[joshuass]

Been doing a lot of reading lately. I've basically determined that one subwoofer isn't cutting it. My room is a 12x19.5 with a vaulted ceiling. It opens on one long side to the rest of the house with about half of that opening blocked by kitchen cabinets.

I have a Rythmik audio 15" ds1500 with their A370PEQ plate amp in the a sealed box in the corner.

I'm not getting much base in the MLP. I hear the woofer bottoming out if I turn it up. The sub is 6yrs old now, and I also wonder if it's failing. It just seems weird to get the kind sound I hear, it's not turned up that high.

The rest of the kit is nice but not quite matched to my use. I have 5 speedsters doing HT duty. They sound great except for their low sensitivity.

I modeled the room it's volume is 2300 cuft.

My use case is 50%TV/streaming, 30% games rest music and movies.

The tv is on one of the 12ft walls. My kids toys are on the other. I am forced to keep subs at the front of the room.

Here's what I think my plan is:

First, get a UMIK-1 and do some sweeps to find my nulls. I hope they aren't room modes I can't account for.

Build 2 new subs.. not sure which two but thinking towards some VBSS designs.

Replace speedsters with either cobalts or HT series. I like the domes and ribbons.

I basically have 12 ft to work with for the sound stage and about 30in in depth.

Is this a good plan?

 

[joshuass]

Here is a bird's eye view of the layout I am dealing with. The wall opposite the opening has a door-wall in it (not rendered). All space behind the chair is considered "kid space" and is not usable. Opposite the couch is the fireplace hearth. I'll be damned if I am going to mount a TV over that. The entire face is rough painted brick. The front channels are wall mounted. The TV is wall mounted. The subwoofer sits between the couch and wall. A "rack" sits in the other corner with the AVR, PC, and other peripherals/consoles.

I have my "side" surrounds on the wall opposite the TV. While not ideal nor proper, it does a decent job. A longer term goal would be to move to something like 7.1 or at least moving the side channels somewhere closer to being on the sides...

Here is a side view of the same room. You can see I have basically split the room's open layout into two areas. This is problematic for room modes, which is why I am hoping to mitigate it somewhat by have to subs.

 

[johnson636]

First, get a UMIK-1 and do some sweeps to find my nulls. I hope they aren't room modes I can't account for.

Very wise descision. If you do find that your MLP is in a null, strategically placing subs in different location should effectively reduce/eliminate it.

 

[trilkb]

A bass crawl is where I would start. Put your sub in your seat and go find a corner to stick your head in. My living room was the worst to get right, at one point I blocked my front door since I dont use it anyways lol. Now its usable but it will hit a speaker if opened all the way. Took about 6 different attempts to set it up right but I am finally happy with it. Sometimes you gotta make a sacrifice to get the sound, most peoples sacrifice is speaker placement to the room, not the other way around.

 

[joshuass]

A bass crawl is where I would start. Put your sub in your seat and go find a corner to stick your head in. My living room was the worst to get right, at one point I blocked my front door since I dont use it anyways lol. Now its usable but it will hit a speaker if opened all the way. Took about 6 different attempts to set it up right but I am finally happy with it. Sometimes you gotta make a sacrifice to get the sound, most peoples sacrifice is speaker placement to the room, not the other way around.

So I did do a bit of a bass crawl. I was unfortunately unable to locate a good space for the sub. This leads me to think taking some mic measurements will help determine why I can't seem to locate a good spot.

 

[trilkb]

Maybe you need to rethink your MLP then? The beauty of getting it right is you can turn on music and shut your eyes and it doesnt matter where you actually are in the room anymore lol. I am thrown by you saying you have a rythmik 15" subwoofer and it bottoms out and you still cant hear it, is there anywhere in the room you can hear it? Reminds me of when I had some Cerwin vega LS12 speakers and got no bass from them, now I have speakers with 8" woofers and get way more bass. Placement!