Best setup for two subwoofers.

In my opinion it is okay to use different subs. I'm also an advocate of asymmetrical placement, so that the two subs are interacting with the room modes differently. The result is each sub will give you a different peak-and-dip pattern at any given listening position, and the sum of these two dissimilar peak-and-dip patterns will be smoother than either one alone.

Since you want very deep bass, you might put the sub that goes the deepest in a corner, and then put the other sub along one of the opposite walls perhaps 1/3 of the wall dimension away from a corner. This would give you good asymmetry in the horizontal plane.

Duke
dealer/manufacturer

If you want a very informed opinions, go to Scott Wilkenson's Home Theatre Geeks podcast. Home Theatre Magazine reviewer. A few weeks ago he had an episode with Dr. Floyd Toole and this guy KNOWS SPEAKERS AND SPEAKER DESIGNS! and much of the podcast was on sub woofer and sub woofer placement and design along with general speaker design.

That said TWO subs will provide for you the best compromise in bass for the most listeners in a room if each sub is equal distant down front and/or back walls or side walls. IE: Put each sub down the front wall the same distance away from each side walls. Or you can put one sub midway down the front wall or near to it and the other sub reversed down the back wall. Or try putting each sub mid way down each side wall of your room. Doing any of these will balance out bass and suppress room anomalies for more than one listener.

Again check out Home Theatre Geeks podcast and listen to the Floyd Toole episode.

Les creative edge, to the best of my knowledge none of the subwoofer studies published by Harmon researcher Todd Welti (presumably Toole's source) investigated asymmetrical placement, simply because that introduces too many variables. Another researcher, Earl Geddes, demonstrated improved smoothness from asymmetrical placement in a paper that is unfortunately no longer up on his website, possibly because it gave away too much to potential competitors. Todd's consumer-oriented paper is no longer up on the Harmon site either.

Based on conversations I've had with both Earl and Todd, the main thing is to have multiple bass sources spread fairly far apart, as that is where the greatest benefit accrues. The exact positioning of the subs is generally less critical than with a single sub.

It is interesting that Earl and Todd arrived at using distributed multiple subs as a solution to room modal behavior completely independent of one another. Neither was aware of the other's work until Todd published the first of his papers.

Duke