subs and small room

Absolutely. We aphiles nearly all try to cram too much bass into too small a room. With treatment (the room, not our neurosis!) measurement and best of all, high quality equalization for the listening position, it can be done, but it ain't a "set it and forget it" deal.

Jeff

The first thing you need to determine is how low your sub is going to operate. Room modes occur higher 80-200 (mid-bass) region in smaller rooms. Check the internet on how to determine where room modes occur based on the distance between two walls. So it will be your main speakers that will excite room modes. The sub if it operates below 40Hz with a XO of 24dB/octave won't really cause a problem but may even help smoothen out nodes that may occur with proper placement and being a bit frugal with the sub's volume control.

Don't know your price point but I use a small Velodyne SPL800 in a small dedicated room. It took some experimentation but after I realized the sub wasn't going in the corner things got a lot easier. I don't know how people get their subs to sound good in room corners. Click on my system page for a pic of what I mean.

Athipaul, I may have this wrong, but doesn't frequency doubling occur with room modes? That is, a given mode will be excited by a wave at half its length?

Thanks for any help with this.