What is wrong with a sub?

@elizabeth Exactly!  Seems like most people with subs just want to hear the thump, thump, thump.   


Used correctly a sub should just extend the lower range of your mains linearly within a few dBs.    At least that's the "audiophile" answer.

But lots of people like subs so they can turn them up and thump away.   I have also been known to do that on occasion when my kids were watching a movie.

Maybe "guys are bass crazy" because bass makes music as physical as it is. A lot of music systems sound anemic to me, lacking the physicality of live music. Dames listen to music from the waist up ;-) .

I like subwoofers because they help me achieve more of the visceral experience that I get listening to live music. 

Most speakers can't do that on their own or they may not produce an even bass response.  Maybe if you have a perfect room.  I don't.  In my main system I have Legacy Audio 20/20 speakers that have  combined total of 6 12" drivers and they can come close to "pressurizing" the room, but the quality of bass is better when subwoofers are added into the system.  I have 4 very large and powerful subwoofers in my system, but they are not set up to "thump", they are there to add body to the music and smooth out the bass response throughout the room.  They are barely noticeable unless I play techno or something else with really deep bass, then they come alive.

In my smaller computer system I have Focal Electra 1008 BE stand mount speakers and a single small 12" sealed subwoofer.  The sub just fleshes out the bottom end, it's not there to thump or pressurize the room.  It's a fairly small room and it just complements the Focals by producing the lower frequencies that they can't.

Big-Greg hits the nail on the head. People say all the time “my speakers go down to xx hz, I don’t need a sub.” The truth is very few speakers, even larger floor standing speakers, are FLAT to 40 hz. Most have a bit of a midbass hump, which gives a bit of a peak in the 70-90hz range, which then allows a stated -6db point in the 30-40 hz range.

Even those speakers that can dig down into the 30hz range, have limited output and suffer from increase distortion in the bass frequencies. To be able to reproduce decent levels (i.e. 105 db) at 30hz and below in all but the smallest room, with reasonable distortion, takes at least 4 10” long throw drivers, two 12”, or 1 15” (all have approximately the same displacement). Go down to 8” drivers (assuming you can find decent sounding ones with an xmax of at least 15mm) you are up to 8 drivers. You can cheat it a bit with large vented enclosures, transmission lines, or folded horns, but do end up with tradeoffs in group delay.

Many will disagree about the above, but it is nearly always true.  Take the Revel Performa F228be, a wonderful, full range, $10,000 pair of floor standing speakers.  At 50hz, they are coming off their midbass peak to 0db.  At 30hz they are 5db down from flat, and 9 db down from their 80-100hz output.  Again, this is measured at lower volume levels, so no dynamic compression.  

https://www.stereophile.com/content/revel-performa-f228be-loudspeaker-measurements

$57,000 Wilsons, same thing:   https://www.stereophile.com/content/wilson-audio-specialties-alexia-series-2-loudspeaker-measurements


As Big-Greg says it isn’t about boom (which is 60-90 hz). It is the deep, almost inaudible bass, especially in live recordings, which give the sense of a real space. When dialed in properly, you hear no sub, just an increased dynamic range and music that has an amazing foundation.