Sub placement

Greetings all and thanks in advance regarding this question.

Go to the “about” page to see my equipment and room:
theaudioatticvinylsundays.com

I have had the same equipment more or less for 30+ years, excepting the sub, which was added 7 years ago. The only other major change has been the room. Three years ago, I moved from a lively, noisy lower Manhattan loft of 41 years to a room that has walls and ceiling insulated with 6” to 17” of rockwool covered by burlap, snd 7” of rockwool under the floorboards between the joists. This made a decided improvement.

In spite of all the insulation, the room, with its weird shape - two dormers and a gable - does present some challenges.

I have never been happy with the sub placement.

I had been following the advice of a friend who worked as the sound engineer at the UN. He said to put it where you sit, walk around the room until you find the spot where it sounds best, and then put it there.

There was never a spot where it sounded best. A few that sounded better, but did not stand out in any way. I would try one for a few months, then tire of it and try another.

Over the weekend, I spent a few hours cleaning out the dust in the amps, resetting the tubes, rotating the Altec drivers in the cabinets, etc.

For some reason, I thought that, hey, I never tried putting the sub behind the listening spot. So I put it under my desk, which is about 3 feet directly behind the armchair where I sit to listen.

Voila.

Anyone have any experience with the sub behind the listening spot? Is this weird or actually not so uncommon?

Anyone venture a guess as to why that would work? A recording studio friend who I thought would make more than an educated guess said to just file it under “hey, it works, don’t think too hard about it, just sit back and enjoy!”

I suppose “home theatre systems” with their half dozen or more speakers around the room do this all the time, but I’m not getting why putting everything from 20 to 70 behind me and everything from 70 to 20,000 in front of me would not only help make the bass more textured and authoritative, but also help open up the rest of the soundstage: make it feel airier, clearer and more detailed.

The downside is that I now feel like I’m sitting on the stage instead of in front of it. I’m finding that dialing the phono-stage back and forth helps with that, as does dialing around the BME Sonic maximizer (don’t laugh: they are analog, and they work), so I think that will eventually resolve itself.