Best place to put a single subwoofer?

Oops! Forgot the first step before moving it around: adjust its phase to match the mains first. Final position then adjust the volume and cross-over to best integrate with your mains. You may still need to adjust the phase again.

IME, the two simplest and most effective techniques for subwoofer placement that require no equipment other than a SPL meter are:

(1)

1. Place the sub at the listening position.
2. Walk around the room and listening for the location where the bass is *consistent* across low frequencies. You can do this by ear or with an SPL meter.
3. Once you find the location in the room that has the smoothest frequency response (by ear or meter), place the sub in that location.

(2)

1. Flip the polarity of either the sub or the mains (but not both).
2. Play a test tone at the crossover frequency.
3. Use an SPL meter to measure the output level.
4. Adjust the sub position (or digital delay, if you have that capability) until you MINIMIZE the SPL at the listening position.
5. When the sub is in place, flip the polarity back so that the sub and the mains are the same polarity.

IME, it is usually best to find the general placement with procedure (1) and then go on to make fine adjustments with procedure (2).

The only caveat I would make about the above procedures is that neither one guarantees that the sub will be time aligned with the mains, and IMO, the best subwoofer setups are time aligned. But this is a controversial opinion. If you are interested in subwoofer time alignment, you can read about it in this thread. If that's too much information, then just following the procedures above should get you in pretty good shape.

Good luck.

Bryon

Rule of thumb. Place on left or right hand side of listener against the wall. Position sub 4 to 6 feet in front of main speakers. I find this position tends to help fill in any suckouts left by the mains and room modes.

Your best approach, however, would be to take some measurements to confirm what is going in with your room modes.

The first thing to learn about bass is that if it is consistently big, impressive and heavy then Houston you have a problem - your bass is crap.

A friend of mine read in the book 'Get Better Sound', that the best location is just in front of the speakers, in-between them, for a single sub. I moved mine there from the wall, and will never move it back. Blends so much better!

I'm not an expert, just know what sounds good in my room. Give all the ideas a try and see what works for you.

For high end 2 channel systems, my experiences have always lead me to a pair of matching subs, as opposed to one, set up equally from the listening position as are the mains. Of course, serious time and tweaking are expected for good to excellent results.