Why is good, deep bass so difficult? - Myths and their Busters

A slightly different take on woofer performance:

I have been working with sub-woofers throughout my life. Spent years in concert reinforcement and recording industries; upon retirement moved on to high-end audio and home theater systems, designed and built car audio competition vehicles.

Car audio provided the finest educational process in learning how to manage and marriage subs to main speaker systems. My dear friend, the late Jay Thomas designed and built over one hundred custom subs to fit in a host of vehicles even those where most said it could never be accomplished. Car Audio is one part of the industry where design and function demands for sub integration are more complex than any other division. I was fortunate to experience building and listening to every type of sub design imaginable and soon realized that no matter what the construction, operational methodologies or supporting equipment selections there were always issues establishing a seamless sonic blending to the primary speaker system.

We were quite successful in building IASCA winning vehicles. Our secret to gaining the upper hand over subharmonic issues were to mechanically ground the subs, amps and anything else we could direct couple to the car chassis using the only two high end products available at that time which were TipToes and Audio Points. Even when adding multiple DC batteries to increase electronics’ dynamic headroom; when mechanically grounded, they too played a huge role in improving sound quality.

Subwoofer integration is a “mechanical issue” and should be approached as such. Subwoofers create a host of problems associated with resonance caused from vibration. There is resonance build up on the driver assemblies and frames, speaker enclosures and more importantly prohibits the internal electronics package to perform efficiently.

We could never figure out why High-End Audio chose to put amplifiers and crossovers into vibrating boxes containing large woofers. In the early days, most speaker manufacturers simply offered their home theater products to high end listeners and it appears their build and use philosophy stuck. Outside of user convenience, we are still at a loss for why manufacturers go all out in other parts of the industry yet tend to lessen their efforts surrounding subsonic.

The all in one box literally opens Pandora’s Box establishing a whole new set of problems knowing how resonance formed from vibration negatively affects sonic performance. Granted, it costs more money to outboard an amp and crossover (individual component selections are another huge benefit) add more cable, more AC distribution, more vibration management and racking however there is much to be said about subwoofer integration by implementing separate outboard components and individual speaker only enclosures - much more. After all, this is High End Audio - right?

We listened to various electronic solutions attempting to solve mechanical issues that boast seamless sonic integration, however did not hear any products that matched up sonic performance to the marketing hype. In my opinion, current day electronic solutions in attempts to solving mechanical issues remain a work in progress.

Likewise, if resonance issues can be properly managed, significantly reducing audible and inaudible floor noise you avoid having to implement acoustic traps, etc keeping the environment less cluttered with more open space for attack, sustain and decay characteristics to fully develop without the need of additional energy absorption processes that take away from the ever fragile “live dynamic”.

If you do not treat mechanical influences established by the woofer systems, one may never discover what a realistic seamless transition provides musically. You may never know the benefits of subwoofer integration and may come away with that age old saying “subwoofers do not belong in high end audio”.

Our advice is to speak with experts involved with vibration management about your main speakers or sub system relationships as there are products available for gaining the upper hand and attaining that seamless “musical” transition.

Subwoofers dominate the overall sound of the system and more importantly the overall sound and functionality of your room environment.

There is a lot of evidence in audio where one can acquire deeper bass response in full range speakers as well. Lack of deeper bass response or sluggish bass as described by many can be attributed to loudspeaker and/or electronic component operational efficiency - another mechanical characteristic.

We are more than happy to discuss component and loudspeaker operational efficiency which is extremely crucial to performance or provide an audition in your own home so you can hear the differences engineered mechanical grounding products provide sound.

Hope this information helps.

Robert - Star Sound