How Much Do Your Subwoofer(s) Cost Relative to Speakers

Good bass is expensive.  While you can buy a modest set of new monitors today for $500 to $1,000 that don’t absolutely suck and can give you plenty of hi fi enjoyment with decent electronics ahead if them, the same cannot be said for a subwoofer.  I have not heard any sub recently that retail for below a grand that I consider adequate.  And if your room is large, you can at least double that.  If you want to smooth out room effects you can double that again and buy at least two.

The plus side of subs in addition to providing bass extension almost no passive set of speakers, floor standers or monitors, can provide, is that you can use stand mounts and in principle get both the imaging advantages and full frequency bass.  The cost is that setting up subs to fill in higher bass frequencies can be tricky.

Harbeth 30.2 XD with 2 REL T/9x

Running 1 sub in a stereo set up is pointless.   

A lot of people advocate a minimum of 2 subs but some rooms (including mine) can’t accommodate more than 1 either due to the size or arrangement. Nevertheless, there are reports that one sub can work very well, and there are few who use a single high end sub in their systems to great effect.

Instead of creating a new thread on experiences with a single subwoofer, I’ll just post this here. Have a look at the photo below which is taken from another forum. This is the top of the the line REL No. 25. The sub looks small as the speakers are huge in real life, weighing in at more than 200 pounds each.

Speakers $60K  (new - paid less that $2K)

Subs - $2500

My sytem ratio as recently configured with 2 subs is about 3:1. 

When I had subs:  1 : 4  (each sub)