Placement of Dual Powered Subs with Tower Speakers

By placement I mean location in the room. That takes some effort.

Turning it to the side, or away from the listener, etc. usually has very little benefit, so orient them in the most aesthetically pleasing manner.

You want to locate the first sub so as to have the smoothest measured response, with minimal anti-modes (big dips) and small peaks. Then locate the second sub in the room so as to complement and smooth it all out. 

Turning your sub around won't really help this. :)

I've been using a single S/5 Sho for the past year, and it is carefully placed and sounds very good

My suggestion would be deliberately placing both subs with asymmetry in mind. For instance, one might be on the front wall near the left corner, and the other might be on the right wall near back corner, but a different distance from that corner than the first sub is from its corner. (You want to avoid running that second sub - the one furthest from the mains - up very high in frequency, because you don’t want it passing upper bass energy loud enough to betray its location when the music is playing.)

The general idea is that each sub interacts with the room differently and produces a significantly different in-room peak-and-dip pattern, and it is the SUM of the two dissimilar peak-and-dip patterns that matters. Nothing against the strategy Erik recommends, his may work better; either one will result in a worthwhile improvement.

If both subs have phase controls, there may be yet another strategy you might try.

Whatever placement strategy you use, imo the exact position of each sub is less critical than when you only have one sub.

Duke

thanks, I currently have one in between the speakers, though closer to one side, the second hasn't arrived yet.  The one is crossed over at about 40hz...looking forward to this, thanks again

I just went through what you are going through and if you check out my post you will read a lot of different things. As you, I received the first the day before the 2nd and got it integrated pretty easily. Adding the second proved challenging for me. I was able to talk to customer service with REL and he assured me that when it comes to phase once you have one set correctly the other sub will be set the same. Get one tuned in, unhook the Speakon and hook up the other and get it dialed in. Don't try to limit yourself then it comes to setting crossover and gains and they may not necessarily be the same; one subs placement may require a little more gain. I have one side of the front wall that opens into another room so it's not ideal. My subs are placed asymmetrically as one is placed in a corner angled as REL suggest and the other is placed inside my right channel bookshelf over a foot from the wall facing straight out. It's very listenable now and I know with some minor adjustments I'll get there. I'll help any way I can if you want to PM me.