Subwoofers - Final Thoughts with Martin Logan ESL 13A

Wow....5 more posts 'till the test....*L* ;)

@navyachts, What does anybody really know, but hell yeah.

Dear @big_greg    " For half a century we didn’t even have subs. When you listen to a live band do you experience the bass is missing? #"

and you posted this in your answer to that post:

"" You made the point precisely.  "

Well, he as you have a wide miunderstood about and are away fo at least a " mile ":

"

In one of my Ask Paul video questions, I was asked how far back subwoofers go in 2-channel audio. The community member had only become aware of subs as they related to home theater.

Of course, many readers of Paul's Post know subs date back much further than home theater.

From Wikipedia: In September 1964, Raymon Dones received the first patent for a subwoofer specifically designed to augment the low-frequency range of modern stereo systems (US patent 3150739). Able to reproduce distortion-free low frequencies down to 15 Hz, a specific objective of Dones's invention was to provide portable sound enclosures capable of high fidelity reproduction of low-frequency sound waves without giving an audible indication of the direction from which they emanated. Dones's loudspeaker was marketed in the US under the trade name "The Octavium" from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s. The Octavium was utilized by several recording artists of that era, most notably the Grateful Dead.

Two years later, in 1966, my former partner in Genesis Technologies and the co-founder of Infinity, Arnie Nudell, along with his airline pilot friend, Carry Christie, launched the second and perhaps most important subwoofer of its time, the Infinity Servo woofer, based on an 18" Cerwin Vega driver.

My experience with a subwoofer began a few years later when I was first introduced to a true high-end audio system. There, in the living room of local audiophile Norm Little, was serial numbers 1 and 2 of aerospace engineer Eugene J. "Gene" Czerwinski's creation, a pair of 18" Cerwin-Vega subwoofers capable of producing 130 dB at 30 Hz, an astonishing level during its time (or any time).

I suppose I have never gotten over the experience of hearing for the first time, all there is in the recordings, including subsonics.

Until you hear it all, you're not going to know what true high-end is.  "

"""" The first home subwoofer was developed during the 1960s by Ken Kreisel, the former president of the Miller & Kreisel Sound Corporation in Los Angeles. When Kreisel's business partner, Jonas Miller, who owned a high-end audio store in Los Angeles, told Kreisel that some purchasers of the store's high-end electrostatic speakers had complained about a lack of bass response in the electrostatics, Kreisel designed a powered woofer that would reproduce only those frequencies that were too low for the electrostatic speakers to convey. Infinity's full range electrostatic speaker system that was developed during the 1960s also used a woofer to cover the lower frequency range that its electrostatic arrays did not handle adequately.

The first use of a subwoofer in a recording session was in 1973 for mixing the Steely Dan album Pretzel Logic when recording engineer Roger Nichols arranged for Kreisel to bring a prototype of his subwoofer to Village Recorders. Further design modifications were made by Kreisel over the next ten years, and in the 1970s and 1980s by engineer John P. D'Arcy; record producer Daniel Levitin served as a consultant and "golden ears" for the design of the crossover network (used to partition the frequency spectrum so that the subwoofer would not attempt to reproduce frequencies too high for its effective range, and so that the main speakers would not need to handle frequencies too low for their effective range).

Subwoofers received a great deal of publicity in 1974 with the movie Earthquake which was released in Sensurround. Initially installed in 17 U.S. theaters, the Sensurround system used large subwoofers which were driven by racks of 500 watt amplifiers which were triggered by control tones printed on one of the audio tracks on the film. Four of the subwoofers were positioned in front of the audience under (or behind) the film screen and two more were placed together at the rear of the audience on a platform. Powerful noise energy in the range of 5 Hz to 40 Hz was generated at the level of 110-120 dB(SPL). The new low frequency entertainment method helped the film become a box office success. More Sensurround systems were assembled and installed. By 1976 there were almost 300 Sensurround systems leapfrogging through select theaters. Other films to use the effect include the WW II naval battle epic Midway in 1976 and Rollercoaster in 1977.

With the advent of the compact cassette and consumer digital audio formats, the reproduction of deep, loud bass was no longer limited by the ability of a phonograph record stylus to track a groove. It became possible to add more low frequency content to recordings. Home subwoofers grew in popularity, as they were easy to add to existing multimedia speaker setups and they were easy to position or hide.  """"

I'm almost sure that both of you never heard about Hartley subs.

tw, multiple subwoofers in an home system is only for HT in a two only stereo audio home system and for one seat position no one in any room needs more than two true self powered subs integrated to the room/main speakers through a high pass filter crossover..

R.

I forgot:

https://www.thebottomend.co.uk/ken_kreisel_int.php

@rauliruegas You seem confused. I didn’t say anything about how long subwoofers have been around, only that they enhance the listening experience. Sorry, no time to read all of the information you copied and pasted from Wikipedia. I’m sure it’s interesting, but not relevant to anything I said.