Assuming you did the sub crawl and actually like the sound you are getting....conventional wisdom is to try moving either the sub or the listening position a few inches at a time until you either find and improvement... or not and if not it is likely you will benefit from a second sub.
Subwoofer location/facing question
So for the last few months I've read and learned a lot about subwoofer placement and implemented those ideas which made sense to me. I crawled, heaved, groaned and probably pulled some muscles in the process. I have found thru trial and error the sweet spot or very close to it. It sounds very nice but am sure it could be better.
Here is the question that has not been addressed in anything I have read, which was a lot.
In what direction should a sealed sub be facing? Parallel to the front wall, parallel to the side wall or facing the prime listening position or other? Seeing diagrams most if not all have the sub on plane with the front speakers facing parallel with the side wall. In my case the sub sweet spot is located approximately 1.5 foot in front of the main speaker plane. Can someone enlighten me which direction the sub should be facing and why? Does a single sub in a system have to be on plane with the mains?
Please enlighten me.
Thanks. PS L & R main speakers are 4.5 feet from front wall, 3.5 from side walls, sub is 5.3 ft from front wall and 2.8 ft from side wall. Mains are toed in 15 degrees. Room size 15x23x8
Here is the question that has not been addressed in anything I have read, which was a lot.
In what direction should a sealed sub be facing? Parallel to the front wall, parallel to the side wall or facing the prime listening position or other? Seeing diagrams most if not all have the sub on plane with the front speakers facing parallel with the side wall. In my case the sub sweet spot is located approximately 1.5 foot in front of the main speaker plane. Can someone enlighten me which direction the sub should be facing and why? Does a single sub in a system have to be on plane with the mains?
Please enlighten me.
Thanks. PS L & R main speakers are 4.5 feet from front wall, 3.5 from side walls, sub is 5.3 ft from front wall and 2.8 ft from side wall. Mains are toed in 15 degrees. Room size 15x23x8
10 responses Add your response
I’ve been working this issue for a couple of days now on my system. Just got a pair of Rel .s812 which replaced a single MK. Rel customer support gave me specifics based on photos and floorplans. I tried their recommendations then did what all the videos and crawl docs etc said to do. I wasn’t really liking what I was hear across varieties of music and it was fatiguing compared to my old setup Finally got a calibrated mic and software to figure out what was going on. Huge spike like 30+db around 35Hz at all the suggested locations. I'm guessing that the old sub wasn't adding enough energy into the room to really excite my problem modes. After stripping my treatments out, pulled out the subs and started again. After resetting speaker position, toe in and take I was still seeing these room modes but much less. Finally starting to understand what those are. Gezz long enough. Now I went around the room with a sub and found the peaks were less pronounced and suprisingly the bass smoothed out. Found the best spot on one side of the room the went to the other side a repeated. What I came up with was unlike anything I’ve read. Subs are outside the speakers by at least 6 feet. 1 in a corner other side of a doorway, other mid wall. They face seemly random directions but direction seemed to really impact that peak. Decay times came out low, average maybe 100ms. My corner traps did nothing to help these modes. All are back in place and the system is less fatiguing them it was, still tuning. I also sent my data to GIK to get some ideas toward tweaking some other areas of interest |
Your subs location seems unusual. Have you checked out REL's videos? https://rel.net/tune-rel-video-series/ If your ears like that position, stick with it. |
I’m sure Duke will give you some definitive info, but as an introduction, subs need to be located in a room so as to counteract that room’s high and low pressure zones (modes and anti-modes) created by the room’s wall boundaries (the room’s dimensions determine the frequencies of those modes). Except in the instance of OB/Dipole subs (which create a figure-of-8 output), which direction the sub cabinet faces is immaterial---frequencies below 100Hz are omnidirectional. |
you will get every answer possible...it's all system and room and preference dependent...I have my REL about one foot inside my right speaker, the face a few inches behind front of mains...my friend with a similar system, very different room, has his on outside of speaker, both of us use facing forward. |