# A couple subwoofer placement questions



## nickwin (Dec 10, 2007)

I've got a MFW-15 in smallish room (2000 cf), and I have a couple questions about placement. First, my room is closed off on 3 sides, but the right wall (if your facing the screen) has an opening to another room. If I place my sub directly across from that opening, will I "leak" some bass energy into the next room. In other words, would it noticeably lower the apparent output in my theater room if the sub is aimed toward the opening? (_And If so, is this a bad thing?)_

My second question is, is it important that the face of the subwoofer driver be aimed at the listening position? If I have the face of the sub at a 90 degree angle from me, will this effect the sound? I know low freq. are pretty much omni-directional, but my "gut" tells me I would get more impact and beter SQ if the sub its pointed right at me. Bass Heads, help me out! Thanks


----------



## ironglen (Mar 4, 2009)

Hey Nick, 

You should turn the sub different directions to see how you like the sound. You might get better reinforcement in one direction vs another, but you should be the judge on overall sound quality. Best reinforcement will be corner placement, second best along a wall away from openings (the opposite wall is ok, just don't place a sub next to it). Sounds like you have a good placement. Hope that helps!


----------



## Prof. (Oct 20, 2006)

nickwin said:


> My second question is, is it important that the face of the subwoofer driver be aimed at the listening position? If I have the face of the sub at a 90 degree angle from me, will this effect the sound? I know low freq. are pretty much omni-directional, but my "gut" tells me I would get more impact and beter SQ if the sub its pointed right at me. Bass Heads, help me out! Thanks


As you mentioned, the very low frequencies won't be adversely affected with the sub at 90 degrees..
However, frequencies near the cut-off point (80hz.) will become more directional..

As a general rule of thumb, the max. angle I would suggest is that the sub doesn't point past the outer most seat on the front row seating..


----------



## lsiberian (Mar 24, 2009)

Bass performance is the result of the room and sub working together. The direction of the sub is irrelevant. Though most of use keep them pointed at us for aesthetic reasons.


----------



## nickwin (Dec 10, 2007)

cool, thanks for the reply's guys. The reason I asked in the first place is because in my particular situation the sub integrates into the room much better aesthetically if its towards the front of the room along the left wall, with the face aiming towards the right wall. I plan on moving it around a little and checking the response with my RS SPL meter when I get a chance, but I just wanted to know if pointing the driver away from the listening position was a big no no before I started experimenting.

The subs basically way to big for the room its in (aesthetic wise) and it seems to look less obtrusive if its sitting parallel with the side wall as opposed to angled out from it. So it isn't _necessarily_ a bad thing if the driver isn't pointed at the listener? When I was thinking about it, down firing subs came to mind, which obviously cant be pointed at the listener, but I wasn't sure if those were designed differently to take that into account.


----------



## selden (Nov 15, 2009)

Nick,

The traditional way to find the best location for the sub is to place it at the listening position and then go around the room listening for the best sound. Then put the sub there. 

The paths that the sound waves follow are symmetric between the listening position and the speaker positions: the same path is followed in both directions.


----------

