Sub inside or outside of front speakers? (1 Viewer)

[Legairre]

I've always kept my sub on the the outside of the front speakers. For instance the sub is in the front right corner and my front right speaker is next to the TV. I've seen lots of "drawings" in magazines where the HT designer has the sub next to the TV and the front speakers near the wall.

Why do these so called experts keep drawing the layouts this way.

Thanks
Legairre

 

[Neil Joseph]

Good question. I would not place my sub anywhere near a tube TV for magnetic reasons, plus corner placement often yields a better result but of course it is dependant on the room in the final analysis.

 

[Jason Co]

Leg, (hope you don't mind if I call ya Leg)
Actually I was thinking the same thing so I tried my sub inside my fronts. Moving it out of the corner kind of weakened the bass but it also localized the sound too much and I could hear exactly where it was coming from. My .02 is leave the sub outside in a corner, but the advice is worth what ya paid for it!

J

 

[Rich X]

I've been in some pretty high-end listening rooms where they put the subs between the front mains and they sounded great. It's probably heavily room and system dependent. These set-ups used a pair of subs which may have something to do with it as well.

I would think that the sound may be more accurate and less boomy if you pulled the sub out of the corner, but you would certainly give up the room gain that the corner gives you.

 

[Yee-Ming]

I haven't done any serious calibrating yet (haven't borrowed an SPL meter yet), and so far I've placed the sub next to the TV console, with my left front outside it. doesn't seem to hurt at all, and although I know I would "lose" corner-loading SPL gain, since I live in an apartment I don't really need it -- just turning the gain (it's only at 11 o'clock now) on my SVS up already shakes the doors and walls! plus WAF on placement, as it is she's not happy with the sheer size of the 25-31PCi, if I start putting it elsewhere other than with the rest of the AV equipment she'd be really really unhappy...

 

[Legairre]

No problem on the Leg thing. I've been called that and a lot worse many times :b. Thanks for the responses.
Maybe you guys can answer another question for me. I recently bought a new house and am in the process of finishing part of the basement as the HT. The HT will be about 12x20. I plan on putting the seating area about 10ft from my 61 RPTV and would like place my fronts about 8-9 ft apart. If I place my sub behind my front speaker I can do this, but if I put my sub on the side of the front speaker I'll have my speakers closer together(around 6-7 ft apart).
Any problems placing a front firing sub behind a rear ported front speaker? If not how far behind the speaker should it be?
Thanks
Leg

 

[Rich X]

As long as there is some space between them, I would not think that this would be a problem. You would also want to make sure that the sub did not cause the speaker sitting right in front of it to vibrate. I've heard several set-ups where the mains were pulled out from the walls with the subs back behind and they sounded fine.

The only way to tell for sure though, is to try both and see which sounds better.