[RCduck7]

hi, let's explain my situation first.
I will have between my 2 front speakers a tv furniture of about 6 feet wide, 2,5 feet high and with underneath it an air gap of about 8 inch. Since my tv furniture is 6 feet wide i can't put my sub next to it, otherwise my speakers have to be set to far apart. My front speakers (floorstanding) will be about 2-3 feet away from the wall. There would be space left behind one of the front speakers to place my sub. I only plan to use the sub for movies only. How it affects the sound of the subwoofer is not my main concern, I'm intrested in how it affects the main speakers. Since stereo playback is the most important to me will one of the front speaker suffer in it's output with the sub sitting behind it? Will there be a difference in sound noticeable from left to right speaker?

[JLM]

If sufficient free space is maintained (3ft to the side and 5ft behind) subwoofer location shouldn't matter.  Best location for the subwoofer is in the corner. 

Try it and hear for yourself, should be OK.  I have 3 subwoofers to even out inherent in-room bass peaks/dips, ala Floyd Toole. 

[DannyBadorine]

The speaker in front of the sub will not suffer from the sub being behind it.  There might be phase problems since they are not aligned but the actual waveform integrity will not be a problem.  Just check the polarity on the sub.  If you have DSP then delaying your main speakers by about a millisecond might help to phase align them.
As JLM mentioned above, you might want to just put the sub in the corner.  Extra space from the speakers might make things better.

[Rob Babcock]

I place both of mine behind the left speaker in the front corner of the room.

[Wayner]

I have a sub behind one of my Martin-Logan speakers in my 32 X 28 foot living room. Its not far from the front corner but not in it. There is absolutely no problem with a set up like this. The sub disappears. I don't really think you need all that "air" around it either. Move it around a bit to fine tune the spot that brings out the most bass.

Subwoofers are supposed to support the mains, not overpower them. The sub should be set so that its barely noticeable during regular program material. I also find that making the XO as low as possible also improves the omni-directional effect of the low bass and supports the main's soundstage depth and width, and seems to improve clarity, tho the MLs are pretty clear.

[RCduck7]

Thanks for all the replies. I move house soon, will see how it turns out but from reading here i suspect it should be ok.

[Digi-G]

I know a lot of people suggest corner placement for the subwoofer, as witnessed in this thread.  I'm going to suggest keeping an open mind about experimenting with placement.

Yes, corner placement will give the most bass.  In my experience, in 2 different houses, corner placement also excited the room mode around 40hz and gave boomy, one-note bass.  It definitely wasn't ideal.  I had better luck (i.e. sound) moving the subwoofer out of the corner about 6' down the side wall.

These were decent subwoofers too - a Velodyne and now an SVS model.  I love this SVS sub - much better bass but more expensive too.

As always, YMMV.