Two subs in a small room....

My desire is for a smoother, richer sound as opposed to "more" bottom, if that makes sense. I have one sub already and my bottom end is fine but keep hearing that two subs would give a better audio presentation. I've been thinking that the room I have my system in may be two small for two subs but maybe two "small" subs may do the trick.

I don't think you could localize any frequency below 110hz, based on the length of your room. Also, are recordings stereo below a certain frequency? I don't think they are, below about 80hz,

Magfan CDs might be but I remember that LPs were recorded mono below about 100Hz.

As for smoothness and richness it is better to get one good sub like JL Audio Fathom 113 that can auto correct for room and whole system response with microphone placed in listening position - instead of two average ones. Studies made with multiple subs usually are oriented toward theater environment to flatten peaks and valleys in whole room.

Matchstikman, I like your diagonal configuration. You might try shifting your speaker-listener-speaker triangle a little bit so that you're not lined up perfectly on the diagonal.

I'm an advocate of using multiple asymmetrically-placed subs to smooth out the in-room bass, a technique I learned from Earl Geddes. Small rooms are especially prone to lumpy bass because the room-induced peaks-and-dips tend to be larger and spaced farther apart in a small room, which makes them more audible. Multiple dissimilar peak-and-dip patterns at the listening position can help smooth things out, which allows you to turn up the subs a bit higher (giving a more natural tonal balance) because you don't have strong bass peaks that boom, forcing you to keep the subs turned down low. Whether you use a symmetrical or asymmetrical setup, two subs will be better than one if you choose wisely.

You see, another issue in many small rooms is excess boundary reinforcement because the room boundaries are all pretty close to the sub(s). So you don't want subs that are "flat" anechoic; rather, you want subs that would roll off gently under anechoic conditions - which the room gain will offset. I'm not sure what would be ideal in a 10 by 10 room, but the 6 dB per octave rolloff of a low-Q sealed box would probably be a good starting point.

Finally, if you're going to place any of the subs well away from the main speakers, you want to make sure those subs aren't contributing any audible lower midrange energy. If they are closer to your ears than the main speakers, you could hear them as separate sound sources if that lower midrange energy is loud enough. So a steep-slope (24 dB per octave) low-pass filter is desirable.

Duke
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