Your sub experience: Easy or hard?

Two houses ago I had two Velodyne 12” subs and I NEVER thought that I had them setup perfectly. Now I have a SVS 2000Pro and the software is very helpful, but for my listening ( Bill Evans Diana Krall Jerry Garcia) I seem to forget to turn it on.

All the best.

JD

I have a McIntosh home theatre processor and a 250 watt per channel McIntosh amp into Klipsch La Scala speakers.  I use one SVS 2000 sub, located in a cabinet behind the right front speaker, which "vents" though what appears to be an air conditioning vent, but serves only the sub-woofer.  It remains on constantly.  I adjusted it once, during installation, with the free iPhone app, and have not touched it since.  It has worked flawlessly.  I do not notice it during streamed music, and it no doubt helps the La Scala's, which have a relatively high bass drop-off.  All speakers are "invisible."  I know it is there when, during movies, I get a big bass bang.  I have concluded that I do not need a second sub in the system.

My 10 year old Velodyne 12" sub came with an onscreen setup guide with an equalizer, so flattening out the high and low freq's also smoothed out the response. Sounds qreat with my Maggie 3.7's placed facing sweet spot from between speakers.

Not likely I can add much other than a brand that hasn't yet been mentioned: the NHT SubOne. Besides sounding clean and tight, it has a very useful "controller" that sits on top (or can be placed in your rack) that controls volume and has a switch for "Flat" and "Video Contour" (the latter for movies, obviously). It's in my main two-channel music system, so it's set on "Flat." Most importantly, it has lots of ways of connecting, including both high pass and low pass filters, and, of course, a phase switch. I use the high pass option, sending everything above 50 Hz to the mains. I've found that locating it to the side of the mains, and facing ("firing") across the sound field, helps a lot with integration. The result is a perfectly natural bass that goes considerably lower than the mains alone without ever sounding boomy. Rock has real punch while acoustic cellos and basses just sound vital and real, not exaggerated.

My only sub in the main system is a dual side-firing Tannoy, effectively two subs in one box. Tower speaker mfr says DO NOT high-pass; allow the mains to run full range. These are rated to 22Hz but have a peak at 35 and roll off pretty steeply below 31. So I set the sub crossover at 31Hz, rolling off at -12dB/octave above that. Basically you're only conscious of the sub with tones in Octave 0. Above that the contribution is so subtle you would notice it only by its absence.

Now, as to placement, I can move sub around using a carpet scrap on a slick wood floor. The dual side firing design seems to integrate best when placed between and a bit behind the mains. Maybe some day I will have time for more experimentation with settings and placement using good test recordings. Room configuration rules out the sub array, so need to simply fine-tune what I've got. Overall, though? Definitely worth the effort as deep bass is very important to me.