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! 🤣
Thank you, @erik_squires. The ELACs have a high-pass/crossover setting (choice of 60 or 80hz, currently at 80) and also the option to “EQ” with a switch +1/0/-4dB for each of HF, MF and LF so I have set the right one at -4dB for LF to account for the corner placement. That way it’s not boomy. As to your questions about wall/ceiling mounting and bass traps, I think you already know the answer 😂 The speakers are tolerated where they are. Previously I had one where the sub now is, but just off the cabinet, so I could sit in the other portion of the sofa and have both speakers closer together (current toe in is 45 degrees) and with no walls/corners directly behind. But that was deemed ungainly lol. And I am not moaning - this is our reception area for guests so it cannot be turned into a technical audiophile listening room. I am looking into “artistic looking” room treatments but with little hope. (NB: behind my current listening position is a window and there are two more on the right wall, so there it just makes things worse and prevents room treatment due to lack of surface, blinding the windows with Rockwool not being an option 😅) I am a little puzzled by your opinion on second sub. Yes, it probably would require room correction by eg MiniDSP (between pre and subs), but presumably having two subs in “opposing” corners should help in smoothing out the general room response. Or are you just concerned that room shape + mains + 2 subs would be too complex? It seems these days a bit of REW + Dirac shouldn’t be too hard to manage, but I am inexperienced. |
Lol @oldhvymec I am just trying to get a little bass extension and free up my 5-1/4’’ woofers to focus on mids, not get gut-churning bass, hence the switch from DefTech to REL ($300 btw). Though I did manage to seriously worry the missus when I once dimed the DefTech with some bass test tracks 😬 |
| Post removed |
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! |
