Toole didn't include pictures (I wish he would have! Dopes like me prefer crayon drawings to figurz!
). He explained placement as such: imagine shrinking your listening room by roughly 25%, centered from the middle. Then place the subs
in the four virtual corners, well out from the real corners. The implication was that this wasn't so fussy that you needed a mathematically perfect windowless, doorless room to make it work.
Obviously, Martha Steward wouldn't approve of this, but it would be doable in any man-friendly larger room (not great WAF, I'll admit). Given, for example, a 20' x 26' room, that's really only a few feet out of the corners, probably closer to the corners than your main speakers. Hey, no one said the best sound will be the prettiest layout. Of course, four subs isn't practical to many people, but it's better than 50! He implied that the use of more subs was better even up to the dozens, but I'm sure he meant this in a research manner only. He got good results with 2.
I will have to find the source I'm referencing; I read so much crap that I can't always remember where I found it.
If you only have 1 sub, you likely would be better off with corner placement, especially if you need the extra room gain. Since SPL drops off with distance (and disregarding room gain for a moment), near field placement of a sub can work very well too, provided the x-over point is relatively low. Dr. Hsu advocates nearfield placement, and I can attest to the fact that it works well, but of course the WAF of that can be off the bottom of the chart.
Russ Herchellmen did have one of the best mainstream articles I've ever read on sub placement, along with a ton of measurements and some theory. I can't recall if he wrote for SGHT or Home Theater Magazine, though. I rarely throw away a mag, so maybe I can dig it up. Perhaps someone here has a link. He argues strenuously against corner placement and has a lot of in room measurements to back his assertions. YMMV, and of course many rules go out the window when you have irregular room shapes, arched doorways, bay windows, etc. Even some pretty potent acoustic software seems to get a little dicier when you have a goofy enough room. Trial and error is often the best answer. Many people of course are limited to very few potential locations.
At the risk of hijacking the original thread, many (if not most) audiophools use no sound theory at all when laying out their stuff. For instance, it seems that the vast majority of online photos of members rigs (not just at AH) have the listening couch right up smack against the rear wall! Yuck! That's a terrible spot. I've yet to see one picture with the couch against a wall where the person bothered to treat the spot behind his head
in any way! I've also seen more pictures than I can count where the listening chair back extends well up over the top of the listeners head. Why would any intelligent person do this? You can easily hear the difference between the sound with your head against the headrest and leaning forward. The reason stuff like this is done is just simple ignorance & comfort (in the visual & physical sense).
My room isn't perfect, but I have a loveseat positioned well into the room (12 feet from the rear wall, give or take). I found that with test tones & an SPL meter, the bass varied by as much as 10dB moving the seating +/- one foot! It sits where the bass is pretty flat (esp after parametric EQ), the imagining is pretty good (imaging isn't one of my top fetishes) and the sightline is good. The backrest of the loveseat extends just over the top of my shoulders (I'm 5'9"-5'10"), and you get no bad reflections unless you slouch down. Room treatments are minimal and will be til I'm not so friggin' broke.
My room has pretty damn low WAF, to be honest- I use it for HT, too, and I have full blackout for the projector. The front of the room is matted off with flat black fabric, as are a few strategic other points. It won't make Better Homes & Gardens, but it's laid out for performance, not looks.
