🔈 Subwoofer Placement Reference Guide

A quick reference for common subwoofer placement options and how each tends to affect bass response.

Why position changes the bass so much

This page lists placements rather than taking inputs, because your room's dimensions set the answer. Two effects drive the five options above. The first is standing waves, lowest along each dimension at:

f = 1130 / (2 × length in ft)     (1130 ft/s, speed of sound)

A 20 × 14 × 8 ft room resonates at 28 Hz, 40 Hz and 71 Hz, plus multiples of each. A sub at a peak of one of those waves drives it hard; one at a null barely excites it. The second effect is boundary loading: each wall, floor or ceiling within about a quarter wavelength adds roughly 3 dB, so a front corner - three boundaries at once - is some 9 dB louder than the same sub in free space. Corners are the loudest option and the boomiest for the same reason.

Running the subwoofer crawl

The crawl is the only row that measures your actual room, and it costs nothing:

Put the sub on the main seat at ear height, playing a bass-heavy track or a slow sweep on repeat.
Crawl the front and side walls on hands and knees, ear at floor level, listening for the most even bass rather than the loudest.
Put the sub where your head was. By reciprocity, the response you heard there is what you get at the seat.

Room gain works in your favour below the lowest mode: in a sealed small room, pressure rises about 12 dB per octave under roughly 28 Hz for the room above, which is why a modest sub can feel deep indoors and thin outside.

Frequently asked questions

Where is the best place to put a subwoofer?

There is no universal spot. A front corner gives the most output, an off-centre front wall position is usually smoother, and only the crawl finds the best answer for your own room and seat.

Is a subwoofer in the corner bad?

Not bad, but uneven. A corner adds some 9 dB from triple boundary loading and excites every room mode at once: more bass, with bigger peaks and deeper dips. Small rooms and modest subs often take that trade.

Do two subwoofers really help?

For evenness, yes - more than a single bigger one would. Two at the midpoints of opposite walls cancel the strongest mode, flattening the difference between seats rather than just raising the level.