4 Subs v. 2 Subs

[tubetwister 78]

My theater has 2 subs up front. Would adding a pair of subs at the rear of the room be any benefit? My pre-pro has dual sub outputs, so these would need a Y adapter to make work.

[yamahaSHO 364]

More potential bass? Yes.  The ability to move your sweet spot around? Yes. 

 

I added a 3rd sub when I had a basement theater to move the sweet spot at my seating position.  I also had to run it 180 out of phase. 

[wuzzzer 1982]

It absolutely would. 

[tubetwister 78]

My theater is all Klipsch, with 11 speakers. Dolby Atmos surround. The front subs are from Madisound.

I’m looking at a pair of R-12SW speakers for the rear subs. They would go in the rear corners of the room, at the back wall.

 

Including the 4 subs, this would have 15 speakers total.

[Ceptorman 12285]

52 minutes ago, tubetwister said:

My theater is all Klipsch, with 11 speakers. Dolby Atmos surround. The front subs are from Madisound.

I’m looking at a pair of R-12SW speakers for the rear subs. They would go in the rear corners of the room, at the back wall.

 

Including the 4 subs, this would have 15 speakers total.

Very nice, what's the rest of the speakers, now we're curious! 

[Marks 5]

A number of years ago I came across a short writeup on setting up multiple (3) subwoofers that I thought was pretty interesting.  I have never given it a try, so I don't know how well it works.  But it sounds like using multiple subs is a good way to flatten the frequency response of the bass in a room.

 

https://mehlau.net/audio/multisub_geddes/

 

Mark

[tubetwister 78]

23 minutes ago, Ceptorman said:

Very nice, what's the rest of the speakers, now we're curious! 

Here is a link that will show the RF-7 III’s.

 

[Shiva 2591]

1 hour ago, tubetwister said:

My theater is all Klipsch, with 11 speakers. Dolby Atmos surround. The front subs are from Madisound.

I’m looking at a pair of R-12SW speakers for the rear subs. They would go in the rear corners of the room, at the back wall.

 

Including the 4 subs, this would have 15 speakers total.

That's a big room, having two subs nearfield is a great idea.   I would up your game though as far as the choice of subs. Something with 15" or even 18" drivers.  Whats your sub budget? 

[tubetwister 78]

1 hour ago, Shiva said:

That's a big room, having two subs nearfield is a great idea.   I would up your game though as far as the choice of subs. Something with 15" or even 18" drivers.  Whats your sub budget? 

Yes, the room is about 25’ X 28’.

Budget? As little as possible. The R-12SW’s are on sale...very reasonable. Being happily married, my goal is to stay happily married.

 

[Paducah Home Theater 2796]

Four subs spread around the room like either in the corners or wall midpoints has long been proven to be superior in terms of smoothing room modes out across multiple seats.  It's a little more complicated than just adding a splitter and hoping for the best though.  You really need a decent DSP so you can add some PEQ's and set the proper delays.  

[Iteachstem 189]

A little info about running 4 subs can be found in the link.  Obviously you can use your own subs, this system just uses the partsexpress amp and I believe the partsexpress 10" HO Dayton drivers as one of the options.  You can also just do a "Swarm Subwoofer System" search for more info.

 

https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/audiokinesis-swarm-subwoofer-system

 

[tubetwister 78]

On 1/25/2021 at 10:59 PM, Paducah Home Theater said:

Four subs spread around the room like either in the corners or wall midpoints has long been proven to be superior in terms of smoothing room modes out across multiple seats.  It's a little more complicated than just adding a splitter and hoping for the best though.  You really need a decent DSP so you can add some PEQ's and set the proper delays.  

The two Klipsch Subs arrived yesterday. They are placed in the rear inner corners of the room, angled out at a 45 degree angle, pointing at the sidewalls.

Saving Private Ryan (4K) was loaded up, and I began to do a crude initial evaluation. 
The bomb blasts were all enveloping, with the sound traveling in waves across the seating area. Much more effective and more impactful  than with dual subs.

 

Have not tried these with music yet. It seems that my music videos and CD’s do not trigger the bass / sub output signal from the preamp. But movies certainly do.

 

One R-12SW will be moved to another stereo system to check for response on music. So far, I am very pleased. This is money well spent!

 

For those interested, a short review was posted under the Subwoofer section of the forum.

[tubetwister 78]

After living with the 4 subs for a short time, it is clear that more really is better!

 

The bass line, along with LFE in soundtracks, is so smooooooth. All enveloping, each seat now gets the full impact. I thought my dual sub setup was good before, but now I am blown away with the impact of 4 subs.

 

Don't know what took me so long to make the leap, but I'm glad I did.

 

The difference is night-and-day!

[Ceptorman 12285]

9 hours ago, tubetwister said:

After living with the 4 subs for a short time, it is clear that more really is better!

 

The bass line, along with LFE in soundtracks, is so smooooooth. All enveloping, each seat now gets the full impact. 

You could use one of these for each seat.....https://thebuttkicker.com/buttkicker-lfe/