In an attempt to fill out a couple of semi "dead" spots in our great room I recently took an older M&K MX-200 and added it to my M80 / EP 600 system. The results were at first some what surprising as initially I found that if anything the bass went DOWN in all listening positions. Well finally I get to see if the phase switch actually does anything and presto! Flip the switch and it's night and day different. Rocks you out of your socks. The bass extension is incredible. Not that the EP 600 was really under performing or anything but I had the other sub so why not.

Anyway, this situation got me to researching this scenario a bit and I found this:

http://www.roger-russell.com/truth/truth.htm#twosubwoofers

For those that don't know the guy worked at Mcintosh almost his whole career and is considered quite the audiophile guru....but I diverse.

The question (s) that I have and would like to find answers to or see discussed are:

If in fact good recordings are using 2 or more microphones placed in different positions for sub frequencies, say 100 hz or below, and as per the article which makes sense to me, then why don't manufacturers give us 2 sub outs? One for each channel? Instead of blending both into 1. I know what folks will say about not being able to localize etc etc but...as it does make perfect sense to think that in a real world environment that there will be harmonics and wave forms that would reach your ears at different times. When blended into one signal these would cancel each other out. It would seem a fairly simple task to leave low frequency signals to the left and right channels separate instead of combining them into 1. But even the hgih end equipment, Macs, Classe, etc all give us 1 channel sub out.

I suppose one solution is to go with 2 subs and hook each up to their speaker level in running the pre amp at say "large" for the speakers and allowing the subs crossover to do the work. However I have always been of the assumption that this will degrade quality.

The other solution I am thinking of trying, and would love to know if any one has done this, is to "bi-wire" both the mains and the sub. In other words run two sets of wires from the amp. One to each of the mains set at "large" and one to each sub's speaker level in on each channel. Is this a good idea?

Even a browse through Axioms and other company’s pages doesn't reveal much. Most 2 sub situations that I can find talk about daisy chaining them together from the sub out. Once again a mono signal potentially suffering from being out of phase.

I'm particularly interested in this because I have a dedicated home theater room in the works and have always planned on 2 subs but never gave it much thought till now.

If any one has experience with this, or any thoughts / ideas I would sure like to hear them.

Thanks.