No, it isn't!
Oh yes you do! If you want to hear all the sub-bass frequencies at their fullest. It's a must. I've done my own testing on this, plus I learned about acoustics several years ago. Plus, it's easy for anyone to test this fact out for themselves. Stand next to your sub woofer and listen. Move 26 feet away and listen. More low frequency bass! How cool!
Given you have a subwoofer in your room, it is inevitable that the room takes huge influence on what you hear where, simply because the wavelengths of bass frequencies have dimensions similar to the average room. It is normal that you'll find places where you won't hear almost no bass at all, and you'll find places where the bass is twice as strong as you want it to be. However, that has little to do with the position of the subwoofer. I do believe that you you have experienced that the closer you come to the subwoofer, the less bass you hear. But I also am absolutely sure you and many other people have also experienced the exact opposite in other situations, such as in a club. Therefor, the fact that you hear less bass the closer you get to your woofer may be valid for
your situation, but not in general.
Yes they will. Put a sub in the farthest away corner, and the listener will hear more bass sound. Maybe, too much and will turn down the bass level. Therefor, less bass for the neighbors. Simple.
The general problem with bass frequencies are the huge wavelengths, which pass doors and even floors (depending on the way they are built) with ease. Therefor, if you have a problem with your bass slipping through your floor down to your neighbours, your options are rare. If you put the sub in a corner, you will experience more bass without changing the volume, as the corner reflects the energy. However, you will also maximize the interaction of the subwoofer with your room, which equates more intense stationary waves and longer reverberations, which you don't want. Putting the sub into a corner is no solution I'm afraid.
Most people use way too much bass. You can't believe how many idiots I come across at music stores who always crank the bass to near max tone settings. Plus, if he follows the tips I give him, I'm sure he'll get an increase in bass sounds, therefor turning the bass level down is the proper solution. He wont sacrifice a thing.
That's one thing I had to learn in a longer process as well: there is no such thing as "too much bass". There is too much bass for your and my taste, but if the listener likes a lot of bass, too much for us will be just right for him. The amount of bass in a setup therefor is not a fixed value, it's a variable depending on the taste of the listener. So if one wants that much bass, he turns it up pretty far. The actual problem is that the higher the bass level is, the more your problems grow.
Spikes are a solution to the tacky and ugly tennis ball thing. Spikes wont isolate bass frequencies passed through the floor, but it will reduce them a whole lot. Oh, and it's racket balls, not tennis balls, that you're supposed to use.
Is there a significant difference between a racket ball and a tennis ball? And I agree that they do look ugly, whereas spikes usually look much better. However, as I stated before, spikes will engage a well-defined connection between the device and the surface it is standing on. Put under a speaker or a subwoofer, they usually make the sound more precise and calm, as they reduce enclosure movements. If you have a soft floor made of wood or something similar however, what the spikes will do is transfer energy from the enclosure to the floor. The floor will radiate that energy by sending it elsewhere, such as your neighbours. And if that is your problem, what you need to do is
decouple the enclosure from the ground. To do that, you need some very soft feet, which absorb the energy by themselves instead of passing it on ... such as tennis balls, or racket balls for that matter.
Regards
the Interceptor
