Sub setup that sounds best in my room but shouldn't?

[Brunt]

Hey guys, just thought I would share with you my sub setup. Keep in mind, I have no measurement tools. Anyway, based on my ears and playing specific movie passages countless times, moving around my room, moving subs, etc....here are my thoughts in my space.

I have a dedicated room that is 21x12x8. My screen is painted on one of the 12 walls making my theater room a rectangle. My couch is more or less at the halfway point of the room lengthwise. Originally I put the subs (dual eD A5-350's) in front of me, one on either side of the center channel between the mains. I thought the output was okay-pretty good. I played with Audyssey, but quickly came to the conclusion that Audyssey boosted certain frequencies too much, giving me an artificial sound. I left it off after this point.

So, I got the longer cables ready and started to try different sub placements. These exact subs were in jasonjcarney's HT and it's a little smaller, but in his room they pound so I knew I wasn't getting everything out of them.

First, I tried them on opposing walls, firing at each other. They were on the midpoint of each wall and I left the phase at zero on both. The results were okay, but not really "better" than both subs up front. I also changed the phase of the rear sub to 180, and that did nothing. At this point I was a bit confused because it started to fly in the face of what some guidelines are. Sound was not more "balanced".

Next, I tried them stacked, in the front left corner of my room. The output was greater, setting phase back to zero for both and leaving sub gain knob at 12:00 like it was for all of these tests. One problem with this setup...weather an illusion or not, but I felt the base was too locatable for my taste.

At this point, jasonjcarney and I threw up are arms and figured, maybe it's my room size? Finally, I tried one more configuration. I put both subs behind the listening position, at the halfway point of the rear wall and up against it, firing at the listener. I set the phase to 180 on both and the output was laughable. Then we set the phase to zero on both and I noticed a huge improvement in sound. It's strange to me because I thought the phase shouldn't have been zero, but it worked. Bass wasn't locatable and output was where I think it should be. Loud, be mindful of your hearing loud. I can only say in my words, that this setup gave me what I feel was the benefits of dual subs should have. More output, but oddly enough, also seemed like good balance too.

My point for the long winded message is this. Read everything you can if your just starting out, but listen to the guys who tell you to try everything in your space. Buy extra long cables if you have to. I never would have thought these 2 subs would sound best in my space in their present configuration, but they do to my ears. Try everything instead of just being underwhelmed because you put your sub(s) where guidelines say you should and don't like the output. Most people here know that, but figured I would share my experience with trial and error.

[JasonJCarney]

I suggest you rerun audyssey as well. From what I learned on AVS you may need to reset your distances.

[CECAA850]

I'm glad you found something that works, but you could have saved yourself some work doing a sub crawl. Put one sub in a seated position, play some test tones and find out what location the sub sounds best/loudest and place the sub there.

If you have your subs in 2 different places, there is a good chance you'll run into cancellation issues. 2 subs can actually have less output at the listening position than one. You'll need an SPL meter and someone who'll adjust phase on each sub, while you watch your meter, to get thing just right.

[nezff]

Sub crawl works

[Brunt]

Guys, I did everything, including sub crawl that didn't use measuring tools. Sub crawl worked when I had 1 sub but didn't when I needed to place a second. Disregard this thread.