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Sub-woofer behind door


dburton

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Depends on what you mean by work :) You can't typically localize bass sounds (long story, wavelengths are so large that they basically wrap around your hard so your ears can't tell what side it came from) - that is the goodnews. The bad is everything absorbs sound, including the door. It is up to you and the customer to decide what is acceptible. It will work, it won't sound as good.

Curt

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I'd like to offer a different perspective.The acceptability of placing a subwoofer ultimately depends on your client's preferences and priorities, i.e. sonic realism vs. appearance and/or clutter. Thus the outcome may be best arrived at by trial and error. That is, place the subwoofer in different locations, e.g. around the room, in closets, under tables, under floor boards and note the customer's reaction to the sonic quality. Once the clients preferences to location and sound is identified, you can finalize the install. Another tip would be to identify the client's music preferences. For example, if it's more rockish, hip hop, metallica, etc.. the subwoofer probably serves to be a low frequency fill. On the other hand, if the client's music preferences are more akin to acoustic or classical music, then sonic realism is probably their goal. Thus, closet and underfloor placement would be completely unacceptable to achieve that end.

A coment on the points raised in the earlier notes... We shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the audio systems attempt to reproduce music with sonic fidelity, i.e. the sound of the actual instruments and voices as performed by the musicians. The goal is not to simply produce frequencies, for that does not necessarily constitute faithful musical reproduction. As an engineer, audiophile and classical bassist, I know that instruments that generate 'bass' notes, (harp, piano, tuba, bassoon, tympani, bass drum, bass guitar, organ, etc) all rely on harmonics to create uniquely identifiy their instruments quality (also known as 'timbre' in music). As such, we can easily tell the difference between a mass-produced instrument and a handcrafted one. Personally I have two B&W, 400 amp subwoofers on the floor just below my main drivers. Their crossover frequencies are set to prevent hearing a timbre change as a piano, organ or bass plays a scale across the crossover frequency. If this is not set properly, the listener will percieve the performer has 'shifted' from the main drivers to the subwoofer - this unnatural effect is further increased when the distance between the subwoofer(s) and main speakers is increased. If you get a CD with low frequency test tones playing scales you will hear this position shift which can be very annoying for some listeners.

Hope this helps.. marcel

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The sub installations here are generally for 5.1 - 7.1 surround, it is part of what CEDAI likes to call th theatre EXPERIENCE.

Subs for audiophile music are a different story , and probably beyond the concept level of most C4 clients and many dealers.

But marcel, you are right, it is what the customer wants, it's his to decide , ours to advise.

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