If the sub is for music only, then obviously quality is an important consideration. The biggest hurdle to quality bass in most rooms is the room itself. It imposes a peak-and-dip pattern on the sub's output that you cannot avoid. You can move the sub and/or move the listening position and change the peak-and-dip pattern, but it will still be severe. You can equalize it and get it much flatter in one location, but in doing so, you've made things worse elsewhere because the peak-and-dip pattern changes dramatically as you change listening locations. That's not to say that improvements can't be made by these means, only that they do not address the inherent acoustic problem. The approach I suggest, if possible, is to use two small subs instead of one big one. Two small subs spread far apart will each generate a different in-room peak-and-dip pattern, and the sum of these two dissimilar patterns will be significantly smoother than either one alone. Todd Welti of Harmon International wrote a paper on optimum symmetrical placement of multiple subwoofers: Welti's paper -skip to page 28 for conclusions Personally I prefer asymmetrical placement but the main thing is this to have multiple bass sources spread far apart. That will improve the bass smoothness at all locations within the room, not just at the listening position, and will make equalization more likely to be a global solution instead of just a local one. Two subs is twice as smooth in-room as one (and four subs is twice as smooth as two), and imo this offers a greater subjective improvement for music enjoyment than going with a single twice-the-price ubersub. Duke dealer/manufacturer |
