Your experience of moving to two subs

I've got two subs run off miniDSP.  I think some kind of DSP is almost essential with subs. I am also running the subs left and right channels. At that point, the subs completely disappear. What I really hate is being able to locate the subs in space. 

If I run the subs by themselves, they're really not loud. but if you run the mains without the subs it's very clear that the music is lacking.  That, to me, means something is right. 

It's worth doing some kind of room eq and dsp to tune in the subs, and while one sub is good two, run left and right channels is what works for us. 

Thanks so much for the update. As a fan of Rhythmik subs and an owner of an SB2000 (for home theater only) I especially appreciated your observations comparing the two subs — most enlightening! Glad to hear you found benefits in using two subs, and I’d love to hear your thoughts once you get the second Rhythmic set up and dialed in. I have no doubt it’s gonna be great and color me a little jealous, and there will be a pair of Rhythmik subs in my 2-channel rig as well at some point.

I had two SVS subs but was not happy with the quality of the bass for music. I moved to one F12 and I feel the quality is better. However, like the OP, I sense its location in the room and others can too, even though I left one of the SVS subs on the other side (my two svs subs were located R and L of the speakers) and only the F12 is hooked up. If I had only 1 sub it would have to go in the middle but with my set up it can’t. I don’t know how 1 sub in the center would sound having not done that but I think two would sound better at the R and L.  I will order another F12 in time.  

Question: Does the R and L channels get different bass in songs? Thus is there is right channel low freq signal that differs from the low freq left channel in music from my DAC which outputs as line level right channel and a line level left channel.

Thanks.

@soix I’ll let ya know.

@12many Yes, bass is mixed using L and R just like anything else. But the higher frequencies certainly give much more soundstage positioning cues. Often, the low bass sounds are set evenly between L and R, which is the same as center. Like, for electronic music’s synth bass lines. But recorded upright bass, or a large tympani could be set in the mix more to one side.

One thing that could lead to being able to locate subs could be that they're causing nearby objects to resonate at higher frequencies and you're hearing that.  I'd play around with tone generator a little to see if you can isolate anything.  

Long ago in my obsessive phase I made an extremely dead sounding room in my basement.  I made dozens of insulation bass traps, got equalizers and measurement mics and found out what accurate was, at least from a frequency response perspective.  One thing I realized is that if I clapped near one of my components it made a very audible resonance sound.  If something coming out of the speakers set that off it would have been a lot more added distortion than the component put out.