sub in the closet?

[tcarcio]

I was wondering if anyone has done this. I have a closet that is not used in the back corner of my HTR. I am going to take the door off and put the sub inside the closet but I don't know if this is really a good idea or not. I know the easy answer is to just try it and see but I was interested to see if anyone else has done this and what their results were. The closet is 7' H and is an off shape kind of like a triangle and has a couple of shelves in it. The sub is an Elemental desiegns A5-350 15'' with a 550w amp and all controls. Opinions.............

[brent_s]

Some recommend against rear sub placement in general. Personally, it works for me. Just make sure you cross as low as reasonable for your mains.

As far as closet placement, itself. It may have the potential to resonate at certain frequencies...kind of like singing in the shower. If I were trying it, I would place the driver and ports in the same plane as the door frame. I would avoid any arrangement that has the ports or driver radiating inside the plane of the closet.

In the end, it's still back to your "easy answer"...since only you can decide if you actually like the results.

-Brent

[tcarcio]

Interesting, I thought the same thing as far as placeing the sub with the ports faceing towards the room itself. But why have it crossed as low as possilble? Right now I have it crossed at the reciever at 80 but I can go to 50.

Sorry I read your post wrong. My mains are rated to handle as low as 40 so you think going to 50 at the reciever would be better?

[joninflorida]

I am in the process of designing our new H/T room in a home we are begining to build later this year. I will have (2) built in subs on the front stage. They are the SVS PB 13 Ultras. The main difference is this sub is a front firing and front ported design. I have been assurred by the tech folks that there will be no adverse effect on sound being built in. They will have the front face about 2-4 inches out, not quite flusf, a slight reveal. I don't think putting a down fire or side fire sub would not be a good idea for a closet. It seems there would be alot of bloated reverberation in a confined area, I may be wrong, but I wouldn't suggest that application for a down firing sub.

[tcarcio]

Well I put the sub in the closet and it was setup with the dual ports facing out into the room and the sub as a side fireing placement. It seemed to localize the bass very close to the closet. I turned the sub to a down fireing position,which is the way the sub is desiegned anyway, and it increased the bass in the room substantially. I didn't get an spl reading but it was very noticable. I will run the test tones tommorrow and see what I get.

[JimP]

I tried rear sub placements using a 80hz and 50hz crossovers and was able to localize the bass. I'm not so sure if it necessarily was the sub, or possibly harmonics that I was localizing.

In any event, when playing your sub, do check to see if you're perceiving low frequencies coming from the rear causing any direction cue problems.

[brent_s]

As I think you've figured out, I was suggesting the lowest usable crossover point to avoid/minimize localization. You could experiement with the 50hz xover, but 80hz is probably ok...that's one octave above your speakers rated f3 point. Crossovers aren't brickwalls so if you cross too close to their lower useful limit, they'll receive a signal they can't really produce, creating a hole in your overall response.

Side firing the driver into the closet probably "corner loaded" the signals above your xover point, that would normally fall into the background. The cabin gain of the small dimensions of the closet boosted the >80hz info enough to be audible. Remember...with a 4th order filter at 80hz, a 120hz tone will only be down roughly 12dB in your sub.

Front firing the driver with the ports top firing would probably work, too. The passband of the ports (20hz? tuning) shouldn't go high enough to excite localizable frequencies.

-Brent

[tcarcio]

Thanks, I appreciate the info. I covered the inside of the closet with some acoustic foam that was givin to me but I don't think it made much of a difference. I think my next step is to get a behringer 1124 and go from there.