You might be wondering, are two subwoofers better than one? The answer is yes. Why, you might ask? This article will explain why you might want to purchase two subwoofers or more for your surround sound system.
Installing multiple subwoofers in your living room or theater room will perform significantly better and give you a smoother bass response across a wider listening area due to modal averaging. The challenge is keeping WAF high (wife approval factor). If your wife is anything like mine, she’s willing to tolerate one subwoofer as long as it doesn’t ruin the aesthetics of the room, but asking her to consider two is a whole different challenge. Thankfully, after hearing the difference, my wife is now on board with the two. Two 12” subwoofers will give even distribution in the room. Adding four subwoofers has the most even distribution bass throughout the room. You’re better off with two subwoofers for high WAF, based on experience.
Many people have their music and home theater system in a mix-used area like a living room open to the kitchen. To get the best bass, the subwoofer performance must be balanced with careful placement to allow maximum value. Even finding the “perfect” location for a single subwoofer still won’t yield the optimal frequency response in all seats you are trying to achieve. You’ll have less potential for the peaks/nulls in the frequency response. Subwoofers in addition to the main speakers can allow you to hear a deeper, smoother sound compared to just large full range floor-standing speakers. Most people can’t hear stereo separation in the lower hertz range, so having low-frequency support deep into the lower registers is a better solution.
A bonus with two subwoofers is that it’s nearly impossible to localize the bass. You’ll want to hear it emanate from everywhere in the room and two subwoofers will achieve that sound. Another benefit is that two 8” subwoofers can fit where larger subwoofers can’t fit. This leads to a cleaner, more aesthetically pleasing look (WAF!).
When it comes to the best location to place two subwoofers in your living room or dedicated home theater room, you have options. The most common is to place your two subwoofers in the front of the room on the left and right of the TV screen. Another option would be to place one in the front and back. Often times we find the best placement to be one subwoofer about 1/3 of the wall distance and the second subwoofer again about 1/3 of the adjacent wall. Have fun with it mess around with placement of your subwoofers to test what sounds best.
You also have the option of placing in-wall subwoofers. This is another benefit for keeping the aesthetics clean and less cluttered, but typically at the cost of bass extension.