[superdragon]

Couldn't wait and setup the Subwoofer. New home will probably be where it is now, around 9 feet to my right on top of the kitchen counter, just around ear level. Setup with an Audtek SC25 1-Conductor Coax Cable into the dedicated subwoofer port of my amp.

@bigshot - Help me out here. I assume phase should be 0 and not 180. Pls confirm. Of course, I'll be playing around with stuff, but what do you recommend for (percentage wise) gain and crossover settings, for music, as well as movies.

This may be the end of the journey for now. We'll see how I like the movie audio from whatever film I watch later.

 

[bigshot]

Subs work better by the floor and towards the middle pointing to an open area. Mains should be on ear level, not the sub. Phase should be zero. I would try a crossover below 80 to start since you can’t cross over your mains. Try it where I indicated on my map.

 

[superdragon]

Ty - Mains are a little below ear level because of shelf height. My speakers have 70 as lowest range - should I set crossover at exactly 70, or a little lower? I'll move the subwoofer to the floor tomorrow - too dead now. I'll see if I prefer your suggestion.

 

[bigshot]

70 is a good place to start. See how it sounds. You can put a little shim under the mains to tip them up a bit.

 

[superdragon]

My setup is much better with the subwoofer, but there is still room for improvement:

I set the gain to one notch before maximum and the crossover to 80 Hz. To test the extra bass, I streamed some random action movie with lots of shooting, lots of fighting, and a bunch of stuff getting blown up. I was very impressed early on when during the first action scene, I felt the genuine movie theater experience. You know, the part when the soundtrack sends steady low frequency effects to get the watchers in the suspenseful mood. I do agree with Bigshot that my subwoofer placement is off. I did feel as if the newfound bass was too localized. Hopefully, with a better placement, it will sound and feel more together with the rest of the overall sound and not like a separate piece.
I didn't get this vibe all of the, just sometimes when the scenes caused the bass to really kick in.

Something weird happened, but I have no idea if this was due to a bad mix, or if my ears quickly adjusted to the new sound. Early on, I raised the volume because it sounded lower than when it started. I did this a few more times. I'll have to stream something mainstream to see if this gets replicated.

The extra bass smoothed out the emptiness, but it was still apparent, albeit less, in the calmer scenes with only dialogue and no soundtrack.

I also had fun listening to some audio tracks the people use to test bass response.

I have plans tomorrow, but will spend some time on Sunday testing different subwoofer locations, including Bigshot's suggestion.

 

[bigshot]

The sub should be completely silent unless it is reproducing sub bass. You shouldn't hear it in dialogue scenes. The level is probably a bit too high. You want to play some music with descending bass lines and see if the crossover is right. The idea isn't to have a lot of bass. It's to have balanced bass that is even from top to bottom.

 

[superdragon]

I believe my setup is finally complete!

I moved the subwoofer to the floor, seven feet to my left and two and a half feet directly in front of a corner, facing into empty space, angled to face the center of the TV. I didn't do the centering on purpose - the corner angle just works out this way. The bass is much, much stronger than my previous raised location. So much so, that I turned the gain down to half, plus one. I left the crossover at 80 Hz. This was fine for the movie I just watched, and some songs, but for other songs, the bass is too overwhelming. I'll try decreasing the gain first and leave the crossover alone. Saw a bunch of webpages recommending 80 for my speaker pair. The new location creates a much more natural complete sound, in contrast to the separate feeling of my previous setup. I just watched another random action/adventure movie with lots of gunfire, fights, and explosions. The audio was more enjoyable than the last movie I watched with the raised subwoofer.

Bigshot did say, "The sub should be completely silent unless it is reproducing sub bass. You shouldn't hear it in dialogue scenes." I didn't hear bass thumping during dialogue scenes from the last movie, but the voices sounded like they were using lower vocal ranges. While perhaps a tad unnatural, I found this to compensate well for any empty sound my weird room acoustics creates.

May thanks Bigshot!

 

[bigshot]

Happy to be useful.