Subwoofer slam vs boom

I think being turned up too loud is the biggest reason for a sub sounding bad. Your subs are terrific quality, so that isn't the problem.

Move them. Try them in the same corner. Try opposite corners but moving one one of them out a little from the corner (so they're asymetrical). Turn them down a little...

They should be outstanding subs, keep trying. I doubt spending more on your sub will solve your problem. They should be plenty slammy and not boomy.

Hi Marty ... it might be corner placement. I have a REL Strata .. a very different, sub, but still a sub. It's crossed at around 30Hz with my mains. I found that corner placement sounded very very boomy, even with the gain turned right down. I now have it out in the room, quite close to my listening position, just inside the right hand speaker. Now there's no boom at all and the bass goes very deep. Now I have the gain quite well up.

Try pulling them out from the corner at least 2-3 feet into the room, just to see if some of the boom goes away. If it does you'll have to find an acceptable trade off between sound and position convenience.

I know a lot of people swear by corner placemeent, but I found that it only creates lots of boomy bass ... for quality bass the sub has to be well away from walls.

Between using the corner or not is really a setup / integration issue from my experience. Since the corner is more active, it works best from my experience to leave a gap between where the bass in the speakers ends, and where the subwoofer takes over. If the sub is not in the corner there can be some overlap of the subwoofer and the bass of the main speakers.

The boom you hear in the corner under this assumption is that fact that there is too much bass at the cut-off frequency. The subwoofer, the speakers, and the corner of the room all taken together, is producing too much bass at that frequency.

If you adjust the subwoofer well in the corner, this gap will have bass partially from the speakers and partially from the subwoofer. If integrated in this way, you won't be able to tell where the speakers end and where the subwoofer takes over (Seemless integration).