Sonos sub, not impressed

Subwoofer waves are gigantic.  When you have two sub sources, depending on the room and where you are in it, two waves crossing can cancel each other out, causing a null.

SUB and the room interact with each other - that’s the physics of the situation. You can explore this. Play a track with a thumping bass and walk the room, very close to the walls, carrying a pack of Post-it’s. You’ll come across spots where the bass is accentuated. Mark these spots with a Post-it. There will also be spots where the bass is doubly accentuated. Mark these spots with !!. As you step back you’ll notice that the Post-it’s are more or less symmetrically distributed around the room. The Post-it’s are placed at “peaks”. About midway between peaks is a “null” where bass will be diminished. If you place a SUB or your chair at a peak, bass transmissions will be more efficient.

In my college apartment I discovered a monster peak and placed a chair on that peak. Male listeners loved this chair because bass seemed to explode from within your body. If I moved the chair a few inches the peak was gone.

After you become familiar with peaks and nulls, you will notice smaller peaks and nulls in three dimensions throughout your space.

I think that must be happening, What do you think I should do? move it or remove one of them?

Tough call.  You can try.  Another thing to do is change the phase on one of the Subs (Settings > System > (Sub room name) > Sound > Sub audio > Phase Control).  This will change the phase of the sub waves, possibly causing the null to move.

Very easy to see what removing one of them does to the sound from the other by turning one off, so why don’t you try that first? Experiment with both Subs. It should then be easy to know which one needs to be turned off for best music results when both are in one group.

Subs are tricky especially when it comes to music SQ outcomes - less so for movie effects. I find Trueplay to be essential to get the right outcome from a play 1 pair+ Sub set up. And where one Sub is tricky, two can be a challenge unless you know exactly how to set up two in a way that complements each other - it is rarely even necessary to have two, in most cases.

waooo JGatie, I didn't know that you could change the phase of the Sub from the app, thank you very much, that will surely solve it, I know well the meaning of the phase difference, and that is what could have been happening, given that when listening to both subs together, one of the two canceled.  I'm going to try it later, I'll let you know.  Regards

Thanks Kumar, I had already tried those options, if you read what I wrote to JGatie, it could already be the solution to the problem, in this way I can leave both zones with subs, thus avoiding phase cancellation when joining them.

Changing the phase on one Sub may work, but it also may not. Worth a shot of course, since it is also easy to do from the app.

Changing the phase of a subwoofer will tend to exchange the peaks and nulls discovered during my walk exploration above. It will usually be very clear if this helps your situation or not. Go with what sounds best.

With non-Sonos subs we had to do a good bit of experimentation with positioning to get the most even sound in a room.

Try both in one corner.

Try them in opposing corners and then adjacent ones.

Try them centered on one wall, then opposing walls and finally adjacent walls.

Working with your results from that will give you a good place to start looking for a final position.

You might want to try using Trueplay at the best sounding couple positions.

Tip, use long extension cords to save having to power cycle the Subs.