Conclusion

Don’t be surprised if perfection is elusive when attempting your own set of measurements to optimize subwoofer positioning. I certainly didn’t achieve it, though the bass in my room ended up being more uniform from seat to seat than before, both with and without Audyssey room correction. And while Audyssey worked well for music listening, I sometimes preferred the added warmth that was present without it for movies. Further experimentation using Audyssey’s Multeq Editor app, which can be used to adjust the target curve, would help here, but Multeq Editor isn’t available for all components that feature Audyssey room correction.

Reading Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms, the book’s charts make it clear that the complexity of small room acoustics is only slightly less than infinite and filled with variables that can’t be fully accounted for in any practical sense. But one thing about bass is certain: In rooms where there’s more than one listener, two (or four!) properly positioned subwoofers beat a single sub every time.