Sub Popping

[mjon99]

I was recently watching We Were Soldiers when I noticed my sub "popped" when the planes were flying overhead during the broken arrow scene. Is the pop due to me just pushing it too hard, I was playing it quite loud. Also, it is a front fire Polk PSW450 and is currently sitting on the ground. Should I have feet under it to lift it an inch or two off the carpet? If so, what does this do? Thanks.

[PAT.P]

I was recently watching We Were Soldiers when I noticed my sub "popped" when the planes were flying overhead during the broken arrow scene. Is the pop due to me just pushing it too hard, I was playing it quite loud. Also, it is a front fire Polk PSW450 and is currently sitting on the ground. Should I have feet under it to lift it an inch or two off the carpet? If so, what does this do? Thanks.
Your sub and speeker should blend in with your speaker normaly .It should be also 2 feet from wall also at a angle pointing at direction of your seating .I know on my receiver in the set up I've adjusted the tone of all speaker so they all blend in.(first I ajusted the sub to the spec in ownner manual ) Im also running two at a time and never heard them popped.Pat.P Good luck

[nightflier]

While this is a large sub (300W, 45lbs), it is not really capable of going that low. You may indeed have pushed your sub too far. I f you have a powerfull amp (100+ Watt), and all five channels are low-pass filtered to the sub, you could be bottoming it out. I used to have a Klipsch RW-12 sub (one of their better ones) and it was crackling all the time (I push my speakers pretty hard). I initially thought this was normal and lived with it for almost a year, until I figured out this was problematic. Once I replaced the sub with a more powerful model from SVS, the crackling was gone and I turn up the volume much higher.

[Mr Peabody]

I'd say it's a safe bet you overdriven your sub. You may need to get a more powerful sub to keep up with your receiver but try a couple things first. Are you using both inputs on your sub, L & R? Most subs require a Y adaptor to connect to both and that allows your sub to run at it's full power. Contrary to what some tell you here, you should NOT have your sub volume at 12:00 or higher. There's no headroom left for your amp and in turn causes the speaker to bottom out or pop. I'd recommend setting the sub volume on 3 or below and use your receiver's set up volume to regulate the volume to where it blends. Even when I had a 100 watt Infinity sub I never had the volume of the sub above 2. There is no rule on sub placement in a room. Placement is unique to each room and it's contents as to where it might work the best. You should try to elevate the sub slightly off the floor to see if any of the energy was being absorbed by the carpet. Mine is a sealed enclosure and it still has legs to keep it off the floor.

If you have had any experience with car audio amps or even guitar amps adjusting the gains it's the same principle as I explained above. Your gains or sub volume can't be maxed or near max because your amp has no room, or power, left to deal with peak demands.