Music Just discovered what a subwoofer can do

For years i've been listening to music using stereo speakers and a center, my GFs brother has just upgraded his home cinema kit so I've ended up with a boston acoustics CR400, i'm amazed at the difference its made! At first I was a bit 'meh' but when you flick it off and on again while the music is playing it makes my non-sub setup sound like 100% tin.

Sorry for my ramble, I was just so impressed I had to post, seriously, I feel like i've been enlightened, it's one of those moments lol

 

I'm a bit worried. Music is not to be listened through via a cinema setup unless it's a 5.1 mix. Subs for music? Err...

 

mm what are you worried about rich? It's wired up to my PC via a 5.1 receiver . . .

I use it for music, vids, games, allsorts

 

I actually made this comment a few weeks ago when my friend wanted to let me hear a song from his PC. It sounded terrible without any real bass.

 

I bought my bro a subwoofer because I couldn't stand his cheap 2$ 2.0 speaker set without any bass

Subs are indeed nice

 

hi-fi setups can sometimes benefit from subs, but it has to be a very, very good sub and you must have some very finely tuned crossover circuitry.
your speakers must also handle all of the frequencies that your ear can locate, leaving the subwoofer to deal with the stuff it was meant for.

 

Nothin' Glad you're happy

 

Is it better to split your channels into sub/treble etc ,then amplify->speakers, or go through the amp, then use speakers with built in xover + separate cones?

Also, where does the power go? In a xover I'm assuming it's got caps to ground low f for the tweeter..so is power lost here?


When i first read your title it sounded like you'd managed to blow out a window or something

 

No what you are finding is that cheap speakers can not produce bass. Not that subwoofers are needed.

It is best to take the signal from the preamplifier then split it using an active crossover (active means powered) then put it into its components. How you split it (bass, mids, highs etc) is up to your speakers. If you have two way you only split twice, three way etc etc.

 

That'd have been a good read

 

The sony floorstanders I use seem to go just as low as my Yamaha sub. I was quite impressed, they're pretty cheap speakers for all intents and purposes.

 

Yeah I was hoping you had structurally damaged your building... nevermind.

You can use a sub with a cinema set up if you have a smart enough amp.

 

What is wrong with a subwoofer for music. My bookshelfs only effectivley hit around 180hrtz. That's where my subwoofer comes in.

 

The worst is when someone listens to the radio talking with music equaliser settings....all bassy and reverberaty.

 

In the PC market 2.1 and 5.1 is used because of the god awful speakers they use. The output range is crap so they add a 'sub' to fill in the bass that is lacking from the speakers.

A decent setup should have speakers that output a fairly large range whilst the sub fills in anything below that range. It certainly shouldn't be the main source of bass and turning it off should not mean your music doesn't sound good.

Subs are also not suited to every type of music. Guitar and vocals, orchestra and most classical doesn't produce low frequencies. A lot of modern dance, and synthesized music does produce some frequencies that might be lacking from your speakers.

I think what I am trying to say is that subs are generally not needed if you have a decent set of speakers but in some situations they fill in gaps that otherwise might be there in particular types of music.

The aim is a realistic sound that is true to the original recording, not something that sounds like a child has played with the equaliser.

 

Heavy metal! \w/

Are there any PC speakers that haver proper tweeters and woofers in them?

 

Umm, thats not strictly true. Orchestral and classical music has a wider frequency range than any other kind, not to mention, a good mix of most music will have a wide enough frequency range to justify at least some of a subwoofers use. The lowest pitch of a kick drum is 50Hz. Many orchestral music listeners will only listen to their music through headphones or incredibly expensive audio set-ups, because it requires clear and accurate definition of extreme bass frequencies. For example, the low fundamentals of an orchestral Double Bass are 30Hz notes (and of an ELECTRIC bass also), while the overtones on a violin reach 16KHz. Thats one of the reasons the String Quartet produces such a full sound, because it covers almost the entire range of human hearing in terms of pitch. A piano can produce 27Hz, and a pipe organ can produce as low as 20Hz!

Also, some forms of music require the production of those low notes at extreme volume, because of this:



This is an equal loudness contour. The lower it dips, the more sensitive the human ear is to that frequency. Because the human ears response drops off sharply in bass frequencies, sub woofers are an important part of a high quality audio system, because SOMETHING needs to produce those frequencies much louder than other, more easily heard frequencies. That is what the 'loudness' button on a stereo does. It contours the sound in the amp to this curve to make the music correspond to the response of the ear.


IMPORTANT THING TO REMEMBER.


While a good sub woofer can immensely improve the quality of the sound, accurate reproduction of lower pitches requires a correspondingly larger room, preferably without obstructions in the speaker path!!

This is because at lower pitches, the physical wavelength changes. In a room smaller than a good 30 or 40 feet across square, extremely low bass frequencies will sound TERRIBLE. A short explanation runs thus: The speed of sound is constant*, the modulation of a pitch considerably variable. As the frequency of a wavelength decreases, the distance covered before a full cycle of that wavelength increases dramatically, as it is travelling at the same speed, but oscillating slower. In small rooms, a low bass pitch will not complete a full cycle before it reaches the end of the room, and will double back on itself to complete that cycle travelling in the opposite, or a different direction.

This has the effect of exciting the 'bass nodes' of the room and causing sympathetic vibrations in the air of the room, distorting the sound immensely.. This is what you feel when stood in a room with loud bass that seemingly makes the room 'vibrate'. The room is too small for the wavelength. Its also part of why smaller venues for gigs, seem much more intense than larger shows or open air festivals.

This property, peculiarly, has become a DESIRED FEATURE of many of today's modern stereo sub woofers, particularly in the lower end market, where listeners will usually not have a large room to listen to music in, and more importantly, when you see a flashing lights stereo system, it is usually cheaply made and designed with the ignorant chav in mind, who considers this distortion and extreme vibration of bass, to be 'Feeling the music'. This is because the doubling back and distortion allows the users of such stereos to experience 'Phat Bass!'. So next time you hear a Chav saying his stereo has 'Phat bass', comfort yourself in the fact that he is so ignorant of music and physics, that he is actually being fooled into thinking a HORRIBLE representation of the recorded sound, is in fact a 'superior stereo system'.

*A generally accepted value for the speed of sound is 761 MPH (1,224 km/h), as derived from the conditions in engineering's 'Standard atmosphere'.

 

Yeah I hate those horrible cheap plastic "mini hifis" that you get from curries or argos or wherever, and they have all sorts of crazy angles and massive speaker cones... and cost upwards of £350 for a heap of junk that sounds TERRIBLE. Heck, if you went onto eBay and bought seperables 2nd hand, it would sound infinatly better.

 

The best way to get an AWESOME bang for buck with quite a lot of audio equipment is to build it yourself from plans. Components are a dime a dozen, and the price of quality transformers and caps, will in the end pale in comparison to total cost. I know a few people who've built their own effects pedals, guitar amps, or indeed parts of their seperates systems, and they sound great if you do it right.

 

takling about differences you've noticed, i noticed a huge one when me and my dad added the Linn exotik pre-amp to our hi-fi.