[russ.will]

FWIW, we had a couple of friends round the other night to watch Pirates of the Caribean DMC and generous soul that I am, I allowed them and the wife to sit in the 'listening position' and the two seats adjacent. This left me sitting in the one position next to a wall. I spent two hours suffering staggeringly overblown bass that rattled every tooth in my head. In the light of Chris's comments at his surfing position, I can easily believe that he is sitting at a reinforcement node. I'll bet it's about 30 to 35Hz. This is a problem I hadn't even considered, until enforced proximity with a room boundary and it's surfeit of reinforced frequencies.

As regards DF or FF, I'd always assumed the directionality of bass (or lack of it) to mean it was purely an asthetic concern. However, in the smaller European room potential sub positions are more limited. You've kinda got to fit them in where you can.

I recently helped a friend set up his new SVS SB12 with my SMS-1 as an aid. He only had two positions it could sit in with a few inches either way for tuning.

In the process of the afternoon that followed, I turned the sub with driver to the wall, along the wall and away from the wall. The position in question was best about 12"out from the wall but there was no room to move it further. With a DF that would have been the limit of choice; 0-12". With the FF SB-12 it gave the option of driver against the wall (0") to the 12" position with the driver facing out (19"). I tried all the variations with the sub facing forward, back, left and right, within the room available before finally settling on the final position.

A DF could not have allowed this.

Russell