"For years, the conventional wisdom has been to put your subwoofer in a corner, or to crawl around on your hands and knees to listen for the best spot," said Chris Baume, Director of Sonic Baume. "Now anybody can harness the power of advanced acoustic simulation through our easy-to-use app. By entering some basic measurements, you receive personalized recommendations on precisely which areas of your room will give you deep, clear, and well-defined bass. All without having to
leave your seat."
"The idea was inspired by my own experience of struggling to position my subwoofer," says Baume. "After trying many different locations and following all the advice, it always sounded boomy on one side of the sofa and flat on the other. I finally discovered the best place with the help of some simulation software, but it was complicated and very expensive. SubZone gives everyone an easy, affordable, and scientific way to position their subwoofer."
SubZone asks users to enter the dimensions of their room, their listening position, and the materials their room is constructed from. The materials are used to estimate the low-frequency absorption characteristics of each surface. Acoustic simulation is performed using the image-source method, which can precisely model the acoustics of rectangular rooms (for non-rectangular rooms, read this article). From this, the strength of the room modes for each possible subwoofer position are calculated and rated on a scale from 0 to 10.
The results are displayed as a heatmap of the room, where the colors indicate the rating between red (0) and blue (10). The best position(s) are marked with a star. Clicking on a tile displays a plot of the room’s frequency response between 20Hz and 300Hz. Additional listening positions can be added, and the algorithm will find the best compromise for the selected positions.
Sonic Baume was founded in 2022 with a mission to make innovative audio technology accessible to everyone, through affordable software that uses advanced technology to improve peoples' everyday lives. This is the company's second mobile app. Their first – Snug – is a white noise app for Android. It uses audio analysis to detect when a baby cries and uses soothing sounds to help them back to sleep. Founder Chris Baume has 15 years of experience in audio technology, and is a lead research engineer at BBC Research and Development. He led the production tools work of the European Union project ORPHEUS on object-based audio.
SubZone is available in 45 countries on both iOS (v15.6 and above) and Android (v5.0 and above) for an introductory price of $0.99 / €0.99.
bau.me/subzone
