditched their EQ and said they were happier with the way it sounded before.

Regards,

Wayne A. Pflughaupt