Placing Sub

[fooman]

What is a decent starting point when placing a sub in your control room? I have a treated room, sitting 38% of the length of the room back. I'm not quite sure where to begin looking to put a sub if/when I decide to get one.

Are there any good websites to go to that will explain where and why to place a sub? I assume it should be directly in front since (generally) the bassy instruments will show up there in the stereo field.

[orange]

Are there any good websites to go to that will explain where and why to place a sub?

Blue Sky

try using a search engine - google is my favourite. If you type in a phrase such as 'sub placement' it will give you a huge list of relevant web pages. It's one of the best ways I've found to search the internet.

There are even advanced functions
Google Advanced Search
to really help you focus your search.

good luck and if you have any problems searching then let me know and I'll try to help out.

.....

sorry, scarcasm is my middle name.

[fooman]

mmmhmmm... thanks for BlueSky.... and piss off for the rest I guess.
;)

[bigggidy]

There are several different theories to where a subwoofer should be placed in a modern studio.

Although bass frequencies are uni directional, it should mean that one could place them literally anywhere in a room. However, if your room has particular problems with acoustics such as standing frequencies in corners, etc. This can cause a problem.

When working at an acoustics company last year, we mainly started with the sub sat further back from your two main nearfields along with being slightly to the right for some reason. Something our managing director came around to through years of doing this sort of thing.

We then would play pink noise through the set up and analyse the source from several different points in the room, but mainly the listening position. We would then adjust phase and volume of the sub to suit so pretty much a flat response was acheived.

Hope this has helped a bit.

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by fooman

Are there any good websites to go to that will explain where and why to place a sub?

Here's my take:

RealTraps - Subwoofer placement

--Ethan

[Jules]

Spend an afternoon with a long set of cables and a friend and try it everywhere until it sounds the best (& mess with all the phase options on the back of the speaker too..)

[Ethan Winer]

Jules,

The problem with trying to do this by ear is the key of the music interacts with the room modes, so a place that works well for the key of A might suck for the key of C. Also, with music the bass notes are always changing. Then there's overall sub level which also affects the perceived quality. If you simply measure the LF response at a very high resolution, you can instantly see what happens at each proposed location.

--Ethan