SET UP SUBWOOFER PLACEMENT RECOMMENDATIONS GUIDE This guide provides recommendations on where to place your subwoofer(s) in your listening room.
1 INTRODUCTION Introduction 2 PLACEMENT CAUTIONS Subwoofer Placement Cautions 3 GUIDELINES General Subwoofer Placement Guidelines Single Subwoofer Placement Guidelines Twin Subwoofer Placement Guidelines Quad Subwoofer Placement Guidelines 4 PLACE Place a Single Subwoofer Place Twin Subwoofers Place Quad Subwoofers 10 APPENDIX A Case Study
INTRODUCTION Subwoofer Placement Recommendations Guide INTRODUCTION This guide gives recommendations on where to place your subwoofer(s) in your listening room to: - Get clean, high-impact bass - Protect your subwoofer(s) from damage - Avoid hazard(s) The recommendations are based on an idealized rectangular room.
PLACEMENT CAUTIONS Subwoofer Placement Recommendations Guide Subwoofer Placement Cautions PLACE THE SUBWOOFER CABINET ON A STABLE, FLAT AND LEVEL SURFACE. An uneven or unstable surface can cause the subwoofer to tip over and cause injury and/or be damaged. This type of surface can also result in buzzing and rocking sounds that could make the subwoofer sound broken. Protruding objects from the surface or an uneven surface could cause damage to the speaker cone in down-firing subwoofers.
GUIDELINES Subwoofer Placement Recommendations Guide General Subwoofer Placement Guidelines Refer to the recommended placement diagrams below for general seating and subwoofer placement guidelines. The seating positions shown in the diagrams below are general guidelines for most room types. Walls, floors and ceilings reinforce bass response. Sitting near a wall almost always results in the perception of more bass than elsewhere in the room.
PLACE Subwoofer Placement Recommendations Guide Place a Single Subwoofer This section provides general recommendations on where to place a single subwoofer in your listening room. You can try placing a single subwoofer in the: 1. Front corner 2. In the center in front of your audio system; or 3. A quarter or third away from the front of the room on either the right or left side of the room. RECOMMENDED SINGLE SUBWOOFER PLACEMENTS CORNER PLACEMENT 2 1 CENTER PLACEMENT QUARTER PLACEMENT 3 WIlIf., Un.
PLACE Subwoofer Placement Recommendations Guide Place Twin Subwoofers This section provides general recommendations on where to place twin subwoofers in your listening room. You can try placing twin subwoofers in any of the following configurations: • One in each of two opposite diagonal corners • One in the front center and one in the rear center; or • One a quarter or one third away from the front of the room on both the right and left sides of the room.
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PLACE Subwoofer Placement Recommendations Guide Place Quad Subwoofers This section provides general recommendations on where to place four subwoofers in your listening room. You can try placing four subwoofers in either of the following configurations: • One in the center of each wall; or • One in each corner RECOMMENDED QUAD SUBWOOFER PLACEMENTS CENTER PLACEMENT Optimum Sutln, POlItIO" lor til.
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APPENDIX A Subwoofer Placement Recommendations Guide APPENDIX A Case Study: Determining Optimal Subwoofer Placement using the “Crawl Test” Technique in Velodyne’s Listening Room Overview To illustrate the use of the “Crawl Test” Technique described in the Subwoofer Placement Recommendations Guide, we used this technique to determine the best locations for subwoofers in the Velodyne listening room.
APPENDIX A Subwoofer Placement Recommendations Guide Illustrative of Technique If you use the “Crawl Test” technique in your listening room, what you hear or the variations you see in the frequency response curves will be different than those in this document. The evaluation we did was to illustrate the validity of the “Crawl Test” technique. What you hear and see depends on the acoustical properties of your room.
APPENDIX A Subwoofer Placement Recommendations Guide 4. We set the receiver volume such that we heard a moderate music volume. 5. Our evaluator walked to each initial location and listened. The evaluator took a step in several directions around each initial location to hear what improvement, if any was heard compared to the initial location. The evaluator chose a final location near each initial location. 6.
APPENDIX A Subwoofer Placement Recommendations Guide Recommended Locations Based on the frequency responses, we picked Location 1 as the best place for a single subwoofer because it had the smoothest response curve. Also, we picked Location 4 as the best location for a second subwoofer because the peak in its frequency response at about 60 Hz was narrower than the one in Location 2.
APPENDIX A Subwoofer Placement Recommendations Guide Comparison of Results Because not everyone has a Digital DrivePLUS subwoofer, we will now compare the results from listening to music and looking at frequency responses. This shows that with the “Crawl Test” technique, if you have a good ear for how bass sounds, you can choose the same locations as the more advanced method of viewing frequency response curves.
APPENDIX A Subwoofer Placement Recommendations Guide Example of Change in Frequency Response Due to Change in Subwoofer Placement To illustrate how moving the subwoofer can impact the frequency response, we moved the subwoofer in Location 4 towards the center of the room one foot. We ran the Auto-EQPLUS optimization at each location to determine the frequency response. The results are shown below.
APPENDIX A Subwoofer Placement Recommendations Guide The difference is hard to see at the above scale, so we have enlarged the curves below. The first image is the original curve, and the second image the curve after moving the subwoofer one foot. Difference between the curves and parameters: • The low-pass crossover frequencies are the same, but the original crossover slope is 30 dB and the second slope is 24 dB. • Note the level increase of up to 1 dB between 20 Hz and 50 Hz.
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