Is it true that even if you have the most powerful 18inch subwoofer and misplace it in your room, you will hear no bass? It has been my experience that the placement can make the difference between very deep loud bass and quiet unextended bass. Is it also true that what may sound like thunderous rattling bass inside the room can barely be heard when you go outside the room or house?
There are more variables. If you place a sub in the corner or some other place which maximally excites a room mode, at a particular frequency and specific spot in the room you will have a null, ie. one spot, one frequency phase cancellation. Corner loading creates all of them that can exist.
Unless it's a sealed 1m thick solid concrete bunker of a room... No
It really depends on what you describe as "thunderous rattling bass inside" and the location where you live. Here in North Europe our modern building standards of high insulation and stone houses (insulated dual wall constructions, thermopane glass ect), it is possible to play loud enough to make your relative lightweight furniture tot resonate/rattle. An innocent neighbour outside wouldn't have a clue. If you repeat the same setup in a wooden house, badly insulated, your innocent neighbour may turn out to be less innocent as you thought. My parents probably describe these levels as "thunderous rattling bass inside" while the kids call it "normal"...as long they are not on their cellphone. So I agree with Revboden that there are more variables and definitions to look at and in short, the answer will be long to your "quick question".
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You will get peaks and dips in the frequency response depending on the distance to and number of walls.
These are consequences of the constructive and destructive interference between the direct and reflected waves. In the case of parallel walls like in a typical room there's also the phenomena of standing waves.
Placing a sub near a wall will give a +3dB boost(for each wall) at the frequencies < 1/4 wavelength to the wall.
These are consequences of the constructive and destructive interference between the direct and reflected waves. In the case of parallel walls like in a typical room there's also the phenomena of standing waves.
Placing a sub near a wall will give a +3dB boost(for each wall) at the frequencies < 1/4 wavelength to the wall.
Why then is it that in my room all the corners I've tried don't give me deep low bass? The best position is about half way along one wall. This contradicts the usual advice of corner placement.
What position would give the deepest bass in a cubic shaped room?
Depends. Extrapolation is a dangerous thing.
Can you give details of the subwoofer you're trying this with?
"The deepest bass" is also very non-specific. If you're talking about maximum output at 20Hz (or some other arbitrary figure), then corner loading. But that doesn't automatically make corner loading the best option.
Chris
So many rooms, so many variables.
Seriously speaking, I have personally experienced some pretty dramatic (very noticeable) bass loss in various points in a room depending on the drivers/boxes/placement and room characteristics combined with my position in the room. (My position in the room being the most significant player actually)
In the real world, we deal with rooms that may share an open stairwell or a shared open space with a kitchen or some such. In these real world scenarios, you should expect some major variations all through range of listening. You may be focusing on bass, but, in reality, there are probably a lot more dips and rises through the range than you may realize.
Fact is, it's easy to "focus" in on bass response because it can effect so much more than just the ear drums. As a result, you may find yourself moving about a room, "feeling" less bass in various places, while, you are simultaneously walking in and out of various "lobes" of intensity for many other frequency ranges while not noticing. The difference is, that when you are more focused on the bass range, your mind basically "fills in" the gaps of sound levels in higher frequencies, because the mind sort of "knows" what it is supposed to expect in those more normal listening ranges.
The mind will play tricks, you sort of intuitively know the expected output, so even if you are in a dip in the lobing at higher hz, the mind will say "it's over there and still exists just as loud" and thus you interpret it as being as loud.
Crazy eh?
Sorry to go all complication on the factor here.
The answer is yesyesyesnonononoyesnoyesnoyesno
Seriously speaking, I have personally experienced some pretty dramatic (very noticeable) bass loss in various points in a room depending on the drivers/boxes/placement and room characteristics combined with my position in the room. (My position in the room being the most significant player actually)
In the real world, we deal with rooms that may share an open stairwell or a shared open space with a kitchen or some such. In these real world scenarios, you should expect some major variations all through range of listening. You may be focusing on bass, but, in reality, there are probably a lot more dips and rises through the range than you may realize.
Fact is, it's easy to "focus" in on bass response because it can effect so much more than just the ear drums. As a result, you may find yourself moving about a room, "feeling" less bass in various places, while, you are simultaneously walking in and out of various "lobes" of intensity for many other frequency ranges while not noticing. The difference is, that when you are more focused on the bass range, your mind basically "fills in" the gaps of sound levels in higher frequencies, because the mind sort of "knows" what it is supposed to expect in those more normal listening ranges.
The mind will play tricks, you sort of intuitively know the expected output, so even if you are in a dip in the lobing at higher hz, the mind will say "it's over there and still exists just as loud" and thus you interpret it as being as loud.
Crazy eh?
Sorry to go all complication on the factor here.
The answer is yesyesyesnonononoyesnoyesnoyesno
The "deepest bass" position would be dependent on room dimensions, regardless of room shape, and would depend on your listening position in the room in relation to the woofer location.
Predictions of gain going from full to 1/2 space to 1/4 space to 1/8 space are predicated on an infinite space as occurs outdoors away from boundaries.
In room response is quite different when the wavelength is large compared to the boundaries.
A 20 Hz wavelength is about 56 feet, a 40 Hz wavelength is 28 feet, a 80 hz wavelength 14 feet.
In a room with dimensions small compared to these lengths, the initial wave combines with the reflected wave in various combinations resulting in an additive peak (in phase) or more or less subtractive (out of phase) dip or null.
The distribution of the peaks and nulls (room modes) are dependent on room shape, dimensions, speaker location and frequency.
The distribution is so complicated that computer programs presently only model the modal range in 2 dimensions, but room modes are 3 dimensional.
Art
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