Subwoofers only at the rear of the room?

[Kain]

I have a small room that is roughly 12 ft long x 11 ft wide x 9.5 ft high.

The front wall will be completely taken up by the front speakers and the large TV (and the AV cabinet under the TV). One side wall has a large glass sliding door that leads to a small balcony and the other side wall has a large built-in closet. I cannot block or put anything along the two side walls. That leaves only the rear wall. I am thinking of putting two subwoofers near the two rear corners with the seating about 3-4 ft in front of the rear wall. Will this give me good bass coverage or am I doomed in this room?

[Peter P.]

I've never seen it advocated to locate the subwoofers where you want, and there must be valid reasons to not do so. I would guess the subwoofers' audio would sound like a separate source, coming from a different direction.

 

The sound coming out of the subwoofers would technically be facing your remaining speaker suite, so there would be some frequency cancellation going on. As a minimum, I would expect the phase control on the subwoofer to have to be set 180 degrees out of phase.

 

You could try it and see what happens, but I think your best solution would be to get smaller main speakers so you could stack the mains on top of the subwoofers, That would cure your space problem and preserve the expected, typical home theater speaker setup.

[CECAA850]

Cross it over as low as possible and be sure it's in phase with your mains and you should be ok.  It's not ideal but should work.

[carlthess40]

Try 180 out of phase and see how that works. Or you can reverse the polarity of the drives
But the best way is to work with the phase knob and get them in phase with your mains

[CECAA850]

If that doesn't work he could play with the distance setting in the receiver to dial it in.

[Paducah Home Theater]

It's not ideal because it's localizeable.  If you do it I'd try to do what the car audio guys do which is a super steep crossover at 65 hz.  Still though, even LFE can be 120 hz and multiple frequencies can combine to be even higher, just not ideal, you will be able to tell where it is sooner or later.  

[wvu80]

Absolutely no problem to put the sub in the back.  I have mine set up that way in the living room, not by necessity but by choice.  The sub is behind the couch.  I can feel the sub, but I don't even hear it.

 

My sub fires into the center of the room, not "at" the speakers, phase is set to zero.  If your sub is set up properly you will hear enhanced LF sound from the speakers, not from the sub.

[nitrofan]

Same experience here wvu