The truth is that the 4-sub Distributed Bass Array (DBA) Concept actually works like a proverbial charm! There are no ifs ands or buts, no maybes, no under the right conditions, no excuses, no fear and loathing, no terms, no conditions, no stipulations, no hidden clauses, no fine print, no oils and no qualifiers whatsoever. It's the cat's pajamas, the bee's knees, good as gold, tits, right as rain and too legit to quit. I believe it's the gold standard of sub systems that all others should be judged against. Based on the 4-sub DBA's near state of the art bass quality, I actually continue to be amazed that it isn't more widely known, accepted and utilized, especially by fellow Audiogon members who are typically keenly aware and accepting of high quality audio related concepts, technology and methods they can utilize to increase the performance of their systems. Heck, the main reasons we're all members is that we enjoy good music, realize high quality audio equipment, technology, concepts and methods are capable of increasing our systems performance and musical enjoyment as well as enjoying learning of, discussing and sharing this information, Right? The very relevant and utilitarian concept of the 4-sub DBA isn't exactly new, either. I believe it's about ten years old and began as a spark of an idea that Duke Lejeune, owner of Audio Kinesis, had while having a conversation with his friend,Dr. Earl Geddes, about the results of the doctor's research and experiments on in-room bass performance in smaller room environments. Dr. Geddes stated that his research indicated to him that 4 well distributed subs in a room reliably provided the best in-room bass response performance regardless of the small room's dimensions or main speakers utilized. This knowledge was the impetus for Duke creating his 4-sub Swarm DBA system that has won multiple product of the year awards (2015 and 2019): 2015: https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/audiokinesis-swarm-subwoofer-system/2019: https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/2019-golden-ear-awards-robert-e-greene/ I've utilized an Audio Kinesis Debra/Swarm 4-sub distributed bass array (DBA) system for about 4 years now with a pair of Magnepan 2.7 QR main speakers. I use my system both for 2-ch music and for 5.4 ch surround sound for HT. I now use it with a pair of Magnepan 3.7i main speakers with equally excellent results, I just needed to adjust the volume and crossover frequency controls on the sub amp/control unit a bit. |
Hello Duke,
Thanks for clarifying the awards your AK Swarm system has received, all well deserved. If you don’t mind, it seems like a few things need clarifying about attaining good bass response performance using subs.
The first issue concerns the timing of the bass reaching our ears at the listening position. Mijostyn stated:"Ideally the sound from the sub should reach the listening position at exactly the same time and at exactly the same phase angle as the woofers in the satellite speakers."
It seems to me that some people are stating false information because they’re assuming that bass soundwaves behave and are perceived by us exactly the same as midrange and treble soundwaves in any given room, specifically as it relates to timing and arrival times. It’s my understanding that bass soundwaves behave differently than mid/treble soundwaves in any given room and that we perceive them differently, too. For phase, I understand I can optimize this by adjusting the continuously variable phase control on the amp as well as sequentially inverting the phase on each sub to determine whether or not the inversion of one specific sub’s phase improves overall bass performance. Would you mind clarifying?
The second issue concerns the use of bass room treatments and room correction software/hardware. I currently use the AK Debra 4-sub DBA system in my room without the use of bass room treatments or room correction and I consider the bass performance near state of the art both for 2-ch music and HT surround sound.
However, I recently had my room analyzed by GIK and they recommended that I place stacked versions of their bass traps (called TriTraps) in all 4 corners of my room along with 2 bass trapping 5.25" thick panels (called 244 panels) along both the front and rear short walls in my room. Their remaining suggestions were an even distribution in the room of absorbing and diffusing acoustic panels for the midrange and treble from my main speakers.
The total assortment of recommended room treatments is about $2,500 and I was initially going to not include any bass treatments to save money but also not to negatively effect the already very good bass performance in my room.
I’ve since reconsidered and decided to include all of the bass room treatments on my order. My current understanding is that these bass room treatments will only have positive effects on my perception of the bass response performance in my room, with no negative effects. I still have no desire to utilize room correction of any type but am under the impression that room correction is also completely optional and will have no negative effects on the bass performance of 4-sub DBA systems. Do you agree with this?
Thanks,
Tim
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gosta:"Tried the "swarm" approach and moved four subs into the room but unfortunately found out that they all have about the same tops and dips wherever placed (+/- 20 db from 25 to 100 Hz). So not much of an improvement. Room eq necessary."
Hello gosta,
As Duke mentioned, something is likely wrong in your positioning of the subs or configuration if you didn’t notice a dramatic bass improvement using a 4-sub DBA in your room. I suggest you may want to answer Duke’s questions to you on his reply if you’d like to figure things out, he knows more about attaining good bass than anybody I’m aware of.
In the meantime, I thought I’d share how I setup my 4 subs just in case it might work well for you. I have the Audio Kinesis Debra 4-sub DBA system using a single sub amp/control unit. However, I don’t know which 4 subs you’re using, a complete AK Swarm or Debra bass system kit or 4 traditional self-amplified subs. Either should work well, it’s just that you’ll need to adjust the volume, crossover frequency and phase controls on each sub individually if you use traditional self-amplified subs. On the Swarm and Debra, you just need to adjust these controls once on the included amp/control unit for all 4 subs as a group.
But either way, following my positioning method could be helpful to you:
1. Disconnect your main speakers and move them to another room.
2. Hookup sub#1 and place it at your listening position. If you’re using self-amplified subs, do the same thing but set the volume to 50%, the crossover frequency to 40 and the phase control to "0" (in-phase).
3. Play some music with good and repetitive bass.
4. Starting at the front right corner of your room, slowly begin walking in a counter-clockwise direction around the perimeter of your room listening for the first exact spot that the bass sounds best to you (solid, detailed, dynamic and natural). Take your time, listen carefully and repeat this step until you are certain you’ve found the exact spot.
5. Once you’ve identified the exact spot, move sub#1 from your listening position to this exact spot.
6. Hookup sub#2 and place it at your listening position. If you’re using self-amplified subs, do the same thing but set the volume to 50%, the crossover frequency to 40 and the phase control to "0" (in-phase).
7. Play some music with good and repetitive bass.
8. Starting at sub#1, slowly begin walking in a counter-clockwise direction around the perimeter of your room listening for the next exact spot that the bass sounds best to you (solid, detailed, dynamic and natural). Take your time, listen carefully and repeat this step until you are certain you’ve found the exact spot.
9. Once you’ve identified the exact spot, move sub#2 from your listening position to this exact spot.
10. Repeat this procedure for subs #3 and #4, beginning from sub#2 for placing sub#3 and from sub#3 for placing sub#4.
11. Bring your main speakers back into the room, hook them up and position them optimally in relation to your listening position for midrange/treble and imaging. You now have 2 systems: an independent powerful,fast, smooth,detailed and dynamic bass system as a solid foundation and an independent everything else system consisting of any main speakers you choose to use.
Once all 4 subs have been positioned, the final step is to optimally set the volume, crossover frequency and phase controls. It’s much easier to do this if you sit at your listening seat and have an assistant adjust the settings at your direction. I achieved the best results by precisely setting the volume and crossover frequency as low as possible with the bass still sounding powerful, fast, smooth, detailed, dynamic and natural. I set the phase at the position at which the bass subjectively sounded the best to me.
As I mentioned earlier, these 3 settings are set once, for all 4 subs as a group, on the Swarm/Debra amp/control unit but must be individually for each sub if traditional self-amplified subs are utilized.
Hope this helps,
Tim
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kenjit:"in other words we dont really know how all these things work so just do a bit of each and see what happens. "
Hello kenjit,
That's not what Duke stated and I think you're aware of that. Most members already understand that he knows how all these things work and that he stated that utilizing bass trapping room treatments, EQ and multiple distributed subs in a room and system will all contribute to better in-room bass performance in most any given room.
Bass trapping absorbs in-room bass energy which shortens the decay times and thereby reduces the magnitude of both the peaks and the dips everywhere in the room. (The in-room frequency response tracks the time domain response, and vice-versa, in the bass region.)
EQ is very good at reducing peaks but not so good at filling in dips, which are caused by modal cancellation, and driving that cancellation harder can eat up a lot of power and excursion (a 6 dB boost to fill in a dip would call for a doubling of excursion and a quadrupling of power). EQ of a single subwoofer is most effective at a single location, because the room-interaction peaks-and-dips will be at different frequencies for different locations within the room. So EQ can be great in the sweet spot, but it usually make things worse elsewhere in the room. In general the larger the listening area we try to fix with EQ, the less improvement we are able to make at any specific location within that area.
A distributed multisub system results in a significantly improved peak-and-dip pattern. Each sub contributes its own unique peak-and-dip pattern, but each sub is only contributing maybe 1/4 of the total bass energy, so the net result is many small peaks and dips instead of a few large ones. This can have a non-obvious psychoacoustic benefit: When a peak and a dip are fairly close to one another (within about 1/3 octave), the ear/brain system averages them out. So the perceptual improvement tends to be greater than what we would infer from eyeballing before-and-after curves. And this improvement is not limited to a given location, but extends throughout the room.
Duke is not recommending individuals do a little bit of bass trapping, a little bit of equalizing and a little bit of utilizing multiple subs and just see what happens. He's stating that it's best to utilize all 3 approaches, bass trapping, EQ and multiple distributed subs, in a thorough and complete manner in order to realize the optimum bass response performance attainable in a given room.
I know my intention, and I believe Duke's intention, of contributing our knowledge and experience on this thread is to save some time and effort for those interested in attaining exceptionally good bass performance in their rooms no matter their room details or the specific main speakers they utilize.
Of course, I realize that Duke has superior knowledge and experience on this stuff than I possess. But I believe I also have relevant information to contribute based on my experiences using his AK 4-sub Debra DBA system for over 4 years thus far.
You're more than welcome to take the long path I took in researching the distributed bass array concept via reading scientific White Papers on the subject written by Dr. Earl Geddes and Dr. Floyd Toole as well as other writings on the subject from Harman International's Todd Welti and Audio Kinesis's Duke Lejeune and James Romeyn before finally deciding to take a bit of a leap of faith and buying the $3K Debra and giving it a try in my medium sized room with Magnepan main speakers. I just thought readers might appreciate the time saving gains resulting from summarizing the main dynamics involved in the DBA concept and my 4+ years of experience enjoying it.
The reality is that I'm currently only using one of Duke's recommended three methods of attaining very good in-room bass performance, the use of the 4-sub DBA concept system, but I'm still achieving what I consider near state of the art bass performance throughout my entire room without the use of any EQ or bass trapping.
However, I respect and trust Duke's advice about bass trapping, EQ and using multiple distributed subs. I also had a free room analysis done by GIK Acoustics that recommended bass trapping so I just ordered about $3,500 worth of room treatments that includes stacked bass traps in all four corners, two 5.25" thick 244 bass trap panels on the front and rear short walls and a 50/50 ratio of absorbing and diffusing treatments throughout my room for midrange and treble frequency control. Once these are all installed, my plan is to listen to the results before deciding if EQ and any further room treatments would be worth trying.
Tim |
Audiologic's procedure for properly setting the phase control is the best I've found thus far.
With phase, it's usually easier to identify the setting that is most 'out of phase' ( the worst or least bass) than identifying the setting that is 'most in phase' (the best or most accurate bass). And all it takes is a simple phase inversion on a speaker. listening and setting the phase control accurately and the a simple reversal of the phase inversion back to normal.
As I write this, I realize It is a bit confusing when written out.
I think audiologic better articulated the procedure than I did here. I recommend rereading his post and striving for comprehension of the task at hand, it's easier than I make it out to be once you understand the goal. I'm going to shut up now.
Tim
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Hello handymann,
Well, it seems like we now have a few contenders for high quality methods for integrating subs into one’s system; the distributed bass array, the line bass array and now, the DBX Venue 360 device. Since the DBX Venue 360 is basically an equalizer and room correction device, however, my main concern is that very high powered amps would also be required for it to operate effectively.
I have little doubt this unit is able to correct all the frequency peaks it identifies in a room, since it merely needs to direct the amps to reduce power at the appropriate frequencies or filter out the excess energy. But I do doubt this unit, without considerable amp power used in conjunction, is able to correct all the frequency dips it identifies in a room, since it needs to direct the amps to increase power at the appropriate frequencies. Correcting frequency response dips requires significant amp power, possibly even a doubling or more of power at bass frequencies.
So, the DBX Venue 360 could be performing its function perfectly but there’s insufficient amp power to correct all the room’s frequency dips it has identified.
Handymann, how many amps and how much amp power do you utilize for your subs and main speakers? Do you have a sense of whether or not your system amp power is sufficient to correct all the frequency dips in your room identified by the DBX without straining these amps?
Thanks,
Tim
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danvignau,
I know you're referring to phase alignment of the woofers. But I just wanted to add a bit of information to readers about concerns with a somewhat related topic: aligning arrival times of midrange /treble soundwaves with bass soundwaves at our ears. Briefly stated: don't even bother to be concerned with it.
Midrange/treble complete cycle soundwaves are very directional and short compared to bass complete cycle soundwaves that are omnidirectional and very long. A 20 Hz deep bass soundwave is 56 feet long and a 20,000 Hz high treble soundwave is a fraction of an inch long. Because of this, midrange/treble soundwaves behave very differently than bass soundwaves do in any given room.
With the main speakers pointed directly at your listening seat, the short and highly directional midrange/treble soundwaves are going to take a direct path and reach our ears first and fairly quickly, before the omnidirectional bass soundwaves that take an indirect path and typically bounce off multiple room boundaries (floors, walls and ceiling) on their way, before arriving at our ears a bit subsequently. One would think this results in the bass being perceived as somewhat lagging behind but it does not; the arrival times of the bass, midrange and treble are perceived as properly time aligned.
There's an explanation for this that I believe is important to understand but I don't recall what the explanation is. Can anyone explain why the arrival times of bass soundwaves slightly after midrange and treble soundwaves at our ears doesn't appear to be important?
Thanks,
Tim
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millercarbon:
"Exactly. Two completely different animals. This may be one of the hardest parts of the whole thing to understand. Though granted, the whole DBA approach relies on a number of hard to understand concepts. No one of them really so much hard as different. At least I feel it must be something like that. Else why so many have explained so clearly and yet so few seem to get it?"
Hello millercarbon,
Besides Duke, I think we're both aware that we are probably the biggest believers and proponents of the 4/5-sub DBA concept on these forums. There are several other members that are strong believers in the DBA concept but you and I are likely the most prominent and vocal advocates. I believe this is due to us both doing a lot of research on the sound bass principles underpinning the DBA concept, being relatively early adopters of the concept and having years of practical experience actually using the concept in our own systems/ rooms and knowing first hand how consistently, reliably and exceptionally well the concept performs.
I think I have a fairly good grasp of most of the dynamics afoot in the behavior of bass soundwaves in any given room that enables the 4-sub DBA concept to deliver near state of the art bass reproduction in any room and seamless bass integration with any pair of main speakers.
I understand that bass radiates in a omnidirectional pattern, the length of soundwaves are inversely proportional to their frequency, the length of deep bass soundwaves can often exceed any of a room's dimensions, humans require the entire full cycle soundwave to be present in the room to even perceive a sound, we require 3 complete soundwaves to perceive a change in pitch, we cannot localize bass soundwaves at or below about 80 Hz, soundwaves continue to reflect off of room boundaries (floor, ceiling and walls) until they are absorbed, diffused or run out of energy, the multiple soundwaves reflecting around the room will typically collide with each other causing frequency peaks, dips and nulls.
Utilizing multiple subs will actually increase the number of bass peaks, dips and nulls in the room but our amazing brains are able to process these multiple peaks, dips and nulls by summing the bass by frequency and averaging it out and creating a perception that the bass is smoother, faster and more detailed. As a bonus, this excellent bass response perception is created no matter where in the room one's head is actually positioned. All quite amazing and very beneficial to music lovers desiring excellent bass reproduction throughout their entire room.
I understand all of the above but I'm still having difficulty recalling exactly why it's not important that the timing of the bass soundwaves reaching our ears matches the timing of the midrange and treble soundwaves reaching our ears. I know it's unimportant just by listening to my system, bass from 20-40 Hz reproduced by the 4 distributed subs and midrange/treble reproduced by a pair of carefully positioned Magnepan 3.7i main speakers. The bass deep, powerful, smooth, fast, detailed, dynamic and natural seamlessly integrated with the main speakers.
I know there's a logical and reasonable explanation but I can't, for the life of me, recall it. Hopefully, Duke will chime in again and explain it again. I'll write it down someplace this time if he does.
Tim
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Hello Duke,
I'm just glad you were following this thread and willing to give such a detailed and informative answer to my question. It all makes perfect sense to me.....Again..... and I'm sorry you needed to repeat your excellent explanation just for that dim-witted knucklehead. Thank you, again and the knucklehead did take notes this time.
There's a lot of interesting and useful things to know about attaining very good bass reproduction in a domestic sized room and I'm very appreciative for your and James Romeyn's help in sharing the knowledge and experience both of you have gained over the years. It's definitely been of great value to me in my journey that has finally led to attaining near sota bass performance in my room and system.
I've learned a lot and gained valuable first hand experience along the way. For example, I discovered that class D amp bass can initially sound very good on one's main speakers; very quick, impactful, dynamic and taut. However, I've learned the very high damping factors of many of these class D amps is a likely cause of the bass sounding somewhat unnatural, although still enjoyable, with the leading edge of the bass notes being emphasized and the trailing edges being underemphasized and the decay even being truncated.
I only realized this after I installed the AK Debra 4-sub DBA system powered by a Dayton class AB amp and continued to run my main speakers full range driven by my high powered class D mono-blocks (D-Sonic M3-600-M with 1,200 watts and damping factors > 1,000) originally into my 4 ohm Magnepan 2.7QR and now into my 4 ohm 3.7i main speakers. Suddenly, the bass sounded much more natural, still with powerful and dynamic leading edge bass but also with easily discerned trailing edges and natural sounding decays.
I was wondering if you noticed the same thing with class D high damping factor amps versus class AB lower damping factor amps driving your speakers and subs? If so, is this why you use a class AB amp instead of a class D amp on the Swarm and Debra systems?
Thanks for all your help Duke,
Tim
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Rooze:
"Just to describe the problem a little more fully -
I have my mains about 75 inches from the front wall and with the mains only I get an excellent perspective, sense of depth and space, and very focused imaging. By perspective I mean that the soundscape is almost entirely behind the front plane of the speakers and extends through the front wall and beyond the outside boundaries of the speakers. The bass from the Dunlavy, in my room, is poor in two ways. Using a test CD and SPL meter, the extension from the sealed box speakers is good into the 45hz range then rolls off quickly. There are dips around 70-130Hz, again at 150-170Hz. I can clearly hear those on certain tracks.
Adding a pair of subs on the outsides of the mains, about an inch or so forward, helps to flesh out the bottom end and mid-bass, but the subs are obviously affected in the same way as the mains by the room modes and the frequency response anomalies.
So it's still far from ideal, but - the attractive imaging and soundstage properties are maintained. There's no negative effect. There's a positive effect but it isn't 'problem solved'.
So moving the subs and placing them by ear/test to get the best and smoothest response at the listening position I end up with the right channel sub about 2 feet behind the right main and the left channel about 5 feet in front of the left main, both up against side walls, both well away from corners and neither firing directly into a wall!
In this way I get a smoother response all the way through the frequency range. Not perfect but better. However, the depth and width of stage is diminished and I lose the laser-like focus of images in the soundscape. There's almost a smearing affect where the air and space around images diminishes and that's what I'm referring to as a 'phase anomaly'.
I've moved the mains to and fro ad nauseam, as we do. I can get a little better response closer to the front wall but the perspective and depth is diminished and I don't want that.
I've tried different listening seat positions, obviously.
I've tried sub placement all over the room and messed with phase toggles (0 or 180) and right now I seem to have the best compromise. But I'm not entirely happy with it.
So if the above is something other than a phase issue I'm happy to stick a new label on it and I'm all over any ways to fix it that don't involve bringing in more gear!
Since posting this thread I've written to a couple sub manufacturers to see if they'd come up with some comments and perhaps even loan out a quad of subs so I can set up the DBA and write the process up as a review. I doubt that will go anywhere but plan B is to go out and buy two or four subs on the used market.
All of your comments are helping and my trigger finger is twitching, but I'm not quite ready to buy more subs just yet."
Hello Rooze,
I think your comments above are a very good summary of your concerns and goals. Basically, you'd like the already very good soundstage illusion created at your listening seat by your Dunlavy 3C main speakers in the midrange and treble regions, what you call "perspective", to be equally good in the bass region. You've been attempting to achieve this by incorporating two good quality HSU subs in your system and room, at various positions and configurations, with less than desired results. I believe this is the crux of your matter, but please correct me if I've misunderstood.
If not, my opinion is also that your issues are not phase related. I believe they are instead sub positioning and configuration related. I'm not surprised that you're having bass issues since it's highly unlikely that the optimum positions of your pair of 3C speakers, in relation to your listening seat, for midrange/treble and imaging performance are the exact same optimum positions of your pair of 3C speakers, in relation to your listening seat, for bass performance. The real problem is that the position of your system's bass drivers (woofers) in your room are restricted to being located directly below your system's midrange and treble drivers in your room.
As I stated earlier, bass frequency soundwaves behave very differently than the much higher midrange and treble frequency soundwaves in any given room. This is mainly due to the fact that full cycle bass frequency soundwaves are very long and have omnidirectional radiation patterns while full cycle midrange/treble frequency soundwaves are much shorter and have very directional radiation patterns. As a result, the perception of bass and midrange/treble at one's listening seat is facilitated and can be optimized when the positions of their corresponding drivers are independent of each other and can be located in the room separately.
The above is why I prefer to treat my systems as two systems: a bass system and an everything else system. I typically begin by optimizing the bass in the room first because I think it's usually the hardest to get sounding right in most rooms and then optimize the everything else, which includes midrange/treble and imaging performance, afterward because it's relatively much simpler. I suggest you may want to try doing the same.
In your case, this would entail a couple of possible options as solutions. Based on my knowledge and experience, I know that utilizing either an Audio Kinesis or a custom 4-sub DBA (distributed bass array) system would provide the highest quality bass response and integration in virtually any room and with any pair of main speakers. I believe this is the ideal solution for you because it will work extremely well for your system now as well as if you ever change rooms or main speakers.
However, I realize you already own two good quality subs which I also know should work well if the subs are properly located and configured. I recommend you use the crawl method to optimally locate each sub around the perimeter of your room. I can describe this, as well as how to optimally set the volume, crossover frequency and phase controls on each, later if you're interested. Sorry I don't have time right now.
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Okay, I'm back and have more time now, so I'll just pick up where I left off in my last post.
However, I realize you already own two good quality subs which I also know should work well if the subs are properly located and configured and you're mainly concerned with just good bass response at your listening seat and not throughout your entire room, which would require a 4-sub DBA system. I recommend you use the crawl method to optimally locate each sub around the perimeter of your room. Here's how to perform the crawl method:
1. Disconnect your 3C speakers, hook up one of your HSU subs and place it at your listening seat position.
2. On the HSU sub, set the volume control at 50%, the crossover frequency at 60 Hz and the phase at 0 (in-phase). Play some music with good and repetitive bass.
3. Beginning at the right front corner of your room, slowly begin walking in a counter-clockwise direction around the perimeter of your room, listening carefully for the exact spot at which the bass sounds best to you (solid, powerful, accurate, detailed, dynamic and natural). Take your time, walk or crawl on your hands and knees very slowly, listen very closely and repeat if necessary until you identify the exact spot.
4. Once the spot is identified, move the HSU sub to this exact position.
5. Repeat this process for your second HSU sub but just begin searching slowly for the next exact room perimeter spot the bass sounds best to you, from where the first sub was located.
6. Once the second spot is identified, move the second HSU sub to this exact position.
7. Replay the same music, sit at your listening seat and verify the bass sounds very good to you. If it does, proceed to step#8. If it does not, you need to redo the entire procedure starting at step#1.
8. Reconnect your 3C main speakers but reverse the polarity on each speaker by connecting the pos. wire to the neg. speaker terminal and the neg. wire to the pos. speaker terminal. NOTE: Make sure you reverse polarity only on the speakers and not on the amps. Play the same music and set the phase control on both subs to the position at which the bass sounds the worst to you (the least solid, powerful, accurate, detailed, dynamic and natural). The reason the polarities are reversed on the main speakers for this step is because it's normally easier to identify the worst bass response in a room than it is to identify the best, it's just a useful trick. Reconnect your 3C speakers as normal and in-phase, pos. wire to pos. speaker terminal and neg. speaker wire to neg. speaker terminal.
9. The final step is to fine tune both of your subs by optimally setting the volume and crossover frequency controls on each sub, one at a time. For best results, I recommend setting both controls as low as possible with the caveat that the bass overall still sounding very good to you at your listening seat. It's very useful to recruit a volunteer for this final step, who can slowly adjust the controls at your direction from your listening seat. Of course, you're free to set these controls at whatever settings you prefer but, based on my knowledge and experience, setting each of them as low as possible typically provides the best results in terms of seamless integration, accuracy, details and a general sense of ease and naturalness on all bass content.
Strictly following this procedure should ensure that your listening seat is not located at a bass peak, dip or null in your room and vastly improve the overall perception of bass response performance from your listening seat. I believe your previous sub positioning arrangements likely resulted in your listening seat being positioned at a bass dip or null in your room. It's very important that you position each sub at the exact position each sounds best from your listening seat, even if that means rearranging your room décor a bit to accommodate optimum positioning.
Poor bass response performance is often the result of individuals, or their significant others, wanting to position the subs where they look the best, are the most convenient or are the most out of the way, rather than where they perform best. It's just like everything else in audio, a matter of choices and compromises.
I hope this will help you,
Tim
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