How big is your subwoofer?

[§ôµÏG®ïñD]

Frequencies is basically isolations per second, basically how many times in a second the subs voice coil is energised to move the cone back and forth. Large subs are slow at responding, they tend to move out fast enough, but have problems returning to state quickly. So the next cycle is already starting when its moving back, hence why the sound ends up not crisp but stays deep simply because more air is being moved.   I hope this kinda helps paul, i\'m in a rush so can\'t really go into depth.

thats actually a good answer period. quick or not.

I disagree with you there.  Having a subwoofer that can goes down to 10 Hz is overkill since that\'s beyond the the hearing level of the average human beings and unecessary.  I disagree with you about bigger subwoofers not being super accurate compare to smaller subs.

Its true that higher quality woofers that are big with deep bass are expensive.  But rightfully so.

Go and price a really good, accurate 18" sub, and see if it\'s practical, or if you can only find one that is for \'rumble\' and less accurate.  At 18" a high end driver would cost a couple orders of magnitude more than the same woofer built at 10".  In any event any driver bigger than 10" is a waste of money for in-home venues.  

As for the 10Hz thing, I simply chose an easy number to explain.  Yes, I know most woofers are 20-200 Hz or within that range (I see 40-120 a lot), but they do make woofers that go lower, and while these are inaudible, they create infrasound, which you can still feel but not hear.  A famous example was the movie Earthquake in 1974 which had such speakers shake the theatre at key points in the movie.

i think you got confused here when you mention subwoofers with speakers...subwoofers are invented mainly for low frequency effects, aka bass because speakers can\'t pump out as deep bass since that can require very big speakers and they are very expensive which makes it uncessary to have such speakers.  That\'s why subwoofers are invented to pump out those deep bass only and nothing else.

While speakers are mainly for middle frequency to much higher frequency response as much as 20,000 Hz, and I believe around 10 kHz - 20 kHz are the high frequency response, aka treble.

We were clearly talking about subs (which is a type of speaker, limited to low frequency) for this whole thread, and the sentence in front of the word speaker.  At best it\'s understood that I\'m still talking about subs, at worst it\'s a recognizable typo, don\'t get so picky.

So, say a big speaker that have a frequency response of 50 Hz - 20,000 Hz, you can listen to musics and movies where it will playback most of the frequency that the human ears can hear.  But what about low frequency response?  Most human ears can hear as low as 20 Hz, but the speakers can\'t go that low though.  So, you will need a subwoofer to playback the LFE.  Most subwoofers don\'t go higher than 200 Hz because that is uncessary because subwoofers are invented to playback the low frequency effects.

If you have a subwoofer that can go down to 20 Hz as its deepest bass, and its highest frequency is 150 Hz.  By doing crossover say at 50 Hz between the speaker and the subwoofer, you will get the frequency response of 20 Hz - 20,000 Hz.  Where from 20 Hz - 50 Hz is created by the subwoofer, and 50 Hz - 20,000 Hz is created by the speakers.

You can do crossover between the sub and the speakers at any frequency that you like between 50 Hz - 150 Hz as an exmaple. since the example subwoofer can go up to 150 Hz, but don\'t do crossover lower than 50 Hz since that\'s where the speakers limit for deep bass is.

This will benefits both movies and music.  I think many music weren\'t recorded with bass as deep as movies, but it wouldn\'t hurt to have a deep bass subwoofer.

Fair enough, didn\'t need the whole explanation of speakers and crossovers, but whatever.  

Here\'s a picture!

The chart defines the general operating ranges of different sized woofers. The green area represents the optimal woofer range while the yellow represents the extended range. The purple area represents the music range of almost all instruments. The lighter purple areas extend the instrument range to include rarely played notes, say the first and last 10 keys on the piano. Comparing the instrument versus driver ranges, one can get an idea of the speaker building problem: no woofer does everything well.

[Paul2]

Go and price a really good, accurate 18" sub, and see if it\'s practical, or if you can only find one that is for \'rumble\' and less accurate.  At 18" a high end driver would cost a couple orders of magnitude more than the same woofer built at 10".  In any event any driver bigger than 10" is a waste of money for in-home venues.

I still don\'t understand how this makes bigger subs less accurate than smaller subs...

As for the 10Hz thing, I simply chose an easy number to explain.  Yes, I know most woofers are 20-200 Hz or within that range (I see 40-120 a lot), but they do make woofers that go lower, and while these are inaudible, they create infrasound, which you can still feel but not hear.  A famous example was the movie Earthquake in 1974 which had such speakers shake the theatre at key points in the movie.

they do make woofers that go lower, but anything lower than 20 Hz usually can\'t be heard but felt like you said.  Your 10 Hz is overkill.  the 40 Hz in 40- 120 Hz is still not as deep as I would like, so again, having a subwoofer than can go as low as 20 Hz shouldn\'t hurt.

Here\'s a picture!

That picture link of your have helps back me up on why it\'s better to have a big sub that can go as low as 20 Hz.

Here is your LInk:

According to your link:  Here is what its said....

[COLOR="SeaGreen"]woofer[/COLOR]

Large loudspeaker designed primarily to reproduce low frequency audio signals.

[COLOR="Cyan"]Frequency ranges[/COLOR]

Humans can hear down to around 20 Hertz. A loudspeaker that can produce bass down to 45 Hertz will sound full range to most people. Many small loudspeakers are designed to produce bass down to around 80-100 Hertz because it is assumed the end user will be using a subwoofer to cover the bottom 2 octaves. But to accurately produce the bottom octaves, a woofer must be large enough to move an appropriate volume of air for a given room. The larger the room, the larger the woofer will have to be to fill the room.


Note that many inexpensive subwoofers are designed to give up on the bottom octave (20-40 Hertz) and sound deep by playing the second octave (40-80 Hertz) louder. It is easy to confuse loud bass with deep bass.


The chart below defines the general operating ranges of different sized woofers. The green area represents the optimal woofer range while the yellow represents the extended range. The purple area represents the music range of almost all instruments. The lighter purple areas extend the instrument range to include rarely played notes, say the first and last 10 keys on the piano. Comparing the instrument versus driver ranges, one can get an idea of the speaker building problem: no woofer does everything well.





[COLOR="Cyan"]Hertz and how it relates to woofers[/COLOR]

For woofers, Hertz is the number of times the cone of the woofer goes in and out per second. So at 20 Hertz, the cone is going in and out 20 times every second. At 20,000 Hertz (often written as 20k Hz) the cone is going in and out 20,000 times per second. The faster the cone moves, the higher the pitch. The farther in and out the cone moves in each cycle, the louder it sounds.


With a little logic, we can surmise that a big heavy woofer cone is not going to get to 20,000 in-out "cycles" per second (at least not sounding very good), nor is a tiny tweeter going to push much air at 20 cycles per second. So we build woofers and tweeters to handle each part of the job.
---------------------------------------------------------------


So, as you can see, big subwoofer is more suited for reproducing deep bass while it seems like smaller woofer are more suited to produce higher frequency range according to your link and picture.  As you can see, the smaller the woofer is judging from your picture, the better it can produce high frequency sound, and those small woofers are only design on speakers while big woofers are design for subwoofers...

[§ôµÏG®ïñD]

I still don\'t understand how this makes bigger subs less accurate than smaller subs...

i explained earlier pretty simply why bigger subs are less accurate then smaller ones.  read up a few posts.
Paul don\'t confuse woofers with tweeters, two different things. Sub-Woofers are only for low range frequencies. Nothing more, Midrange are for midrange frequencies, tweeters being high frequencies.
little image to help clearify it.

6x9 3-way speaker

[Paul2]

as you said, subwoofers are only for low range frequencies.  So, bigger sub with bigger woofer should be able produce deeper bass than smaller sub.  I am not saying smaller sub can\'t get deeper bass, its just that its harder and i doubt it can get the bass more deeper has the sub been bigger.

Mid range and high frequencies made by tweeters are only found in speakers, not subwoofers.  And we are talking about subwoofers here, aren\'t we?

So, I still don\'t understand why is that smaller subwoofer is give "better quality sound" than bigger subs?  By better sound?  Can you guys elaborate it more?  Do you mean smaller subs can get deeper bass than bigger subs?  If so, I disagree.

[§ôµÏG®ïñD]

read above for F@#K SHAKE "Shakes fist"


here, i\'ll post it for you again.

"Frequencies is basically isolations per second, basically how many times in a second the subs voice coil is energised to move the cone back and forth. Large subs are slow at responding, they tend to move out fast enough, but have problems returning to state quickly. So the next cycle is already starting when its moving back, hence why the sound ends up not crisp but stays deep simply because more air is being moved. I hope this kinda helps paul, i\'m in a rush so can\'t really go into depth."

[Paul2]

Okay...not sure I understand completely, but shouldn\'t deeper bass be better?  You mentioned that big sub isn\'t crisp but stays deep compare to smaller subs.  I am not sure I understand the crisp part, but again, shouldn\'t the deeper bass is what we want out of the sub?

Okay...not sure I understand completely, but shouldn\'t deeper bass be better?  You mentioned that big sub isn\'t crisp but stays deep compare to smaller subs.  I am not sure I understand the crisp part, but again, shouldn\'t the deeper bass is what we want out of the sub?

Yeah, but we also want accurate deep bass. Hence the reason we don\'t buy 18" subs with 60W amps.

[Paul2]

who is forcing you to buy 18" sub as they are very expensive and not necessary for small bedroom or living room.  Who says 18" sub only have 60 Watts RMS amplifier?  They can have as much as 1,000 Watts RMS or more, hence another reason why they cost a lot.  Believe me, if a big sub like the 18" you mentioned can produce bass as deep as 16 Hz with 1,000 Watts RMS, it will sounds a lot better than 8" bass with 1,000 Watts RMS where it couldn\'t get the bass no deeper than 28 Hz as an example...Not to mention they produce deeper bass, powerful spl (sound pressure level) with very little THD distortion than the smaller one be able to.

I am just saying that bigger woofer, for instance, the 18" woofer can produce deeper bass, lesser THD noise distortion, where the smaller one, for instance, 10" won\'t be able to produce without having a much higher amount of THD distortion.  If that\'s not accuracy, then I don\'t know what is.

[§ôµÏG®ïñD]

Okay...not sure I understand completely, but shouldn\'t deeper bass be better?  You mentioned that big sub isn\'t crisp but stays deep compare to smaller subs.  I am not sure I understand the crisp part, but again, shouldn\'t the deeper bass is what we want out of the sub?

Well, you\'re not getting the picture / understanding the basics of speakers.
Sound is about clarity. How quickly a voice coil can move the cone effects sound greatly (since this is what creates sound)  if it sounds shit, it is shit. Large subs suffer from certain problems, to avoid this you\'re paying big bucks, for good subs and normally D-Class amps. So it’s not feasible to bother with it when u can just get 2 x 10\'\' or 2 x 12\'\' etc.  That’s for cars, if it was a theatre system I wouldn’t bother with anything over 10\'\'. I’d rather 2 x 10\'\' then one large sub.   Humans hear from 20hz to 20khz. Theres no real point in having subs running under 20hz besides to "feel" it. You\'d get just as much out of 10\'\' - 12\'\' subs and still feel it.

anyway, http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/speaker5.htm, this may help.

ohh and paul. Sub-Woofers are a type of speaker.

ohh and paul. Sub-Woofers are a type of speaker.

Thank you for saying that, I was going to but I think he would have argued with me.  (Just like when I pointed that out last time)

Okay...not sure I understand completely, but shouldn\'t deeper bass be better?  You mentioned that big sub isn\'t crisp but stays deep compare to smaller subs.  I am not sure I understand the crisp part, but again, shouldn\'t the deeper bass is what we want out of the sub?

So you can\'t tell the difference between sloppy bass and tight bass when listening? This is why i prefer 3 10\'s or 2 nice exspensive 12\'s in a mono load. I can get decent SQ while still keeping a lovely amount of SPL

[Paul2]

Humans hear from 20hz to 20khz. Theres no real point in having subs running under 20hz besides to "feel" it. You\'d get just as much out of 10\'\' - 12\'\' subs and still feel it.

I never said to get a big sub to run under 20 Hz, where you had pointed out is just to feel the frequency.  But there are some people that have a good hearing that can hear the frequency lower than 20 Hz, as much as 16 Hz...again, I never said or recommend anyone to get a very big sub to hear the frequency lower than 20 Hz.

I always get the impression that it\'s easier to get deeper bass from bigger sub than smaller sub.  So, i said before and you pointed out, humans can hear as low as 20 Hz.  Some can hear lower than 20 Hz, but that\'s beside the point.  Which is why I thought it\'s better to get a 15" driver sub to get bass as low as 20 Hz than smaller sub, say like 12" or 10", or even 8".  Because I alway get the impression 10" sub or smaller can\'t get bass down to 20 Hz.  Just last night, I did a little research and found out that I was wrong.  That a single 10" sub driver can pull off 20 Hz +/- 1 dB frequency with little distortion at quite loud SPL.  So, after reading that, I was very surprised to find out 10" sub can still get bass as deep as 20 Hz.  So, I guess you have some valid points there about not going over 10" or even 12" subwoofer for most moderate size hometheater...since those size are adequate enough to get bass down to 20 Hz...

anyway, http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/speaker5.htm, this may help.

ohh and paul. Sub-Woofers are a type of speaker.

Good link.  I learned something new reading that link.  I never said subwoofers are a type of speaker.  FatalXception said that, and later he said he made a typo.  scroll up and read what he wrote earlier.  Maybe I wrote big woofers are for handling small frequency while small woofers are for producing higher frequency...I guess I should have wrote tweeters there.  But isn\'t tweeter is a small type of woofer?  at least that what is looks like according to fatalXception link...

Maybe I didn\'t write clear enough to clarify what i am trying to say and my English is not that good as it\'s my 2nd language.

[GmanJoe]

Ahhh...the old days of low frequency base from old school rap like LL Cool J and 2 Live Crew played in crappy vibrating Tercels driving by.