All About Subwoofer

By Author: Kaisar Adnan
Total Articles: 38
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Subwoofer refers to either a woofer, or a complete loudspeaker dedicated to the reproduction of bass audio frequencies, typically from 150 Hz down to 20 Hz.
Subwoofers are useful for augmenting main loudspeakers by providing playback of low bass frequencies at high levels. Subwoofers are available in several formats, including bass reflex, acoustic suspension, infinite baffle, horn loaded, tapped horn and bandpass types. The range of sounds from lowest to highest that the subwoofer is capable of reproducing is called frequency range. The actual frequency range can vary depending upon the type of box, crossover point, and the vehicle the subwoofer is installed in.
All loudspeakers characteristically exhibit trade offs between frequency response and response time or transient response depending on the characteristics of the voice coil, properties of the magnetic motor, the cone mass, and the nature of the enclosure.
The voice coil translates the magnet's energy into cone motion. Cone size and voice coil inductance are major factors for a subwoofer.
The most common subwoofer sizes in professional concert ...
... audio are 12", 15" and 18".
The first subwoofer was developed during the 1960s by Ken Kreisel. Infinity's full range electrostatic speaker system of about the same time also used a subwoofer to cover the lower frequency range the electrostatic arrays did not handle adequately. Subwoofers came into greater popular attention in 1974.

Applications of subwoofers

Subwoofers are used in various systems. The main areas of application include professional audio, home audio, car audio and many other fields. Subwoofers are now almost universal in professional sound applications such as live concert sound, churches, nightclubs, and theme parks. Professional audio subwoofers must be capable of very high output levels. This is reflected in the design attention given in recent years to the subwoofer applications for sound reinforcement, public address, and concert systems.
A subwoofer does not necessarily provide superior bass performance in comparison to large conventional loudspeakers on ordinary music recordings due to the lack of very low frequency content on such sources. Most home and car systems have much smaller and unmatched drivers at low frequencies; they attempt to reproduce very low frequencies with large cone motions.

A Subwoofer Shopper's Guide

If you've been sitting in traffic in any city, no doubt you've heard that bass-thumping sounds from the car behind you. A subwoofer reproduces the lowest of all sound tones. Two Types of Subwoofer
An active subwoofer has a built-in powered amplifier to help boost the power going into the subwoofer. This extra power allows for a larger and louder sound. A passive subwoofer has no power supply or built-in amplifier. A passive subwoofer requires some skill in assessing how best to cable the subwoofer to the rest of the components. If you are looking for an easy way to add some deep bass to your home theater setup, then go for an active subwoofer. Costs for Subwoofers
There is a great range of prices for a subwoofer. You can get a good quality, name-brand subwoofer starting around $50. This is for an entry-level passive subwoofer from a company like Sony. Remember, if you go with a passive subwoofer, you will need an amplifier and possibly a crossover filter to drive the speaker. In most cases, you will also need subwoofer cables to connect the speaker to your audio system.
Best Place to Research a Subwoofer
Listen to a $60 subwoofer followed by a $600 subwoofer and compare what you hear. Ask and look at the way the subwoofer is installed. Whether you are putting together a home audio system or boosting your car's audio output, a subwoofer is a worthwhile investment.

Secrets of DIY Subwoofer Equalization

Subwoofers depending on size, placement, and packaging have different characteristics unique to that setup. For example larger subwoofers such as 15 inch or 18 inch subwoofers require larger enclosures for the subwoofer to operate properly.
The rear wall of the subwoofer box acts as a reflection panel that the subwoofer uses to reflect and compound bass waves to help the subwoofer itself reach a higher peak response (or a harder hit).
A side effect of using a larger subwoofer is that a larger moving body in a larger enclosure is more naturally tuned with a lower resonant frequency.
Anyway, within that range of 'bass' frequencies a single vented subwoofer has a typical response curve with a peak response at around 40 to 50hz. However if you were to play things like classic rock and some pop songs on this same system, you will find your bass lacking because those tracks more commonly use bass sounds that are in the higher bass range closer to mid bass or around the 125 to 200hz mark. So, an out of the box subwoofer (even if designed by a great company) may not hit all the frequencies you want it to hit properly depending on your style of music.
Once solution to this problem is to get a subwoofer system such as the infiniti basslink system which has an internal sound processor designed for live signal processing to improve the performance of the subwoofer in its enclosure no matter what type of music you throw at it. The EQS 746 has 3 of its 7 bands in the bass and midbass audio range 50 Hz, 125 Hz, 345 Hz. "Do I constantly find myself playing with the gain knobs and bass boost on my system depending on what song or what genre of music I am listening to?"
If the answer to that question is Yes, then installing and tuning a parametric equalizer can give you a similar bass boost depending on the frequency range where you need the boost the most.
Two important frequencies to work with here are the 50hz and 125hz frequency. Based on a typical vented subwoofer spectrum image I acquired, the graph shows that at 40 to 50hz we have a peak response of 83dB whereas at 125hz the response rolls off to around 66dB. What this means is that your bass at 50hz (when listening to a Rap track with deep bass) is about 17 times louder than your bass at 125hz (when you are listening to rock or classical music).
With the EQS746, (or any similar multi-band EQ) you can lower the gain for the 50hz frequency, and increase the gain for 125hz and 345hz respectively. You resultant spectrum analysis should be as flat as possible between 25 and 200hz with the gain rolling off at frequencies lower than 25 hz or above 200hz. This is all performed with only the subwoofer playing that is; if you had the entire system running when doing these tests, your midrange and midbass speakers should continue this linear trend past 200hz and pick up where the subwoofer would drop off.

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