HELP - Subwoofer placement
Hello everyone.
I have recently decided to experiment with a subwoofer for my system (mainly audio, little HT) and dug out my old Definitive Technology SUB1000 from my now retired HT system. My room has a quite inconvenient L-shape with ver few options for speaker placement. I have used my kid’s drawing program to describe it as best as I could below where my two ELAC Navis ARB-51 active bookshelf speakers are the red squares (too far apart but little I can do about it, also for wife-acceptance reasons). The sub is currently in the purple square and I sit in the black L on my corner sofa. Grey squares are other potential placement options. The big brown rectangle is a massive brick fireplace. I forgot to draw a large cabinet sitting directly left of the sub in the guest dining area of my room (ie no man’s land).
Considering the improved SQ despite (i) potentially poor current placement/tuning and (ii) decidedly poor sub quality (much more of a big HT boomer), I have now just bought a used REL T7 (1st gen) which I will be getting next week.
Questions I have are:
1. If using one sub only, where would you put it?
2. If using two subs, would you use the two grey positions or right grey and purple? I read that opposing “corners” can be helpful to get rid of nodes
3. Do you see a lot of value in adding a second decent sub (thinking REL T5 to sit in the right, closed off area with the T7 to power through the more open space on the left)? IMO keeping the DefTech sub will only negatively affect the SQ of the T7.
Many thanks already for your views. Jokes about my drawing abilities of course welcome! 🤣
Hello @jl35 I found the threads on DBA and it sounds interesting but is meant to use 4 subs, which option is definitely not even close to being on the table here. How did you apply the principles with two subs? Or where would you suggest to place two on my artfully drawn plan of my listening room? Right grey and purple? Thanks! |
You don’t have opposing corners, really, you have complex modes that include all of the open space.
I think if you do 1 sub right you’ll be exhausted and happy. Take a look here though if you want to see what’s involved in optimizing multiple subs: https://www.minidsp.com/applications/subwoofer-tuning/tuning-multiple-subs
While I really like the app note I tune my subs to peak between 20Hz-30Hz and descend about 1.25 to 1.5 db/Octave until the crossover point. I find this much more musical than flat. JL Audio and Dirac seem to agree with me. Last bit of advice: 1 sub, well integrated, is glorious. Most people get 1 sub and cant' do it well so go looking for more ways to fix their problems. I assure you, if you get 1 sub working well, EQ your two mains to match each other, you'll be in a really good place.
Best,
Erik |
Study a lot more about DBA. All the "one sub" people are about 20 years behind the times. Instead of learning the physics and psychoacoustics that makes a DBA work so well they persist in trying to fight physics with DSP and tube traps. The principles that make a DBA work so well are the same as will get you the most possible from fewer subs. Namely, asymmetrical placement. Another one the old school laggards miss, a great deal of the boom and other acoustic problems is due to speakers being coupled to the floor. Use effective isolation like Nobsound springs or even better Townshend Podiums and you will be shocked how much of this "room acoustics" problem goes away. Basically the choice you have is do you want to be the kind of audiophile who does what works, or the kind who does what everyone else is doing? Logically, every time something better comes along nobody will be doing it. You will remain mired in the past. Think about it. |
OP the Arrays or swarms can use cabinets as small as .75cf. 4 small front firing or even ported cabinets will amaze you. BTW you can hide a .75-1.0cf box pretty easy. They are small and very effective. James Romeyn was hooked up with VMPS for over 25 years the company closed and of course the staff moved on. He was a huge promoter of Class Ds in the very early days to with Hypex 400 modules too. There are a lot of them still out there made by his hand... DEBRA Distributed Enhanced Bass Reflex Array - James ...https://jamesromeyn.com › audiokinesis-speaker-models DEBRA is an AudioKinesis licensed clone of AK Swarm HERE. DEBRA cabinets are wider and shallower, and comprise a different panel material. I’m not affiliated with any of them in any way, neither is the rabbit (Junior) or the dog (Bubs). Regards |
