Good idea davekayc
Keep all options on the table!!
The JL E-112 subs have a fair amount of built in tuning so hopefully this proves helpful;
Since I am nuts about this stuff, I am going to grab our nice Oscilloscope from work and my omni mics (or use a Laptop with some USB mics) and capture the onset of various test tones;
Once I have alignment temporally (overlapping first cycles of sine wave) and magnitude wise, I can play with the sub gain setting if the actual listening test prove excessive bass or what have you. I think the sub/speakers must align time wise for max potential, at least this is what I have read and it makes sense, on paper;
I was going to place a mic directly in front of the sub 3 inches away; same for the speaker woofers mic;
Cue up some bass tracks or just a sine test tone, trigger the scope on one mic and see how they line up. I am 100% positive if I run the sub off the amp output; the acoustic rising wavefront (the first cycle) will arrive at least 10 ms after the rising slope on the woofer output, due to the delays in the sub;
I will repeat the test at the listening chair to see how the alignement changed after wave fronts traveled 9 feet;
Once the entire room "pressurizes" does this time alignment still matter that much? -- we don’t listen to successive impulse trains...we listen to music in a complex environment with lots of interference patterns;
I can, in theory adjust the JL phase to exactly overlap the sine waves but the sub woofer will always lag the speaker woofer by a whole cycle. This may mean absolutely nothing sonically, or it may be perceived as muddy or too fat.
It’s going to be a fun few weeks figuring all this stuff out!
If I end up hating the subs / can’t get them to gel, I guess I can toss them in our home theater or sell them;