2. speakers
  3. 1270085427

are subwoofers anti-audiophile?

I have been into this hobby 25 years now and have noticed not a lot of us use Subwoofers in our systems.

I have 2 systems, one which is a Celestion SL700 with their Celestion System 6000 subwoofer pair with a outboard crossover-----my other system has changed quite a bit, but with always large floorstanding speakers. I have also always had adequate power to the speakers.

My floorstanding system cannot match the realism i get from my Celestion/subwoofer system. In my floorstanding system, it is almost like the bassist is backstage playing, while the rest of the band is front stange and center. This leads me to my question. Why don't most of us use subwoofers? I am a member of an audiophile club and we do system hops and no one has a subwoofer in their 2 channel systems.
justlisten
nandric's avatar
nandric
4,086 posts
 
The designer Joachim Gerhard (Virgo,Caldera,Medea) keep away from 'enything' below 40Hz in the mentioned loudspeakers. But for those that parsist on organ music he produced some subs...
Maybe that the 40 Hz 'bondary' was some kind of 'idee-fixe'
for him but this is realy hard to belive.

Regards,
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,443 posts
 
Lowest bass string is 41.2Hz. 5 or 6 string bass guitars are used for easy of playing only. Piano goes down to 27Hz (A) but it is not very often used. There are organs and big drums but there are also neighbors.

My speakers go down to 30Hz while my room amplifies 38Hz (1150/15'/2=38Hz) - no problem with 41.2Hz. If I decide to get sub it will be one like JL Fathom 113 that self adjusts/equalize itself with microphone.

My speakers could possibly go lower but most likely were tuned for lowest distortions and not for the extension. Quality of bass (attack, decay, tone etc) is more important than quantity or extension.
drew_eckhardt
394 posts
 
Nandric writes:
>The designer Joachim Gerhard (Virgo,Caldera,Medea) keep away from 'enything' below 40Hz in the mentioned loudspeakers. But for those that parsist on organ music he produced some subs...

It's about trade-offs.

At the same efficiency, a speaker which extends to 20Hz instead of 40Hz must be 8X as big.

At the same size, a speaker which extends to 20Hz instead of 40Hz must be 9dB less efficient. Assuming a 100W amp provided enough head-room with the 40Hz speaker, you'd need 800W in a perfect world without thermal compression.

Given the dearth of musical content at 40Hz, it doesn't make much sense to go for the extension unless you're using an electronically assisted alignment such as a Linkwitz Transform (the Ultimate Monitor BOMB would be one commercial example). With such a configuration you can have good sensitivity from a small enclosure where there's musical power, and just pay the price in the last octave where peaks are 10-20dB down from the rest of the spectrum meaning you can apply substantial equalization before running out of headroom.
gunbei
2,327 posts
 
Hey John,

My problem is that depending on mood and music I tend to vacillate between favoring weight or abhorring bloat, heheh.

Dean
martykl
3,578 posts
 
Drew,

There are now class D amps. Let's say 2 or 3 subs times 1kw per sub amp. You never run out of headroom.

Marty
More to discover