A Question about subwoofer placement: any advice appreciated!

Doctorhugo

Los Angeles CA
Subscriber
Hey Guys -

I have a question about placement of my new subwoofer, both in terms of acoustics and cooling for its amp. It's a Miller & Kreisel V-125. It's my first subwoofer, so any help appreciated!

I'm attaching a sketch of my listening room (apologies for the quality). At the moment, the subwoofer is in the corner: but despite all I'm told about bass being non-directional, I can certainly hear that the sound is coming from the left side. I could move it more directly in front of my listening point, almost equidistant between the main speakers.

BUT there's a complication. In the instructions, the manufacturers say that the rear of the sub should be one foot front the wall for cooling. It's a pretty large sub already, and moving it 12" from the wall would be damn near impossible. Right now I can move the rear of the sub away from the wall since it's in the corner.

Can anyone advise please? I've noticed that the cooling fins don't even get warm when I'm using it (or leaving it on standby). I don't listen at high volumes (if that makes a difference). Could I sneak it a bit closer to the wall?

Thanks in advance :beerchug:

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If it's not even getting warm, move it as close as three inches if you want.
As for directionality, you could be hearing the sub as a distinct source for a few reasons: crossover point is too high; corner placement is reinforcing it and making it louder than it should be; room modes are causing a frequency boost at your listening seat, and those happen to be the frequencies that allow for localization.

Utilize the "possible" placement if you are able. Corner placement when you only have one sub is less than ideal.
For setup, make sure the crossover is lower than 100 Hz (80 is better). Put on some familiar music and have someone turn up the sub until you can hear it as a distinct source, then back down until it "disappears" sonically, but is very obvious when it is turned off completely.
 
I have an REL sub and they claim that the corner is the ideal spot for a sub, not in between. Cross-over should be the point where your front mains can't go down to. The subs are to re-enforce the fronts (not overlap too much), so they need to have cross-over fairly low (mine are around 50 hz) and then you can turn the sub up a bit. Moving the sub around in the corner until it sounds the loudest is the simple way to dial it in. Sometimes you may have to use the polarity switch on the sub (if it has one). The correct polarity is the position that sounds the loudest.
 
Hey Guys -

I have a question about placement of my new subwoofer, both in terms of acoustics and cooling for its amp. It's a Miller & Kreisel V-125. It's my first subwoofer, so any help appreciated!

I'm attaching a sketch of my listening room (apologies for the quality). At the moment, the subwoofer is in the corner: but despite all I'm told about bass being non-directional, I can certainly hear that the sound is coming from the left side. I could move it more directly in front of my listening point, almost equidistant between the main speakers.

BUT there's a complication. In the instructions, the manufacturers say that the rear of the sub should be one foot front the wall for cooling. It's a pretty large sub already, and moving it 12" from the wall would be damn near impossible. Right now I can move the rear of the sub away from the wall since it's in the corner.

Can anyone advise please? I've noticed that the cooling fins don't even get warm when I'm using it (or leaving it on standby). I don't listen at high volumes (if that makes a difference). Could I sneak it a bit closer to the wall?

Thanks in advance :beerchug:

View attachment 910736
Based on your layout, I would recommend putting it in position 2 (the center). That would most likely allow the sub to blend in with the speakers quite a bit better.

Doing the subwoofer crawl would be helpful, but it doesn't look like you have many options.

I hate putting subs in a corner. Sure, some are better in the corner than others and sometimes it may be helpful to use the room gain in the corner to your advantage, but it tends to muddy things up and make the bass accrue in that corner. Bass accrues in corners enough already, without putting bass-producing boxes there. That's likely the main reason why you can hear it coming from that corner in your current setup.

Crossover is speaker-dependent, but anything above 80 hertz starts getting directional (90-100 usually is okay, but definitely don't do above 100 unless you absolutely have to). I agree that the less overlap, the better. My sub is crossed over (truly crossed over - with a low pass and high pass filter) at 50 Hz with my dual 8" mains. I use 80 Hz for HT, which is a different animal.
 
Thanks Guys - this is all much appreciated. Subwoofer crawl about to commence.

I VERY much value the input on crossover frequency: I had it set to about 80hz which looks like it's too high for music. I'm going to lower that, and (subject to the Crawl) move the sub into the center position.

I'll report back with results! :beerchug:
 
OK, Crawl complete, and confirms that the sub is better in the middle. I re-sited it, set the crossover for about 50hz and it's a HUGE difference! It was sounding so bloated in the corner that I turned it way down. Now I set it to their 'reference' level' and can actually hear clean bass. Since this is my first sub, I was thinking 'is that the best they can do'? NOW I know what was wrong!

Thanks to everyone who offered advice. :beerchug:

JoeESP9, I'm going to find out the -3db point of my speakers: right now I'm using temporary ones as I finish my rebuild of the Focal Aria speakers I found at Goodwill. The Stereophile review of them gives all this info.

The only person not impressed is my cat: picture attached.

P1040941.JPG
 
OK, Crawl complete, and confirms that the sub is better in the middle. I re-sited it, set the crossover for about 50hz and it's a HUGE difference! It was sounding so bloated in the corner that I turned it way down. Now I set it to their 'reference' level' and can actually hear clean bass. Since this is my first sub, I was thinking 'is that the best they can do'? NOW I know what was wrong!

Thanks to everyone who offered advice. :beerchug:

JoeESP9, I'm going to find out the -3db point of my speakers: right now I'm using temporary ones as I finish my rebuild of the Focal Aria speakers I found at Goodwill. The Stereophile review of them gives all this info.

The only person not impressed is my cat: picture attached.

View attachment 911145
Excellent! :thumbsup:
 
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