Your sub experience: Easy or hard?

Not difficult but it is a process and the more of a perfectionist you are the more knowledge and tools you will need.

Depends greatly on the subwoofer (RELs are by far the easiest because of their passive radiator) and the speakers (speakers with lower output are harder to integrate unless you plan to high pass, which I will not do.

Two subs are more difficult, especially if you don't know the proper method, but the results are better.  

I would not integrate a subwoofer without a using some form of measurement tool- e.g. a microphone, RTA software and full bandwidth pink noise tracks.

I’ve run a single sub + 2 desktop main speakers for ~15 years. Until ~5 years ago the mains were powered; then I switched over to a series of passives.

For me, the hard part of subs wasn’t placement--I only had one placement option, and luckily all the subs I’ve tried sounded good in that spot. Specifically, in my nearfield setup (home office), the sub’s effect sound flattest/best in the listening seat equidistant from the speakers. So I lucked out there.

But for me, the hard part was getting a high-pass filtered signal to the mains. Some subs have built-in crossovers that can do this. Sometimes those crossovers are high quality and sound good; other times they’re trash and sound bad (I’ve had both). I solved that issue for once and for all by picking up a transparent, high-quality external electronic crossover ((Marchand XM-66 in which the high- and low-pass filter slopes 24 dB/octave).

The other hard part is matching the sub’s output level to that of speakers. I found two things that help:

• I get better results by far when using sealed/acoustic suspension speakers. They sound better here, and have the benefit of having a real drop-off out output at the resonant frequency. I count on that when setting the crossover
• And it helps to cross over to the sub at the lowest frequency (that is comfortably above the -3 dB drop-off point of the mains).

Would all this apply to a far larger, high-end system in a living room? Yes, but also no, because there the physical placement of the sub (or subs) would consume much time & effort.

@atmasphere - hi atmasphere, I was wondering, which of your two set-ups, with the DBA and the single sub, do you feel sounds better? And, of subs in general, do you believe forward-firing subs produce more accurate lows than downward-firing ones? thanks much!

in friendship - kevin

@kevn The DBA setup is more accurate. The single sub suffers a bit around the edges of the room where it gets too much reinforcement. Forward or downfiring has no effect (in practice) simply because in most rooms the bass is entirely reverberant by the time you hear it due to the wavelengths involved (at 80Hz the wavelength is 14 feet).

Thanks for your quick reply, Ralph! : ) - kevin.