Place the sub under a table?

Anybody here done this? I'm runing out of wife-approvable options to place a small subwoofer near the audio/TV setup in the living room.

So far, the agreed-upon plan is a chin-high wooden audio cabinet (medium-dark brown); the teevee will be to the left, hung on the wall so the height of the set will be even with the height of the cabinet. A shelf ("espresso" brown) will hold the right, center and front speakers, just below the set.

Then, to the right of the cabinet would be the sub, underneath a rolling table where the turntable is...so I can roll it down the hall, into the studio/office when needed infrequently. That table would also be "espresso" brown. The tv and the sub are both black, so that makes for a nifty little symmetry thing.

So, I know you get a boomy effect when you sink a sub ("sink a sub"! Ar-ar-ar!) into a cabinet shelf. But you can get away with being under a tabletop, if it's high enough, and doesn't give the tuntable above any grief. If my Polk sub (PSW-10) is 15" high...how high a table clearance should I seek out? I'm assuming I'll need to mount the casters myself, it's hard enough to find the furniture that fits my ideas as is.

 

You want to put a sub under a turntable? There's no worst place you could image except for possibly putting the turntable directly on the sub itself.

Vibrations are a turntable's worst enemy for tracking and sonic reasons. Don't do it unless it's a cheap system you don't ever crank and have a listening room elsewhere with a far better system anyway.

 

^^^ what he said. Put the sub far away from the tt....

 

Personally I huave found its got to go where its got to go. The room measurements tell me that, and thats it. Often closer than what I would like it, but what ya gunna do? Any other positioning in the room further from the TT just made the nice balanced low end I had go completely tits up.

 

Funny how you spend half your life making a laundry list of "how the sound system's gonna finally go if we ever get our own home"...and no matter how hard you wish and plan and stategize...it all comes down to, "You are NOT going to pass on this house because you can't get your speakers in right-!"

My only other option appears to be, knock down two load-bearing walls, set the thing up right and perfect in the new area...and who cares if we don't have a kitchen.

 

**** yeah! Open that bad boy up, set-up the perfect entertainment area, and grab yourself a TV dinner!
-Bill

 

The best set-up is to get a lowboy audio stand and mount the TV on the wall directly behind it so that it is in the dead center of the speaker arrangement. The sub can go out to the side under a table, no problem. Just place the turntable on the top surface of the audio stand, not over the sub. This photo shows the TV directly on top of the stand, but you can imagine how much space you'll have if you wall mount it instead.

-Bill

 

Nice thing about a sub is you can hide it anywhere. It's not as critical as the other speakers setup.

 

My sub is under a table in the corner, but not near my TT.

 

Depends what you want from it. If you want it to fill out the bottom octave where your mains roll off, and do it say +\-3db I think placement is pretty important.

 

Correct, hence the words not as critical.

 

It took me ages to place my sub but where it ended up after a few hours of me and my mate messing around, wasn't where you'd think the most obvious place would be.

It's down in the far corner, just about as far from the TV (and all but the front/left speaker) as it's possible to go. It's the perfect place for it though.

 

I've got hours and hours into placement based on analyzing graphs and tweaking settings. But throw it anywhere you want and it will sound good.

In my experience, you can throw it anywhere you want if you don't mind one note bass. If you want to use electronic room correction as a band aid then you can have a few more options. If you want seemless low end with a smooth frequency response that blends into the mains with no room created dips in the response and time aligned with the mains then as @tim185 said, the sub goes where it goes and everything else is placed around it, including bass traps.

It's all a compromise. Chose where you want to make your compromises. I chose to pick a house when we were shopping with my own room to do with as I wanted.

 

Dos an Oppo have a microwave feature...?

 

Yeah, I've been amivalent to the lowboy option for awhile. I'm trying hard to not make the obvious choices, something that works where neither a home decorator or an audio guy would think of ("Wait for the SECOND right answer").

So I already have my chin-high media cabinet, and putting the TT in it is not an option anyway, since it willstill be used in two rooms. I guess my best punt will be putting the sub underneath where the teevee hangs, and put up with the grousing about my having 4 speakers (L, R, C, Sub) aimed at us. Then I can have a bit more fleibility is finding a rolling table for the TT, because I wouldn't have to find one that would have had to roll over a big hulking thing on the floor. My only useless frustration will be losing the espresso brown accent - I'll have to go with a black shelf and table instead.

This isn't the main system, this is just to enhance the audio for our 2nd TV, and provide something for music when my wife's mahjong group comes over. In fact, I'm going to use a PS2 as the CD transport, simply because I've got one sitting in a box.

 

7 Ways To Hide Your Subwoofer

 

Not to join the chorus of people not answering the question, haha, but is a wall shelf an option for the turntable? Based on your description, you have some room for the sub under the TV? I guess I'd be looking to keep the sub in the corner and place a super solid, squat ... something for a turntable there instead. I don't know if that even makes sense without a better sense of the room. Anyways, I'm no stranger to the limitations of a small space myself. I'll add that I had a subwoofer in a corner underneath a heavy, metal desk—almost no clearance left/right, about a foot above. Not bad. Actually, I think in a psychological sense, having the subwoofer somewhat obscured improved the illusion of bass in the soundstage. Putting it right in the middle of the speakers measured well, sounded good, but I found myself constantly looking at the subwoofer and it diminished my enjoyment somehow. So that's one reason I prefer to find a good corner. People are strange.

 

Kitchens are overrated.

Wisdom Of The Ages.

Good to know. That should translate to "not critical" which in turn should grant you some of the placement flexibility that sub marketing suggests.

Sometimes it doesn't have to be set up perfectly.

Crowd: "GASP!"

Maybe a separate thread, but certainly a fitting comment here anyway.

 

Posted for the Polk : Al Baron from Polk Audio gave the same forward-firing recommendation, and also advised, "Keep the space around the woofer enclosure to a minimum to reduce unwanted resonances from this 'secondary enclosure.' The cabinet's interior will have a resonant frequency all its own that will exaggerate this range unnecessarily, muddying up the bass. If you can't minimize the space, stuff fairly dense batting or insulation around the sides and back to reduce the level of this resonance.