SVS Subwoofer Placement
What is the ideal subwoofer for a home cinema? Small, so that it is easy to hide, powerful so that it can shake and tickle your nerves properly, flexible in setting so that you do not want to plug your ears and run away from the room … The only problem is that the listed requirements are largely contradictory. And only the leaders of the subwoofer industry manage to achieve a certain optimum.
SETUP and Calibration Principle
Setting up the subwoofer and most importantly its correct placement. So you’ve finally taken the plunge and decided to buy a subwoofer to improve the sound quality of your audio system. Once you set it up correctly , your subwoofer will be able to rock your home with its powerful sound.
Correct placement and correct subwoofer setup
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The Importance of Placement
Most users do not attach much importance to this moment, although when you listen to an audio system, the interior of your room and the arrangement of objects in it really have a big impact on the overall sound. Walls, windows, and furniture color the sounds you hear, but low frequencies are especially sensitive to room factors. This is why subwoofer placement and setup is a really important motivators.
Among your subwoofer’s biggest enemies are parallel surfaces – you know, those crazy things called walls in your living room or office. Bass waves are inherently non-directional, so they tend to reverberate throughout the room. When bounced off your walls, they bounce off each other, creating one of two scenarios: standing waves or bass nulls.
Standing waves (which are affected by the size of your room and the wavelength of the sound) are excess low frequency energy. This happens when a certain frequency is amplified by room factors or similar wavelengths occurring at about the same time and place. In this case, you hear that “boomy” effect or “monotone bass”, which lacks clarity or tension. At the opposite end of the spectrum are low frequency nulls, which occur when reflected waves cancel each other out, leaving the listener in a dead zone.
To deal with the acoustics of a room and its effects, you can work either with or against the room. The room work includes acoustic procedures, which also include subwoofer setup and smart subwoofer placement. Working against a room can include anything from a variety of equalizers to room correction software. At any rate, whenever possible, we prefer the first tactic to the second.
Subwoofer setup and where to put it
Generally, placing and setting up a subwoofer in a corner or close to a wall results in more bass, but not necessarily better bass. Small, low power subwoofers, such as those commonly supplied with home theater systems and soundbars, tend to use small drivers paired with low power amplifiers and thus tend to take advantage of limited space. Unfortunately, all you really get is the same crappy bass. While we acknowledge that an angle is often the most convenient option, it is rarely ideal.
Subwoofers with larger drivers like SVS SB 4000 and more powerful amplifiers do not need to be pressed against the wall for additional support. In fact, high-quality subwoofers tend to sound best when they are moved at least 20 to 30 cm from the wall. Subwoofers also work better in the front half of your room, placed closer to the front channel speakers to reduce lag and phase compensation.
Here are some helpful tips on where to place the sub depending on how much flexibility you want and what to expect from it in a specific location.
- Carte blanche: So the sub can be placed anywhere? Well, congratulations. No, seriously, that’s great, because very few people are as flexible as you. But since that’s the case for you, here’s what we suggest: Move your chair or couch away from where you normally sit. Now put the subwoofer where the chair used to be and unplug it from the powerful bass. Walk and crawl around the room, listening carefully to where the bass sounds most flat and clear. It’s not just about intuition. If you want to hear the timbre (sound quality) and texture of the notes, put a piece of tape on the floor when you notice everything sounds good, then move to another location. Keep doing this until you have 3-4 options for the best installation location.
- Anywhere in the front: follow the “rule of thirds” for subwoofers. The idea is that by placing the subwoofer a third of the distance from the wall, you will reduce the numbercaroled-up of standing waves and nulls. Mathematically speaking, if you follow this guide, the chances of your seat being a “good bass seat” increase.style=”border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; left: 0px; position: absolute; top: 0px; width: 554px;” vspace=”0″ width=”554″>
It has to be in the corner: look, no one wants to put their awesome new toy in the corner, but sometimes you have to. Here’s what you can do to reduce the problems that come with subwoofer cornering. First, if your subwoofer is located on the back of the cabinet, you caroled-upcaroled up the port with tennis balls, rubber balls, or even rolled up socks to seal the cabinet and reduce its interaction with the wall behind it. you could experiment with sound. Second, move the subwoofer at least 15-20 cm away from the corner. Bribe a friend with pizza to literally crawl on the floor for you; move the subwoofer a few centimeters in each direction to find the perfect spot.
Under sofa or table: Not the worst option in the world, but expect dips in sound if you have really small satellite speakers that rely on a subwoofer for frequencies above 120Hz.
Inside the wall: This is becoming more and more popular with installers, and while there are some really good built-in subwoofers from JL Audio, Paradigm and B&W. But this is not the type of equipment you should even consider for installation purposes, especially if you have drywall partitions, then you risk seriously annoying your neighbors. In-wall subwoofers should be professionally installed with special boxes that are designed to hold the subwoofer cabinet in place and isolate it from the rest of the room. If done right, this can be an effective solution. One thing to keep in mind is that wall-mounted subwoofers are really expensive because they often require an external amplifier, crossovers, and a lot of labor to install properly.
What about wireless? If the location of the subwoofer is in the way due to wiring, consider purchasing a wireless subwoofer adapter such as the SoundPath Wireless Audio Adapter from SVS. This won’t save you from having to find a convenient power outlet (in fact, it only exacerbates this requirement), but it does eliminate the need for a physical connection to your AV receiver or amplifier. If you have one, make sure it’s designed for ultra-low latency. Some Bluetooth models have invalid latency; that’s fine for headphones,/>
Automatic and manual calibration
These days, most mid-to-high-range AV receivers have some sort of automatic room correction (ARC), and while they do a good job of detecting things like speaker distance and channel levels, they’re notoriously inaccurate when it comes to comes down to defining the crossover settings. The point is that the concept of crossover refers to the point at which the speaker stops reproducing bass, and the subwoofer takes over this function. As you can imagine, this setting is critical to getting the best bass in your room.
Instead of relying on an automated system, it’s worth trying to figure out the best crossover settings for your system yourself. You can still use automatic calibration for other speakers and manually calibrate the subwoofer.
Setting the SVS subwoofer phase
After you have found the best place for your sub and changed some important system settings, you need to set the subwoofer phase, crossover point and volume. The smaller the size of the other speakers, the higher the crossover frequency will be. If you don’t already know what your speakers are capable of, look up the frequency response characteristics of your dynamic drivers in their manuals or online. Now take this number and increase it by 10 Hz.
Setting the crossover point is easy: turn the toggle switch all the way up. This will disable the subwoofer’s internal crossover, allowing your AV receiver to take over the task. If you are not using an AV receiver or preamp/processor to control the crossover, set the crossover as close as possible to the point at which you want the subwoofer to start producing bass.
This is usually based on the speaker’s nominal low-frequency expansion. You can also ask your pizza buddy (if he’s still here) to start with the crossover control by setting it to the bottom position, then slowly move it up until you feel like you have a good match between your main speakers and subwoofer.
In the next step, turn on bass-heavy music (movies are unreliable, and don’t let your ears catch on to something familiar). If, while listening, you notice an obvious drop in bass energy (or what we call “sucking”) near the frequency at which your subwoofer and main speakers intersect, you need to make adjustments to your phase control.
Play the same track over and over again and listen while your friend changes the phase setting (this could be a continuous dial or a simple switch with one or two positions).
Stop when you get to the setting that gives you the fullest sound. If the set-up phase doesn’t get you out of the “suck”, the problem may be in the wrong placement. Go back to the placement section of this guide and try again.
When it comes to volume, a common mistake is to set the subwoofer’s volume control to its maximum. Instead, set the volume control to around 75% or so and adjust the subwoofer output level with your AV receiver or preamp/processor. Turn the volume up and down, first over a wide gain range, then in small increments, until you get to the point where you can’t really hear the subwoofer. Basically, it should “disappear” into the sound, giving the illusion that your entire system is reproducing all that bass response. A well-integrated subwoofer will also expand the soundstage both in depth and width.
If you’re looking for an easy, less restrictive way to set up your crossover, subwoofer manufacturer SVS has a good set of cutoff frequency recommendations for different speaker sizes and types.
Work with your room, not against it
Instead of trying to outdo your room’s effect on sound by tweaking the sound itself, set up your room so that it doesn’t affect the sound picture at all. One of the easiest ways to do this is to put some
SVS Subwoofer setup and equipment doubling.
Note: hard-earned before we share our last piece of advice, please keep in mind that we are not sellers – we have absolutely no interest in milking you for your hard-earned money. What we are about to tell you is true. We tried it ourselves and the results are fantastic.