Best Subwoofer placement for surround sound

After placing surround sound speakers, you may think about the subwoofer placement. The most popular option is to place a surround sound subwoofer in a room corner or under the TV.

A wrong placement of the subwoofer may cost you lower bass quality and stop it from playing at its maximum potential.

Table of Contents

Through this article, we will know the best Subwoofer placement for surround sound and what if it has more than one subwoofer.

Key Takeaways:

The most common place for a subwoofer is the front wall corner or under the TV
Must have a gap between the wall and subwoofers,
The subwoofer must be focused on the seating areas,
Connect the subwoofer output to the amplifier input through RCA cables.

Without technical knowledge, the best way to put a subwoofer in your room is in the front wall corner. Read more to know what to do if you have more than one sub.

Where to place subwoofer for surround sound?

There are many surround sound systems that come with different speaker pairs like: 5.1, 5.2, 7.2, and 9.4, etc. It doesn’t matter if you have more than one subwoofer, we discussed the most possible ways to place them in your room or theater.

Single Subwoofer Placement:

Most of the sound system comes with a single subwoofer, you need to understand where is the best place for a subwoofer to extract the maximum output.

For a single subwoofer, I recommend you put it on the front wall or towards one of the front corners. It allows the walls to create boundaries that amplify the bass and keep sounds heading in the right direction. Also, you can put it under the TV or beside the Soundbar(If you have one).

If you want to put a subwoofer beside the sitting areas, you can do it. Before finalizing the place, put your subwoofer in both front and beside the seating areas to ensure which position is more effective.

Two Subwoofer Placement:

The most common place for two subwoofers is the front corners. Ensure they have enough gap between the wall and subwoofers. Having the subwoofer in the corner will give you more bass impact.

If the room size is big enough, put them beside the front speakers or under the TV(Must have a gap between to subwoofers).

Do you know how to place a 7.2 surround sound system, which also comes with 7 speakers and 2 subwoofers? We already have an article about it.

Four Subwoofers Placement:

An easy and effective way to place four subwoofers in your room is to choose four corners. Although there are many combinations available to place four subwoofers in your room or theater.

Are you interested in trying those combinations, let’s check the list of places:

Place two subwoofers in the front wall corners and two beside your seating area.
Two subwoofers under the TV(Ensure they have enough gap) and two subwoofers in the back wall corners.
Place the speakers beside the setting areas, and the gap between the walls must be the same.

Using a wired subwoofer may be good for the sound quality, but multiple wires are not good for room decoration. You can hide all the speaker’s wires using a few tricks.

How to connect subwoofer to surround sound receiver?

There are two ways to connect a subwoofer to a surround sound receiver. One is a wire connection and the other is wirelessly.

Wire Connection: Most of the premium subwoofers come with a dedicated LFE Subwoofer cable, which is capable of connecting with the receiver. RCA cables are another option to connect them.
Wireless connection: Verify that both receiver and subwoofer support Bluetooth connectivity. Put your Bluetooth subwoofer into pairing mode then, put your receiver into Bluetooth pairing mode. Once both are connected, ensure both working perfectly.

How to hide subwoofer in the living room?

The subwoofer is not a small thing to hide, for me it’s not correct. In the past few years I already did it using multiple ways. Where I failed in some cases, I have a success story also. Here I shared a few of them:

1. Under closable cabinets:

Closable Cabinets are the most used option to hide a Subwoofer and put the subwoofer inside the cabinets. Before putting subwoofer inside the the cabinets, ensure the cabinet has enough breathing space.

Now, test your subwoofer and try to find the changes in bass quality.

2. Behind large plants:

I prefer to use large plants to hide my surround sound Subwoofers. A Parlor Palm or snake plant has enough height to hide a subwoofer. Some artificial plants can do the same as organic plants do.

Because my sub is placed in the room corner, it’s easy to place large plants in front of the subwoofers.

If you have multiple subwoofers, place them in every corner behind the large plant. Using this method you can also hide your surround sound speakers.

3. Matched Speaker Colour

This will be good for your room decoration purposes. Choose the subwoofer color according to your room color. Although this may not hide your subwoofers, it can be better than choosing a multi-color subwoofer.

Many premium sound service companies offer to choose the subwoofer color. Matching color and placing it in the right place can hide your subwoofer.

Do I need a subwoofer for surround sound?

For an immersive audio experience, you must have a subwoofer. Subwoofers are known for adding that extra bass to complete the surround sound system. So don’t forget to install a sub with surround speakers.

If you don’t have the budget, you can leave it. Because an average to premium quality subwoofers may cost you between $100 to $1500.

Many speakers are available which is capable of providing surround sound quality, but not as good as a sound system with a subwoofer.

Few movie scenes require more bass, where a simple speaker is unable to touch that mark. Mostly in every fighting scene, subwoofers must be there to fulfill bass requirements.

What does a subwoofer do in surround sound?

Subwoofers add depth and clarity to your surround sound system. It’s dedicated to reproducing that throbbing low-frequency (20-200 Hz), and bass-heavy beat.

During an action-packed scene, a Subwoofer plays a crucial role. With your speakers alone, you can’t able to experience the depth and clarity of music.

Are you interested in experiencing it in the live example, how effective a subwoofer is in surround sound?

Turn on your surround sound system(3.1/5.1 or 7.1) and play an action scene with subwoofers. Now play again without subwoofers to see the difference between sound qualities.

This would be an eye-opening experience if you still thinking about what a subwoofer does in surround sound.

Final Word:

Place a subwoofer in your room corner or under the TV setups is common. But if you have multiple subs in a single sound system, you need to worry about it. We already discussed previously in this article, how you can place multiple subs in your room or theater.

If you still have any queries on Subwoofer placement for surround sound, comment below or contact us. At last, I suggest you hire professionals to do it for you.

Sourav

I’m sourav, a music lover and sound enthusiast. After experiencing multiple sound qualities, I thought many people searching regarding this topic, but there is not enough detailed information on it. That’s the main reason why I created this blog.