rubbish? what the hell do i listen to? all sorts - everythign from metallica to mozart. i have my sub crossed over at 50hz for a reason and its not what i *think*, its what i
hear. i didnt spend the time measuring everything with an spl meter and setting up real time equalistion through foobar if i wasnt so particular about the sound from my own stereo
that can be a cause, yes, but not the only cause. bass in the 100hz region might be very quiet in a particular song but its still directional enough to tell where its coming from. Running a sub too hot will affect the balance of everything coming out of it, obviously so yes, that will make it more obvious too but in the case of very low stuff, its not in a 'i can hear it from over there' way but a 'its louder than everything else' way.
There is one thing, the most important thing, that you should be aware of with a subwoofer and that is the way it interacts with the room. A lot of peopel will tell you bass is not not directional 'so it doesnt matter where you put the sub'. this is the single biggest misconception i think you'll find regarding subwoofers. Where you put a sub in a roo can completely change the the way it interacts with the room. Because of boundary gain, standing waves and everything else involved with a moving piston trying to generate sound waves, the frequency response can be dramatically changed by moving the speaker, or moving yourself. Try it - play some music, move your head around the room and you will hear the sound changes dramatically. the same will happen if you then move the sub but you stay in the same listening position. where i sit listning to my stereo, i have seen a change of over 15db at a particular frequency just by moving the subwoofer. 15db is a huge amount, if you consider that an increase of 3db requires double the input power, you should see what a difference it really makes. so you can see, as far as frequency responce goes, placement is critical.
Now, sound waves ARE directional whatever the frequency. they move in a straight direction away from the driver producing them. them being directional and what we can 'hear' as direction are two different things, but consider this:
imagine a subwoofer positioned off center in a room. a lot of people say a corner of the room is a great idea so we'll go with that - imagine a subwoofer in the front left corner of the room behind the front left speaker, this being a downward firing sub with a front firing port, just for example, with the port firing towards the rear left corner. you will hear without an doubt as i did with my setup like this in my old lounge, that there is a lot of bass in that rear left corner of the room and the rear right, but a null right in the middle of that wall, where i happend to sit. not ideal and a pain in the backside tbh. you'd notice also that there is next to no bass at all in the front right corner of the room "but bass is not directional......you cant hear where its coming from". maybe not but you can hear what parts of the room are trapping bass.
So, you move the sub around a bit. now you have masses of bass in the rear left corner, but non in the rear right and ill tell you right now you most certainly can hear that. you can liken it to putting on a pair of headphones and playing a 30hz tone out fo the left speaker only - you WILL hear it. Now, the human brain isnt stupid and actually does a decent job of telling you where a sound is being generated from because of room interaction even *if* its not possible to poinpint frequencies that low in a wide open space.
if you really dont believe me, just try it. its why my subwoofer is sitting dead center between my two front speakers, why its crossed over at 50hz, and why ive been able to extract an almost flat responce right down to 9hz from a sealed 15" subwoofer *in the listening position*
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