Subwoofers driving me nuts


I have an issue I have been trying to figure out for awhile.  I have not seen much discussion on this one.

I have a closed rectangular room,  13' x 21'.  I have a stereo pair of Rel T/9i.   It's a model that's designed to depend on corner-loading, as are many Rel models.  Rel says if the woofers are powerful enough for the room, they can be moved closer to the mains.  Tried that, no good.  I have them in the corners now. But I have moved them around a lot.

Here's the problem I have.  I have low, powerful bass down the entire length of both of my side walls, but...

In the middle of the room -- there's just no low end at all.  I moved my chair fore and aft with no result.  I even crawled the mid-line of the room.  

Help?




mac742
What you describe is of course physically impossible. Bass travels in waves of different lengths at different frequencies. Its possible to have nulls of no bass at certain frequencies, in fact not only possible but guaranteed. But it is impossible to have nulls of no bass at all frequencies. This is step one in understanding your problem.

Step two is your room. But keep in mind all rooms have this same problem to some extent. Your dimensions 13x21, the width is very close to the wavelength at 80 Hz which is 14 feet. You can play around and find the exact bass frequency at 13 feet it will be a little higher but whatever. Point is to start thinking about it as a problem in math or geometry. 13 and 21, seven is close to a common denominator. The worst room would be where they are all multiples of each other 24x32x8 for example. 

You have moved them around a lot. Welcome to the club. With only one or two subs that is all you can do. It never will work but its all you have with only one or two. My guess is you also are following the conventional wisdom and moving them symmetrically. Because someone repeated the line about integrating, or timing, or whatever. 

What you want to do with your two is put one in a corner and move the other somewhere very different, like a side wall several feet from a corner. This way you will have two sets of very different bass modes and nulls, and the overall response will be smoother.

You never will by the way get as much bass in the middle of the room as along a wall. Any wall. Any system. Any room. It just ain't happening. You don't even want it to happen! What you want is smooth even bass at wherever you're listening from. 

All the advice above is ultimately little more than a here's how to make it a little less crappy type solution. For really good bass nothing with only 2 subs is gonna get you there. For that you need two more. At least.
https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367
Have you done the subwoofer crawl with a sub at the listening chair - as shown here?
Try adjusting the phase relationship of the subwoofer to the mains.  Could be sub is substantially out of phase and cancelling at various frequencies in the low octaves.  While there is no exact solution either physically or in time (phase) in a room where there are thousands of reflections you may be able to minimize the cancellation and create a better overall balance.  To "see" what is going on I recommend using a spectrum analyzer, preferably one with constant percentage bandwidth filters, 1/3 octave minimum or 1/24 octave is better.  Very narrow band usually labeled FFT spectrum is also useful but can get confusing.  There are a number of free programs out there that work great for analyzing room acoustics.  Below is a link to some of the best I have found.  I think you will enjoy being able to see a little bit of what's going on and correlate that with your subjective impression.  Once you get a picture of what the room and speakers are doing you can try some of the many corrective solutions that are available.  Let us know how it goes.    
https://listoffreeware.com/free-audio-spectrum-analyzer-software-windows/