Problem in Sub Woofer placement

[vikasjsheth]

Dear friends,
I had recently bought a JVC Home Cinema System which consisted of 5 satellite speakers and one active sub woofer. The woofer is 6" in dia, rear ported and side firing. When I tested it in Mumbai, where my room is quite big (20ftX10ft) it worked wonderful! The bass was tight, there were no overhangs and there was no booming. Now, I've shifted to Pune. Here I have a much smaller room compared to Mumbai (12ftX8ft). Here, I'm keeping the woofer such that the 8ft wall is perpendicular to the sub woofer and the rear port is directly facing the 12ft wall. The bass here is horrible! At some frequencies, the bass is OK, but many it simply blooms out of control and the experience becomes extremely annoying .

I went to an audio expert, he said that since my sub woofer is rear ported, the sound is blooming. He offered me the Polk Audio active sub woofer containing a front firing 10" woofer and the sub is bottom ported. Now, do I really need to buy a new Sub Woofer, or can you suggest me a better placement option.

Thanks,
Vikas J Sheth

 

[markw]

Before giving up hope. experiment with placment of that thing. ...or even turn it aroubd. It costs nothing to be creative with that. Odds are that you'll find a suitible place/position for it if you try long enough.

Plus, it sounds like a room issue, not a hardware issue. A new subwoofer, particularly a larger one, will most likely have the same problems with placement. ...only worse.

 

[tcarcio]

It may sound stupid but put the sub in your listening position and then crawl around the floor, yes I said crawl, and when you get to where the bass sounds best put the sub at that position. You can experiment more after that but that should help.

 

[j_garcia]

The room size is the reason. Smaller rooms don't support the length of the waveforms sufficiently and they form in fractional portions which allow for much greater cancellation. The closer to square a room is also is a big factor in poor bass response. Changing the direction of the port will make absolutely no difference.

I agree with the placing the sub in the listening position, however due to the size of the room I don't think you are going to find an ideal spot that will completely overcome the issue. What you may end up needing to do is place the sub near the listenign position to get the most out of it. I'd also consider some tactile transducers AKA Bass Shakers.

 

[tcarcio]

I would imagine some EQ would be a good choice if positioning fails to give you a good result.