PSA: Short Unused Speakers and Subs in the Listening Room

By the way, I think the low frequency performance of my system increased after shorting the unused subwoofers. I was only able to listen to one song (that wasn’t especially bass heavy) after I made the change but it seemed clearer in the bass frequency department.

Shorting the terminals creates a situation where the same voltage being generated by moving the cone with your finger, is simultaneously putting voltage right back into the coil resisting this same motion. As a result it moves hardly at all.

Is that why it works? Makes sense. My assumption was that with an open circuit, only voltage is created and with a closed circuit, current can flow and the internal resistance of the wire and speaker eats up the power in the circuit. I hadn’t put too much thought into it. I think I like your explanation better.

If the speaker is sealed design then you have pretty much turned it into a closed box. But if it is ported then you have created a speaker sized Helmholtz resonator.

That would be a good thing right? Or is it only a good thing if your room has a nasty resonance peak at the absorbing frequency of the shorted and ported subwoofer?

Here’s my question: If you only care about one listening position, are multiple subs really better? I just can’t shake the thought that multiple subs (4 or more) spread throughout the room wouldn’t integrate that well with each other. Would the bass be smooth and full? Good lord, yes. But true to the original signal? I am not sure on that. Perhaps it’s the best we can do though. 

The only other room I heard anything like this was an impeccably acoustically designed and tweaked out room that also had two huge racks of subs, not a classic distributed array exactly but with 4 on each side stacked 5ft high not all that different either.

Reminds me of the Infinity IRS V speakers which have 6 stacked bass drivers per side. The sound was jaw-droppingly good! Why use 1 subwoofer when you can use 12? Just don’t forget to short them if you aren’t using them when listening to music. Actually, I’m quite sure you can accomplish the same effect as shorting by simply turning on the amplifier but don’t feed it a signal. I get the same effect tapping on the cone and hearing silence by turning on the amplifier as I do with shorting. I wonder what the technical reason is.