#Matching subwoofers to an amp plus#

The acoustic energy in music is highest at low frequencies and tails off with increasing frequency. And with a treated room you may well find that your existing speakers actually deliver much more and better bass than you thought!ДЄnother useful benefit of a subwoofer is the additional power handling accorded to the system as a whole. You can often improve a room's acoustics dramatically for minimal cost with some basic DIY. If the room has nasty standing-wave problems - and almost all home studios do - it's vital that these acoustical problems are sorted out first, before you spend money or time on a subwoofer.Д«ass trapping to control and reduce room standing-waves is a subject that we've covered many times, and is also a popular topic for ongoing discussion and guidance on the Studio Design &В Acoustics forum on the SOS web site. If you put the world's best subwoofer in an acoustically poor room, you'll get very poor bass performance! I have frequently come across monitoring systems where the owner has added a subwoofer in the hope of curing a weak or lumpy bass response, only to discover the situation either doesn't improve or actually gets worse! The room's own acoustic properties are of paramount importance. However, here lies the first major issue we need to take onboard: having a special box that generates low frequencies doesn't guarantee good bass in the listening room - in fact, far from it! In most cases, this is roughly the bottom two octaves, from 20Hz to 80Hz. What it is trying to do, and how does it work? Obviously, the fundamental idea is to reproduce low frequencies. The first thing to understand is the basic concept of a subwoofer system. So the aim of this article is to try to explain the hows and whys of choosing and using a subwoofer, in the context of both stereo and surround sound applications. The individual speaker cabinets are more compact and lighter than full-range speakers, and that is often an important consideration - especially in small home studios and for location-recording rigs. On the other hand, a well-designed and well-configured system will usually enable more accurate imaging, and have a clearer, more transparent mid-range (thanks to lower distortion and intermodulation levels) and higher overall output than could be achieved with the satellites alone.ДЇrom a practical point of view, a satellite and subwoofer combination is much easier to site and to move around. The worst kind of subwoofer system will only provide a boomy or monotonal 'woomf' of energy, regardless of the pitch or dynamics of the bass instrument, and the bass might thus appear to be slow or late relative to the main speakers. It is the 'integration' through this crossover region that really makes or breaks the system as a whole. Often there is an obvious 'hole' in the frequency spectrum in the crossover region between the satellite speakers and the subwoofer. Poor subwoofer installations usually suffer from too much, or poorly defined, bass. Equally, though, it is very easy to destroy any chance of good monitoring quality with an inappropriate or badly set-up subwoofer - and it is worth stating that I have probably seen nine unsatisfactory installations for every good one! When designed and used appropriately, subwoofers can be extremely effective and very convenient. Again, I'll come back to this topic later, but I first want to consider 2.1 stereo monitoring arrangements. The fact that this sub usually also doubles up, through the use of bass management (explained later), to handle the bass content of all five main channels as well, is just a convenience that allows the use of smaller satellite speakers. However, in the case of 5.1 home theatre and surround sound systems, a dedicated subwoofer is required specifically to handle the low frequency effects (LFE) channel.

#Matching subwoofers to an amp plus#

In the same way, a surround sound system is often denoted as 5.1, meaning five main channels plus a subwoofer to handle the low frequency effects channel (LFE). The two refers to the main pair of stereo (left and right) speakers, while the '.1' refers to the limited-bandwidth subwoofer. It is therefore becoming increasingly common to have smaller 'satellite' left and right speakers, plus one or more subwoofers - a format often referred to as 2.1. When I was first getting interested in all things audio, home subwoofers were rather specialist devices that were only of interest to two groups of hi-fi enthusiasts: those who listened to large pipe organ recitals and those who enjoyed reggae! Things have moved on a great deal since those distant days, and today subwoofers are now considered - more for the 'domestic acceptance' factor than any potential sonic benefits - to be an almost standard part of modern hi-fi and studio monitoring systems. If you really want to craft your bass end, a subwoofer can be indispensable.