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Subwoofers and Seating Position for Klipsch Forte iv's

Hi All, 

I am trying understand seating position and subwoofer size/power requirements.

My room is 35 X 15 x 8 = 4200 cubic feet. The room setup (music only and no HT) is such that my main speakers are on one end of the 35 foot length and my seating position is about 11 feet from the speakers, such that half of the 35 foot length is behind me. There is nothing obstructing the whole 35 foot length except the seating position.

My thought is that I would obtain two subwoofers and start with them on the same end of the room as the main speakers. I realize room modes may impact subwoofer positions, but I am hallucinating that only one of the subwoofers would  ever come further into the room than on either side of the listening position and not end up at the other end of the 35 foot length.

So I am imagining that I am really trying to energize just the half of the room that is closest to the main speakers.

My speakers are Klipsch Forte iv's connected to a Don Sachs preamp and then to a variety of amps between 25 and 100 wpc per channel (Van Alstine, FW F7, DS  Kootenay, and Quicksilver horn monos). The Fortes are specified as handling 100 wpc continuous at 112 decibels. 

I used to run Thiel CS5i's in this same space and a McCormack DNA 500 would provide "in my chest" bass response when I cranked it.

Been looking at HSU (15 inch & 450 watts, SVS (13 inch & 800 watts), and Rhythmic (12 inch & 400 watts) as these manufacturers seem to garner good reviews for being musical without going beyond the $900 to $1200 per sub range.

Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks for listening,

Dsper

 

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dsper
perkadin's avatar
perkadin
286 posts
 

After reading OPs response, I think I disagree with Tony on every one of his points-  

1. Clearly there is a budget in mind as well as certain esthetic requirements that adding pile of bass speakers would be prohibited for multiple reasons. 

2.  Having speakers far out from the walls is seldom the best location, usually results in weak bass when applied to full range speakers, and ruins the feng shui of nearly any living space. The only types of speakers that I've heard that really benefit from being way out from the walls are dipoles. I have the Forte IV, 6-24in enough room for it's passive radiator.

3.  Subs, or more specifically bass, is omni directional.  They are also adjustable in output and phase so they can sound good in a location where they also look the best. 

The best audio systems that I've experienced are typically among the most visually appealing as well.  There is nothing worse then a carefully pieced together system that looks like a showroom in an audio store (the exception being showrooms that take the extra step to stage like a living room etc). If its in your home, make the system work around your space, not the other way around.    

soix
9,433 posts
 

Having speakers far out from the walls is seldom the best location, usually results in weak bass when applied to full range speakers, and ruins the feng shui of nearly any living space.

@perkadin  It depends what you mean by “far,” but go to any audio show or high-end dealer and the speakers are always well away from the walls unless they’re designed specifically to be near the walls, but those speakers are few and far between.  But point taken that going too far can result in negative results as well so it’s all about finding what works for someone’s specific tastes, speakers, and room.
 

Subs, or more specifically bass, is omni directional.  They are also adjustable in output and phase so they can sound good in a location where they also look the best. 

This is just factually incorrect.  To get subs to work best within a room they need to be placed carefully so as not to excite room modes and provide even bass response, and output and phase can’t fully correct for that.  Even if you use room correction that can’t do much if anything to improve room nulls — only proper placement can do that.  Just because bass is omnidirectional below a certain point does not mean you can just plop them anywhere — the room dictates where subs sound best and that just takes some work to get right unless you do something like a Swarm as mentioned earlier.

 

grislybutter
2,887 posts
 

are you planning to match 2.5K subwoofers to 5K speakers that already have a lot of bass? 

perkadin's avatar
perkadin
286 posts
 

@soix how exactly does one carefully place their subwoofer?  Do you move it all around the room, tweaking phase and output settings to eliminate bad choices?  Is it inch by inch or foot by foot?  Are you using music or sound tones?  What if you have two subs?  There are limitless permutations. 

Or do you simply find a spot that you think will work that also looks good and dial it in?  There's no need to be neurotic about it, you are talking about 20-80hz which makes up a very tiny slice of recorded music. And as I said earlier, for the most part it's omnidirectional. Tuning a sub is basically eliminating unwanted vibrations while getting sufficient output. If you have a big room like OP's you'll probably need a second sub.  

soix
9,433 posts
 

how exactly does one carefully place their subwoofer?

@perkadin There are programs designed to help like RPG, etc., but the crawl method I mentioned earlier is very effective and doesn’t require additional software, microphones, etc.

https://www.audioholics.com/home-theater-connection/crawling-for-bass-subwoofer-placement

If you wanna understand more of the theory of sub placement there’s a good intro in this video, but you can google Todd Welti on whose work a lot of this info is based.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InwRYDzgEQk

So it’s not as easy as just plop them wherever they look good and change some settings to get really good bass in a given room — there’s just a lot more to it than that.

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