Just curious and of course it’s room dependent, etc.
The face of my subs are currently a good 20" (~50cm) behind the face of my speakers and it has my wittle brain thinking about it.
Mine is a good 100cm behind / to the right of my right speaker. I tried to leverage this with phase adjustments by ear. And decided it’s good enough. But that also never stopped my brain from thinking about it 
Edit/add: The sub is a Velodyne Digital Drive 10 Plus. The active mains are ATCs. They still go full range. After a room simulation in REW I choose to place the sub at the middle of the front wall. Then dialed in the phase by ear (brown noise, test tones). I then used the build in automatic room measurement/EQ/DSP of the sub for a first adjustment. Then I measured the complete system with REW. From that I created a convolution filter for Roon. Sounds great.
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My dual, stereo sub set up in my office puts them about 3’ in front of the stand-mounted “monitors”; woofers centered about 6” off axis to the outside of the monitors.
I have a pretty massive, 2-driver, down-firing sub in my dual-purpose (HT/stereo) “big rig” that sits about 3’ in front of and 3’ to the right of the right front speaker and about 18” from the right wall.
I tend to subscribe to and enjoy the “rule of thirds” guideline when it comes to sub. placement. IOW, my subs/sub are about a third into the room and placed somewhat independently of main speakers.
I have never favored front wall or corner sub. placement.
FWIW.
My dual stereo subs are roughly in line with the woofers on the main speakers and facing the same direction. They are positioned between the mains. I haven’t had the time to try an time align or set phase other than by ear.
On a similar vein I wonder if anyone has tried facing the sub(s) in a different direction from the mains? Pointed toward the wall, toward the mains, or away from the mains. I am really limited as to where they can be placed in the room but they seem to be good where they are.
I don’t attempt to physically align my sub with my speakers at all. REL and many other subwoofer manufacturers recommend starting with room corner placement for boundary reinforcement. As for phase alignment after placing the sub where the manufacturer recommends for best extension and efficiency, that’s what the phase switch or knob is for. That’s the last control I typically tweak after roughing in the right volume and cross-over point when I’ve put the sub in its’ final position.
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What makes you think people didn’t follow any instructions their manufacturer may have given? I know I did…with both pairs.
I spent a lot of time adjusting two S3/SHOs and found placing them close to wall (away from speakers) are natural, clean and rich sounding in our listening room;
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Single REL sub left of and probably 40 cm behind speakers.
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One pair of Seaton Submersive HPs along the front wall about 4-1/2’ behind the front baffles of the L & R mains to (the acoustic center of) each dual 15" opposed sub. The other pair of Submersives are along the rear wall nearly 15’ feet in front of the L & R mains. I use a DSPeaker Anti-Mode2.0 in its multi-sub mode to time align the nearer rear subs with the 10’ more distant front subwoofers and then provide PEQ to the subwoofer pass-band.
For stereo playback the sub crossover is a JL Audio CR-1. Between the CR-1’s independently adjustable high and low pass frequency and damping controls along with the DSPeaker processor’s time alignment of the front and rear subs, I’ve achieved a seamless 80Hz transition between my ATC mains and the Seatons.
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Oh, heck yes! Killer.
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I was actually super impressed with the DSPeaker AM2.0 used in this fashion. The auto generated time alignment delay between the front and rear subwoofer pairs along with the several PEQ filter notches it created to address some modal misbehavior perfectly correlated with the REW measurement results.
Previously I’d had to interpret the REW measurements, manually enter the DSP corrective filters in a Xilica loudspeaker processor, and the re-run my REW measurements to ensure I’d got it right or adjust further and repeat the cycle. The AM2.0 made successfully dialing in a quad subwoofer array much easier!
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I think the answers you get here are purely depending on FR in the room and vary strongly, as most (to my surprise) seem to use subwoofers without DSP or analog EQ.
Without that the only thing you can do to avoid enormous peaks where you don’t want them is, to move the sub where they are at suck out places in the room. If this then is a place that’s fine for the other frequencies is questionable and pure luck. Subs with that feature in contrary you can more or less place where you want and not only compensate the most severe peak but also most others.
Subs without DSP/EQ are a mystery to me.
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My subs are inside my speakers. And it shows.
Acoustic room treatments simply trump DSP and EQ. Also, with proper techniques, tips and tricks, you’d be amazed at how good you can dial in a pair of non-DSP/EQ subs along with keeping your mains playing fullrange.
Your room will STILL benefit from subs. Your speakers are not in the best location for the best bass response in the room. At least I hope they’re not.
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I have seen your rooms. I know better than to be concerned with your thoughts.
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What’s that supposed to mean?
It’s not a hug.
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Yes certainly, if one’s able to get rid of a severe peak in the 20-40 Hz range with room treatments (which means quite some effort) that’s perfectly fine. I considered the more common situations where people have limited options of room treatments.
Keep thinking what you’re thinking. You’re the one missing out.
You never said what frequency range, plus most average sized rooms have issues in the 50 - 80 Hz range, not 20 - 40 Hz.
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