Your sub experience: Easy or hard?

I had two JL Audio 110E subs, the JL Audio CR-1 crossover, and a DSpeaker room correction (which I used on the subs).

To answer the question:

1. Easy.

2. Hard.

3. Impossible.

First, it was hard in the sense of trying to find a place to put two more bloody speakers in my room.  And then the hassle of getting AC to the subwoofers.

But the CR-1 crossover is brilliant.  Simple, fairly intuitive, made for folks like me who don't want to make a second career out of integrating subwoofers (I can not BELIEVE how much time some people spend on integrating subwoofers, the endless room measurements, the tweaking...)

So it was actually easy to get an initial good blend of the subs with my main Thiel speakers.   But...being very picky about integration...it was hard to get a completely seamless integration.  If I spent as much time constantly making adjustments like some subwoofers enthusiasts do, I may well have got a more seamless coherent blend (the Dspeaker did help too).

Impossible in the sense that even when the integration sounded very close to seamless, it still changed the tone/timbre of my speakers.  Always.  And I'm super, super picky about that.  The voice or timbre of a speaker is my number one priority, and if that changes, it ain't the speaker I bought.  The subwoofer always altered the tone somewhat, away from what I liked.

It did even out the bass!.   But I actually preferred the punch and coherence of the speakers when the subs were turned off.  The CR-1 crossover makes it super easy to flick a switch between the speakers run full range and then with the subwoofers integrated.

Anyway, sold all the subwoofer stuff and never looked back.

My first experience with a pair of subs was difficult to the point where the best spot still resulted in unsatisfactory bass. The best spot was hard to find with asymmetric placement but neither in a corner.  The bass was flat except for except a 60Hz vertical mode. I even tried putting the subs on five foot stands to negate it with partial success. This was under the direction of a remote acoustician. A crossover I was reluctant to purchase fixed the 60Hz issue. I recently installed nine quasi bass traps but have yet to remeasure or recalibrate. Listening, thought, the bass is fixed to the point where I like it. I know there is a delay  between the subs and main speakers. While there is that room for improvement, I do not care now.  My room drives me nuts honestly. 

@prof 

Good post. I can relate to it better than those who report outstanding and far-reaching benefits to subs. The subs simply fix a wide and deep bass dip that is not possible to fix with speaker or listener placement.  I also like to play with the CR1's bypass. A tonal shift that came along with it was solved by flipping the ground switch. Not saying that was your issue, but I do understand your preference. 

Very difficult if not impossible. That is why Goldenear speakers have the built-in sub...

As Mr. Gross claims by slightly blending the subwoofers crossover region at a higher frequency to be beneficial in matching the main speakers lower frequency presentation. Simply by using my subwoofers Auto EQ feature followed by manually drag and dropping the subwoofers Frequency Response Parameters by ear. Easy.

Just as easy was determining the rooms ideal subwoofer positions which are, unlike Mr. Gross' claim of within (or near) the speaker, one of the worst locations in all of the rooms my system has occupied.