Dynaudio SUB 250 COMPACT Positioning the subwoofer, Choose adequate music material, Operation

Operation

1/4 1/2 3/4

1/4

Listening Room

1/2

3/4

Positioning the subwoofer

Although it is often said that the location of a subwoofer in a listening room is not critical (as the human ear can not locate direction at very low frequencies), we recommend that you choose its position carefully. Thus the subwoofer can integrate seamlessly with the other speakers in the system and interact correctly with the room acoustics.

All of the following should be taken as rough guidelines; bass response in general is very dependent on the acoustics of the listening environment. Finding the best position often involves a lot of trial-and-error experimentation. Always trust your ears, even if the position of the subwoofer seemingly goes against the guidelines. Contradictory as it may seem, good integration of subwoofers has been achieved when one isn’t aware that a subwoofer is present at all in the system, yet performance involves fast, deep and solid bass without sounding stressed, even at loud levels.

Choose adequate music material

When experimenting to find the optimal location, use a couple of music tracks with repetitive bass across a large spectrum. The tracks should be sufficiently different from each other and each should cover a wide bass-range. Musical instruments, such as a double-bass, bass guitar, church organ, etc. cover a wide spectrum in the bass region and are therefore very suitable. Using non-music (such as action movies) material to position and adjust the subwoofer with, may lead to spectacular results with such material but almost always it will result in overblown and excessive bass when playing music with the same setting.

Impact of room-modes

Every listening environment will have specific “room-modes”, whereby in some specific locations in the room and at particular frequencies, the bass may be too much or too lean. This effect will be stronger in square and “shoe-box” shaped rooms. With a single subwoofer, the better position for the subwoofer relative to the listening position will be the one where bass is perceived to be neither too much nor too lean at any given frequency.

XAvoid placing the subwoofer at 1/4, 1/2 or 3/4 of either the length or width of the room as at these locations the room-modes are likely to be strongest (the dashed lines in the figure)

Note: Always position subwoofers at least 1 mtr/3 ft away from a CRT television as the magnetic field emanating from the subwoofer may otherwise distort the picture. If you see discoloration on the television screen, try moving the subwoofer and other speakers close by away from the television.

12 Dynaudio Sub 250