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Two subwoofers in smallish HT room?

My home theater system is set up in a 16x11x8 ft room. I currently have one line-level HT subwoofer in the front-right corner. It's a very good subwoofer (Vandersteen V2W), but it needs to play pretty loud to produce good LFE. When it plays loud, it seems to localize.

I've been thinking about getting a 2nd sub and locating it near, but not in, the back left corner of the room in an attempt to smooth out bass response and give me the opportunity to turn down the volume on the front sub.

Does this make sense, or will it make in-room bass response worse? Is the room too small for two subs?
rex
theaudiotweak
2,801 posts
 
Electrical phase reversal may actually be putting the sub in acoustical phase with the mains.You can also have a phase or timing issue with another sub plugged into a separate AC line other than that used for the main sub..Tom
eldartford
4,262 posts
 
Sogood51...I noted the bass reenforcement from an out-of-phase rear speaker as a BAD byproduct of matrix multisound. For me it seemed boomy. This is what you would expect because the reenforcement is peaked at a wavelength that corresponds to a room mode. I can't imagine why anyone would do it.
sogood51
2,157 posts
 
Eldartford

Sounds like you use a high X-over setting with your subs...boom should not be a problem.

Dave
rex OP
245 posts
 
Thanks for all the input! Looks like I will have to invest in a second sub for my room. More than two subs in the room isn't feasible purely from a space standpoint, unfortunately.

I'm quite curious as to why the there is a strong recommendation for two identical subs though. I guess I was kind of hoping I could get away with a smaller, less expensive sub as the second sub - a matching sub wouldn't be outrageously expensive, but it isn't cheap either, and these subs are LARGE. What would be the major disadvantages of non-identical subs?
goinbroke
105 posts
 
Eldartford,

"I tend to think of subwoofers as just another driver of the speaker system, so that each speaker should have its own colocated SW. I have three for my front channels, and would have two for the rears if I thought that the rear LF response was a problem."

It is my opinion that a truer sentence has never been spoken. Now if I could just find room to put a center channel sub...
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