Home theater

Anyone running more than one subwoofer on their home theater system? Long story short is we replaced our aging speakers with a new system but our old subwoofer was still in great shape. Really like the feeling of having the lows distributed throughout the room (one front, one rear). Just wondering if anyone else has tried this.

Many do but, not very successfully or cleanly. The trick is to find the modal points of the room the SW is in and locate the sub in a common null to get that clean crisp response. This can be achieved with a single subwoofer but in smaller rooms the potential for peaks and nulls to overlap at a common point are higher.

http://www.bobgolds.com/Mode/RoomModes.htm

http://www.silcom.com/~aludwig/Room_acoustics.html#Where_should

GilaMinumBeer said:

Many do but, not very successfully or cleanly. The trick is to find the modal points of the room the SW is in and locate the sub in a common null to get that clean crisp response. This can be achieved with a single subwoofer but in smaller rooms the potential for peaks and nulls to overlap at a common point are higher.

http://www.bobgolds.com/Mode/RoomModes.htm

http://www.silcom.com/~aludwig/Room_acoustics.html#Where_should

Click to expand...

Good info. I'd say either we just got lucky or our audio tastes are not that refined.

It's always been my understanding that frequencies below 80Hz or so are very much nondirectional. however, I suppose you could run into dead spots (standing waves) and two subs could help elliminate those. I would start with one and move it around the room until you find the best, most uniform sound. Buy a second sub only if only if the first one just won't get the job done (though I would be surprised if it's needed).

It may have just been mental but I always felt like I knew where the lows were coming from as opposed to feeling immersed in them. The SW was also located very close to where we sit so that probably also contributed. I probably wouldn't make a point to purchase another sub but circumstances allowed us two and, for us anyhow, we definitely like the effect.

To me, a SW should be transparent. In that you should not be able to disern the subwoofer from the rest of the system but, that is just how I like it.

The one thing I most despise in many HT set-ups is the need to chase the volume. When that occurs it's usually the result of either poor seating/speaker location or poor SW set-up.

If you feel compelled to turn the volume down in the heavy action scenes and then back up in the quiet scenes then the room / system is fighting against the experience.

I have two sub's, My entertainment center has two cupboards in the bottom of it and I have one in each. I have not had any problems with distortion at all and the bass is very clean and loud.

For most people, two seems better because it will be louder but you can actually create a lot of strange peaks from standing waves if you don't have enough bass trapping furnishing (or dedicated traps).

If you can discern where the bass is coming from, you have your low pass crosso ver set too high. It's common on systems that use micro mains/satellites and try making up for their weakness with a quasi sub/woofer/midrange unit. Bose anyone? If your center channel and L/R are capable of at least decent low end (under 80hz), set the sub to >80hz.

I only have one 12" sub and it's not in an ideal location due to SWMBO's constraints. I'm not about to add another one that I have to put where it looks best.

This whole thing was a big shift actually. We had very large (old) Technics speakers for our mains and moved to Mirage Nanosats (old sub is a Velodyne). Seems like everyone likes the micros (Bose bandwagon?) but, coming from a definite non-audiophile, I like full sized speakers. They just seem to give a much fuller sound. Again, though, home theater isn't my thing and it's probably just what I was used to.

I really like the bookshelf and sub combination.

A lot of decent bookshelf speakers are 3 way and are capable of ranges from 20kHz to 80Hz. Mine are actually $20 each RCA's bought from Radio Shack.

With the microphone at 3 meters and volume at reference level (forgot what dB setting I used) my RTA showed that they actually have a decently flat response across their range. Coupled with a 1000watt powered 15" sub and I can cover the entire spectrum.

Although, it took me 3 hours to rattle test and fix my room I have yet to feel the need to treat any part of the room.

I have 5.25" drivers as my mains, surrounds and center. I'm not knocking bookshelf size exactly but I'm talking about the tendency to go with 3" cubes with a whopping 2" driver.