Subwoofer slam vs boom

Hi Marty ... it might be corner placement. I have a REL Strata .. a very different, sub, but still a sub. It's crossed at around 30Hz with my mains. I found that corner placement sounded very very boomy, even with the gain turned right down. I now have it out in the room, quite close to my listening position, just inside the right hand speaker. Now there's no boom at all and the bass goes very deep. Now I have the gain quite well up.

Try pulling them out from the corner at least 2-3 feet into the room, just to see if some of the boom goes away. If it does you'll have to find an acceptable trade off between sound and position convenience.

I know a lot of people swear by corner placemeent, but I found that it only creates lots of boomy bass ... for quality bass the sub has to be well away from walls.

Between using the corner or not is really a setup / integration issue from my experience. Since the corner is more active, it works best from my experience to leave a gap between where the bass in the speakers ends, and where the subwoofer takes over. If the sub is not in the corner there can be some overlap of the subwoofer and the bass of the main speakers.

The boom you hear in the corner under this assumption is that fact that there is too much bass at the cut-off frequency. The subwoofer, the speakers, and the corner of the room all taken together, is producing too much bass at that frequency.

If you adjust the subwoofer well in the corner, this gap will have bass partially from the speakers and partially from the subwoofer. If integrated in this way, you won't be able to tell where the speakers end and where the subwoofer takes over (Seemless integration).

Sugarbrie ... I have to disagree from personal experience. I had the REL on very little gain, with the rolloff down at about 25Hz and it still boomed away in the corner. The only way I could get good integration, and slam without boom was to bring it into the middle of the room.
I know you also have a sub (a REL I think) so I suspect that it's something to do with my room, perhaps that it's quite small.

I thought I was cheating by using all large speakers. In hind site for a ht setup this might not be true.

What is in the .1 track? I wonder if some frequencies are not being duplicated in both the mains and subs. What I have tried to do is let each piece of equipment do its own job, and not over load one piece.

I tried the subs out in the room, still not slamming. the subs are set about +2 db over the rest. This is not too high, I hope.

Before I got deeply into this hobby, I was at a friends house, listening to his rig. I have no idea what he had for equipment, since moved away and can not ask, but he played a demo disc and WOW. Some guy coughed and it felt like someone whacked me in the chest with a 2X4.

This crisp slam is what I am after.

Thanks all

Marty

I noticed the slam in my system vastly improved when I switched to a different amp in my woofers. I used to use IRS Betas with Adcom monoblocks and they had some good bass, but then I upgraded to the IRS V, which have a 2,000 watt amp in each tower. I believe that they are digital amps. Slam galore. Since it uses the same drivers as the betas and 12 woofers vs. 8, the biggest change was the amp. When listening to a bass cascade on Without Me from Eminem's The Eminem Show, it actually felt like I was falling. And on track 3, well, there is some slam. I must put a lot of it on the amp. Of course, the speakers have to be there to be driven as well, but it isn't just the speakers or the placement.