Happy soon-to-be New Year. My wife and I are building a new house and I will have a 50ft by 26ft rectangle basement that is all mine! I will be finishing it myself and will also share a wall with a separate 25ft by 25ft side room. Floors will remain concrete (covered in epoxy). 8 ft ceilings. Completely underground with only one egress window. I am doing my best to plan out my entertainment setup. I will be using an 86” QLED screen mounted on one of the 50 ft walls so viewing will be across the 26 ft not the full 50 ft length, tower fronts, ceiling surrounds and rears with a 7.2 receiver (Maybe a 9.1). My question is: would four separate sealed 12” subs placed in the corners running off a NV3000 give better low end than a F-20 with a Dayton ref 15 running off 500watt Bash amp? Math says the four 12s with more watts would be louder but I am a total rookie when it comes to horns. From what I have read they are super efficient. Not looking for huge SPL, want to dig deep and have some volume when needed. I will also be using a minidsp to help tame the concrete floor. 50% TV, 25% movies, 25% music. Like to stay under a $1k for just the sub/amp choice.
You absolutely positively are better off with multiple subs, otherwise you will have drastically differing bass as you move around the room. Like none in one spot, way too much in another. Be aware though that the 4 corners are unlikely to be the best spots. Maybe two corners, but you'll want the other two more random. Search distributed bass and read a bit.
I can't speak to horns but I did buy a Ref15 and managed to build a TL line for it tuned to like 22. I'm very happy with the output and the sound down low is exactly what I was expecting a good low distortion sub to sound like. However I've decided to build a set of TL lines with 10 inch pro drivers to do 40-120 to get more of the upper end punchy stuff and have more control over the sound.
Definitely go with multi subs. I've got 4 x12" in a roughly 70' x 40' first floor, three sonosubs, one EBS tuned, and one isobaric loaded. With a 49 year old 35 wpc receiver driving them, the bass is scary deep, and uniform, once you get the position right. Corner placement never worked for me... I have them, 2 mid wall in the 40' width, one at ceiling level (2nd floor landing) and the last by the TV. Here's and older pic. Remember, you are mostly tuning to the room, filling the nodal response, so multi subs gives more options
