Subwoofer
A subwoofer is a loudspeaker designed to reproduce low-pitched audio frequencies, known as bass and sub-bass, that are lower in frequency than those which can be generated by a woofer. The typical frequency range that is covered by a subwoofer is about for consumer products, below for professional live sound, and below in THX-certified systems. Thus, one or more subwoofers are important for high-quality sound reproduction as they are responsible for the lowest two to three octaves of the ten octaves that are audible. This very low-frequency range reproduces the natural fundamental tones of the bass drum, electric bass, double bass, grand piano, contrabassoon, tuba, in addition to thunder, gunshots, explosions, etc.
Subwoofers are never used alone, as they are intended to substitute the VLF sounds of "main" loudspeakers that cover the higher frequency bands. VLF and higher-frequency signals are sent separately to the subwoofer and the mains by a "crossover" network, typically using active electronics, including digital signal processing. Additionally, subwoofers are fed their own low-frequency effects signals that are reproduced at 10 dB higher than standard peak level.
Subwoofers can be positioned more favorably than the main speakers' woofers in the typical listening room acoustic, as the very low frequencies they reproduce are nearly omnidirectional and their direction is hard to determine. However, much digitally recorded content contains lifelike binaural cues that human hearing may be able to detect in the VLF range, reproduced by a stereo crossover and two or more subwoofers. Subwoofers are not acceptable to all audiophiles, likely due to distortion artifacts produced by the subwoofer driver after the crossover and at frequencies above the crossover.
While the term "subwoofer" technically only refers to the speaker driver, in common parlance, the term often refers to a subwoofer driver mounted in a speaker enclosure, often with a built-in amplifier.
Subwoofers are made up of one or more woofers mounted in a loudspeaker enclosure—often made of wood—capable of withstanding air pressure while resisting deformation. Subwoofer enclosures come in a variety of designs, including bass reflex, using a subwoofer and one or more passive radiator speakers in the enclosure, acoustic suspension, infinite baffle, horn-loaded, tapped horn, transmission line, bandpass or isobaric designs. Each design has unique trade-offs with respect to efficiency, low-frequency range, loudness, cabinet size, and cost. Passive subwoofers have a subwoofer driver and enclosure, but they are powered by an external amplifier. Active subwoofers include a built-in amplifier.
The first home audio subwoofers were developed in the 1960s to add bass response to home stereo systems. Subwoofers came into greater popular consciousness in the 1970s with the introduction of Sensurround in movies such as Earthquake, which produced loud low-frequency sounds through large subwoofers. With the advent of the compact cassette and the compact disc in the 1980s, the reproduction of deep and loud bass was no longer limited by the ability of a phonograph record stylus to track a groove, and producers could add more low-frequency content to recordings. As well, during the 1990s, DVDs were increasingly recorded with "surround sound" processes that included a low-frequency effects channel, which could be heard using the subwoofer in home-cinema systems. During the 1990s, subwoofers also became increasingly popular in home stereo systems, custom car audio installations, and in PA systems. By the 2000s, subwoofers became almost universal in sound reinforcement systems in nightclubs and concert venues.
Unlike a system's main loudspeakers, subwoofers can be positioned more optimally in a listening room's acoustic. However, subwoofers are not universally accepted by audiophiles amid complaints of the difficulty of "splicing" the sound with that of the main speakers around the crossover frequency. This is largely due to the subwoofer driver's non-linearity producing harmonic and intermodulation distortion products well above the crossover frequency, and into the range where human hearing can "localize" them, wrecking the stereo "image".
History
1920s to 1950s precursors
From about 1900 to the 1950s, the "lowest frequency in practical use" in recordings, broadcasting and music playback was. When sound was developed for motion pictures, the basic RCA sound system was a single 8-inch speaker mounted in straight horn, an approach which was deemed unsatisfactory by Hollywood decisionmakers, who hired Western Electric engineers to develop a better speaker system. The early Western Electric experiments added a set of 18-inch drivers for the low end in a large, open-backed baffle and a high-frequency unit, but MGM was not pleased with the sound of the three-way system, as they had concerns about the delay between the different drivers.In 1933, the head of MGM's sound department, Douglas Shearer, worked with John Hilliard and James B. Lansing to develop a new speaker system that used a two-way enclosure with a W-shaped bass horn that could go as low as. The Shearing-Lansing 500-A ended up being used in "screening rooms, dubbing theaters, and early sound reinforcement". In the late 1930s, Lansing created a smaller two-way speaker with a woofer in a vented enclosure, which he called the Iconic system; it was used as a studio monitor and in high-end home hi-fi set-ups.
During the 1940s swing era, to get deeper bass, "pipelike opening" were cut into speaker enclosures, creating bass reflex enclosures, as it was found that even a fairly inexpensive speaker enclosure, once modified in this way, could "transmit the driving power of a heavy...drumbeat—and sometimes not much else—to a crowded dancefloor." Prior to the development of the first subwoofers, woofers were used to reproduce bass frequencies, usually with a crossover point set at and a loudspeaker in an infinite baffle or in professional sound applications, a "hybrid horn-loaded" bass reflex enclosure. In the mid-1950s, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences selected the "big, boxy" Altec A-7 as the industry standard for movie sound reproduction in theaters.
1960s: first subwoofers
In September 1964, Raymon Dones, of El Cerrito, California, received the first patent for a subwoofer specifically designed to augment omnidirectionally the low frequency range of modern stereo systems. It was able to reproduce distortion-free low frequencies down to 15 cycles per second. 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, bassist Monk Montgomery, bassist Nathan East, and the Pointer Sisters. The Octavium speaker and Dones's subwoofer technology were also utilized, in a few select theaters, to reproduce low pitch frequencies for the 1974 blockbuster movie Earthquake. During the late 1960s, Dones's Octavium was favorably reviewed by audiophile publications including Hi-Fi News and Audio Magazine.Another early subwoofer enclosure made for home and studio use was the separate bass speaker for the Servo Statik 1 by New Technology Enterprises. Designed as a prototype in 1966 by physicist Arnold Nudell and airline pilot Cary Christie in Nudell's garage, it used a second winding around a custom Cerwin-Vega 18-inch driver to provide servo control information to the amplifier, and it was offered for sale at $1795, some 40% more expensive than any other complete loudspeaker listed at Stereo Review. In 1968, the two found outside investors and reorganized as Infinity. The subwoofer was reviewed positively in Stereophile magazine's winter 1968 issue as the SS-1 by Infinity. The SS-1 received very good reviews in 1970 from High Fidelity magazine.
Another of the early subwoofers was developed during the late 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.
1970s to 1980s
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. In 1976, Kreisel created the first satellite speakers and subwoofer system, named "David and Goliath".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 Cerwin-Vega "Sensurround" system used large subwoofers that were driven by racks of 500 watt amplifiers, 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 the film screen and two more were placed together at the rear of the audience on a platform. Powerful noise energy and loud rumbling in the range of 17 to 120 Hz were generated at the level of 110–120 decibels of sound pressure level, abbreviated dB. 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.
For owners of 33 rpm LPs and 45 rpm singles, loud and deep bass was limited by the ability of the phonograph record stylus to track the groove. While some hi-fi aficionados had solved the problem by using other playback sources, such as reel-to-reel tape players which were capable of delivering accurate, naturally deep bass from acoustic sources, or synthetic bass not found in nature, with the popular introduction of the compact cassette in the late 1960s it became possible to add more low frequency content to recordings. By the mid-1970s, 12-inch vinyl singles, which allowed for "more bass volume", were used to record disco, reggae, dub and hip-hop tracks; dance club DJs played these records in clubs with subwoofers to achieve "physical and emotional" reactions from dancers.
In the early 1970s, David Mancuso hired sound engineer Alex Rosner to design additional subwoofers for his disco dance events, along with "tweeter arrays" to "boost the treble and bass at opportune moments" at his private, underground parties at The Loft. The demand for sub-bass sound reinforcement in the 1970s was driven by the important role of "powerful bass drum" in disco, as compared with rock and pop; to provide this deeper range, a third crossover point from 40 to 120 Hz was added. The Paradise Garage discotheque in New York City, which operated from 1977 to 1987, had "custom designed 'sub-bass' speakers" developed by Alex Rosner's disciple, sound engineer Richard Long that were called "Levan Horns".
By the end of the 1970s, subwoofers were used in dance venue sound systems to enable the playing of "ass-heavy dance music" that we "do not 'hear' with our ears but with our entire body". At the club, Long used four Levan bass horns, one in each corner of the dancefloor, to create a "haptic and tactile quality" in the sub-bass that you could feel in your body. To overcome the lack of sub-bass frequencies on 1970s disco records, Long added a DBX 100 "Boom Box" subharmonic pitch generator into his system to synthesize 25 to 50 Hz sub-bass from the 50 to 100 Hz bass on the records.
By the later 1970s, disco club sound engineers were using the same large Cerwin-Vega Sensurround-style folded horn subwoofers that were used in Earthquake and similar movies in dance club system installations. In the early 1980s, Long designed a sound system for the Warehouse dance club, with "huge stacks of subwoofers" which created "deep and intense" bass frequencies that "pound through your system" and "entire body", enabling clubgoers to "viscerally experience" the DJs' house music mixes.
In Jamaica in the 1970s and 1980s, sound engineers for reggae sound systems began creating "heavily customized" subwoofer enclosures by adding foam and tuning the cabinets to achieve "rich and articulate speaker output below 100 Hz". The sound engineers who developed the "bass-heavy signature sound" of sound reinforcement systems have been called "deserving as much credit for the sound of Jamaican music as their better-known music producer cousins". The sound engineers for Stone Love Movement, for example, modified folded horn subwoofers they imported from the US to get more of a bass reflex sound that suited local tone preferences for dancehall audiences, as the unmodified folded horn was found to be "too aggressive" sounding and "not deep enough for Jamaican listeners".
In sound system culture, there are both "low and high bass bins" in "towering piles" that are "delivered in large trucks" and set up by a crew of "box boys", and then positioned and adjusted by the sound engineer in a process known as "stringing up", all to create the "sound of reggae music you can literally feel as it comes off these big speakers". Sound system crews hold 'sound clash' competitions, where each sound system is set up and then the two crews try to outdo each other, both in terms of loudness and the "bass it produced".
In the 1980s, the Bose Acoustimass AM-5 became a popular subwoofer and small high-range satellite speaker system for home listening. Steve Feinstein stated that with the AM-5, the system's "appearance mattered as much as, if not more than, great sound" to consumers of this era, as it was considered to be a "cool" look. The success of the AM-5 led to other makers launching subwoofer-satellite speaker systems, including Boston Acoustics Sub Sat 6 and 7, and the Cambridge SoundWorks Ensemble systems. Claims that these sub-satellite systems showed manufacturers and designers that home-cinema systems with a hidden subwoofer could be "feasible and workable in a normal living room" for mainstream consumers. Despite criticism of the AM-5 from audio experts, regarding a lack of bass range below 60 Hz, an "acoustic hole" in the 120 to 200 Hz range and a lack of upper range above 13 kHz for the satellites, the AM-5 system represented 30% of the US speaker market in the early 1990s.
In the 1980s, Origin Acoustics developed the first residential in-wall subwoofer named Composer. It used an aluminum 10-inch driver and a foam-lined enclosure designed to be mounted directly into wall studs during the construction of a new home. The frequency response for the Composer is 30 to 250 Hz.