Subwoofer firing into carpet - Remedy?

tortfsr24 · March 2002

Recently, I purchased a house that has carpet in the main den area in which I am going to set up my home theater. (My previous home had hardwood floors).

I have two cerwin-vega powered subs (sub-150). Each of these subs has a 15" downfiring woofer. I am worried about these subs firing directly into the carpet and the sound loss I will probably experience. I was thinking about cutting a square of 3/4 inch plywood for the subwoofer to sit on. However, I have seen other posts concerning slate and other materials. If I were to build the plywood bases I referenced earlier, would I need to attach feet on the bottom of the plywood or just lay the plywood flat onto the carpet?

Thanks for the input.

Brent

juice21 · March 2002

i am in the same situation, my HSU's are down-firing subs. i am very pleased with their performance, but was curous on the tweaks to tighten up the bass. it seems like slate/granite is your best bet. i am still trying to find some slate myself to try this out. no luck so far, of course, i haven't put alot of time into looking yet either...

ron-p, and a couple others on here use slate under their subs, i'm sure they'll chime in soon...

Aaron · March 2002

The best thing I ever did to tighten up the bass on my subwoofer was to get a pair of MIT Terminator 6 interconnects. I doubt any amount of slate could make this much difference. Unbelievable! I was a cable doubter before I bought a pair of these.

Aaron

tortfsr24 · March 2002

So, does everyone agree that something needs to be done as far as placing something between the subwoofer and the carpeted floor? Alot of subs on the market have a built-in wood base that the downfiring woofer fires into. This is what got my initial thoughts on this process rolling.

Thanks for the input!

Brent

pensacola · March 2002

>>So, does everyone agree that something needs to be done as far as placing something between the subwoofer and the carpeted floor?

Here's a novel idea: get yourself a piece of 2' x 4' x ¼" plywood from your favorite home improvement warehouse to try out, and see if it's a tweak worth pursuing.
Better to spend $3 to find out if it makes an audible difference TO YOU, than to spend moreonly to find that you now have some really good-looking, though large, paper weights laying around the house.

wakbored · March 2002

You will not get an appreciably better output (read SPL).by putting the sub on a peice of plywood. 1. It is too light 2. The sonic impovements garnered by slate and other DENSE and HEAVY materials is that they couple the speaker to the floor and transfer resonance (which adds coloration, smear, etc.) to the subfloor which then expends the energy through out the structure. That in turn cleans up imaging and detail. If you want to EXTEND the response of your sub to truly SUB levels find a way to couple the sub to the floor.
Carpet will have less than a 3db dropin SPL...besides that is why we all calibrate our systems and why powered subs have a volume control, right?

Todd

CHRIS · March 2002

Slate dose not couple the sub to the floor. Just the opposite, isolates it, also stops reverberation and tightens up the bass. Giveing you a clearer less muddied sound.
Sandstone and some others will do the same thing. Tile, man made, and the likes will couple your sub to the floor as well as the plywood. The slate idea was in an artical on tweaking about 2 years ago.

BTW-I have a Velodyne ULD-18, I have always used good cables, slate is the only "tweak" which made a noticeable improvement. You can get a peice from a stone yard etc. Home Depot has man made tile which does not work. You can get a peice of slate from a stone yard for about $10, make sureits about 1" thick.

Subwoofer firing into carpet - Remedy?

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