Why the obsession with the lowest octave

Its human nature's hard wiring of the brain. Think about it, the fight or flight instincts of the human brain are more influenced by hearing low octave sounds. When you hear the rumble, T-Rex may be near, and that is exciting, know?

Reaching down to the lowest octave creates a realism in music not otherwise experienced. Even though the fundamental note may only go down to 40Hz there are overtones reaching far below giving music the proper foundation.

It's not a guy thing and it has nothing to do with balls. Men have larger eardrums than women giving them the ability to hear low frequencies better than women.

If one can get deeper bass without any tradeoff of other qualities, why not? But, such "free" deep bass is hardly ever achieved. Bigger drivers able to push more air usually means more mass (inertia makes such drivers less nimble), bigger cabinets (hard to control resonance), and most significantly, deep bass response usually means much lower speaker efficiency and the need for higher powered amps. To me, there are very few higher power amps that deliver the kind of performance of low powered tube or solid state amps.

I care less about high volume, extremely deep bass than I do about good behavior where most of the music resides in the lower range. I want realistic tonality to bass. There are a lot of speakers on the market with extremely tight, punchy bass, that lack the ability to deliver the proper tone and harmonic structure of lower range instruments (double bass, kettle drums, contrabassoon).

To ignore the range from 20 to 40 Hz is to deny the FACT that there are harmonics down in that range that do affect realistic music reproduction. Not to mention that there are also ques down there that give us the impression of a large hall for example.

Don't believe? Listen to a cello on speakers that cutoff at 40, and then listen on a full range pair. Many people do live with the lowest octave, and many live without much above 12kHz, but this does not prove there is no valuable information there.

Elizbeth,

I usually find your posts to be very informative, but I have to say that your passing this off as some testosterone-laced fantasy is beneath your knowledge. Maybe you just meant to poke fun at us guys. ;-)

Electronica artists have the freedom to create music without the limitations of traditional instruments. They can be creative in any octave they want and I don't want to miss out. That's why I have a pair of JL subs. I saw Crystal Method live in Santa Cruz at an older venue and I really thought the ceiling might start to crack and fall on our heads due to the extreme bass. The room seemed to be shaking vertically even when the volume was low at times. It may have been "unnatural" but it was their art and creation and we were having a blast. Don' wanna miss out on that in my living room!