This is a guest blog post from Gary Yacoubian, President and CEO of SVS, and someone we're proud to call a friend. With more than 25 years invested in consumer electronics on the retail and corporate side, Gary is an industry icon and global leader in high performance audio who, let's face it, knows his bass.
A subwoofer is a speaker designed specifically to deliver bass for all the other speakers in a home theater or stereo system. Bass is important for many reasons. It adds layers of massive sonic impact as well as subtle, even delicate sound that draws us in and makes all of our music, movies, and TV shows more thrilling and immersive. Bass allows you to literally feel a musical note or sound effect in a movie — it sets the mood in a soundtrack, and it provides pacing for the rhythm and melody in music. Bass creates the foundation of the rhythms that make you tap your toe or nod your head when a favorite song comes on.
Unlike choosing speakers, which is a subjective decision based on many factors (appearance, voicing, form factor), choosing a subwoofer is a more objective one. Why? Because when it comes to subwoofers, we can more easily judge them by their ability to do 5 basic things. The best home subwoofers all share these five performance qualities, which are easy to catch if you know what to listen for.
Also check out our best home subwoofers of 2021 list.
1. Incredibly low frequency extension.
Many subwoofers don’t have the ability to reproduce the deepest bass notes or tones. In more technical terms, this means they’re unable to reach notes at or below 20Hz (the threshold of human hearing). So, they attempt to make up for it by exaggerating the mid-bass performance to hide the missing notes. This results in boomy, single-note bass, creating a less believable experience that robs you of feeling what the artist or director really intended to present in the lowest frequencies. The best subwoofers deliver the deepest bass with clarity and grace, sometimes creating frequencies so deep they can’t even be heard — only felt!
If you’re looking at a spec sheet, it’s important to know that these are written based on test results in an anechoic chamber (a room designed to completely absorb sound). This is unfair for subwoofers, as they rely on sound reflections in your room to create clear, powerful notes. As such, a subwoofer may only be specified as going down to 30Hz, when in reality, it dives much, much deeper.
What you should listen for:
Look out for subwoofers that seem to run out of steam on very deep bass notes. Put on your favorite EDM bass drop, and you might notice that as the bass falls lower and lower in pitch, the volume starts to drop as well, too. World-class subwoofers will maintain output levels the whole way down.
(Photo: SVS Prime Tower and SVS SB-2000 subwoofer)
2. Low frequency output at the highest sound pressure levels (SPLs).
That’s a mouthful, but the concept is quite simple. A world-class subwoofer plays effortlessly loud and distortion-free, no matter how deep or demanding the source material. Unlike passive speakers, subwoofers usually have their own internal amplifiers and DSP engines so they can make their own on-the-fly volume adjustments when a home theater or stereo system is cranked up. Lesser subwoofers use amplifier limiting, which artificially reduces the volume of the biggest slams of bass bursts to protect the amplifier from being overworked. The result: the bass “disappears” at the very moment you want it to kick in the most, like an action movie explosion or an EDM bass drop. This is an important feature, meant to save the subwoofer from damaging its driver or amp, but it creates a deflating experience. A world-class subwoofer generates enough energy to perform effortlessly with massive SPLs well beyond reference volume, without bottoming out or simply quitting at those critical moments.
What you should listen for:
Pay attention to how much energy and chest-thumping power it creates with the very deepest bass notes (try the great action scenes from Battleship or Tron). If you can’t experience it in person, it’s good to talk to someone who has, like the product experts at World Wide Stereo. You can also check the wattage, which tells you how big the internal amplifier is.
3. Accuracy in frequency response.
The best subwoofers produce the exact amount of bass you’re supposed to hear at the exact right pitch with complete faithfulness to the movie, music, or other source content. This is perhaps the biggest factor in creating a believable home theater experience because it reflects what the artist or director intended for you to hear and feel — without any extra frills or distortion added by the subwoofer failing to perfectly recreate the sound.
What you should listen for:
Is the sound clean, clear, and powerful like it should be? Or is it unclear, flattened notes that sound warped and inaccurate? Bass should not be boring thuds, but rather an extension of the sound your speakers are producing.
(Photo: SVS PB-2000 subwoofer)
4. Pinpoint speed in transients.
This is frequently described as the subwoofer's ability to “stop and start on a dime.” A great subwoofer has extremely fast impulse, or change in momentum (accelerating and decelerating). When these changes don’t happen at lightning speed, extra notes get produced during those impulse times, and the sub is unable to keep pace with your speakers in an audibly pleasing way. For this reason, lesser subwoofers have difficulty keeping up with full range speakers when complex bass lines, aggressive action scenes, and other full range content is presented. The result? A loss of detail. With lesser subwoofers, the bass can take over the soundfield in an unnatural and distracting way. World-class subwoofers stop playing bass at the precise moment they’re supposed to and kick back in at the perfect moment so the sound is indistinguishable from the speaker output and everything plays in perfect unison.
What you should listen for:
How the bass integrates with the other speakers. Does it take over and dominate the sound in aggressive, but sloppy way? The transients are slow. The subwoofer should seem like a part of your speakers, seamlessly blending with their sound and broadening the performance, not overwhelming it.
5. Blend seamlessly with full range speakers.
No one wants to only hear bass in their home theater or audio system. Proper home theater audio is about creating a total experience where the subwoofer lays the sonic foundation, but never draws attention to the bass alone or its location in the room. Bass is omnidirectional and a subwoofer should energize or pressurize a room without overwhelming the soundstage or revealing its placement and presence in a distracting way. A world-class subwoofer adds a powerful and tactile sonic element that can’t be ignored, but always remains complementary to the system as a whole...
What you should listen for:
Just like the previous tip, pay attention to how the bass integrates with other speakers. The subwoofer should sound like it's part of the rest of the audio system, not stealing the show.
(Photo: SVS SB-2000 subwoofer)
Ready to bring on the bass?
From infectious bass guitar riffs and toe-tapping drum beats to armrest-gripping action movie and TV sound effects, a subwoofer unleashes a level of low frequency impact a loudspeaker is simply not equipped to handle. And while some subwoofers merely add boomy, one-note bass, the best subwoofers elevate sound in a thrilling and palpable way that makes you want to re-watch and listen to everything again to hear and feel what you’ve been missing.
If you’ve never experienced this level of low frequency performance, World Wide Stereo has some of the finest subwoofers in the world from SVS and other brands. If you want to hear what all the noise is about, stop by one of World Wide Stereo's showrooms for a demo, or speak with one of their product experts. You’ll never think of sound the same way again.
Meet Gary Yacoubian
Lately, I’ve used A Quiet Place, which sounds amazing, and believe it or not, The Shape of Water. Our tried-and-true SVS demos include Mad Max: Fury Road, Tron: Legacy, and Avengers: Age of Ultron. For 2-channel, I use Bob Dylan’s The Man in the Black Coat, anything from Nine Inch Nails’ Hesitation Marks, and Miles Davis’s Someday My Prince Will Come.
What song/band/artist inspired you to pursue a career in this industry?
My love of audio is all about my love of music. It started with hearing the Beatles’ Abbey Road for the first time, or hearing Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors on a great stereo system. And that love affair never ended. I just took a 3 hour train ride to see a Radiohead concert! So, yes, since I’m not a musician myself, bringing great sound into people’s lives seemed to be the next best thing.
On a Friday night, what are you listening to?
My living room starts out as a jazz club, with classic Miles Davis and Ornette Coleman playing, until my sons come down and take over with J. Cole and Kendrick Lamar… Then it no longer even remotely resembles a jazz club!
What kind of audio setup do you have at home?
I’m fortunate to have several systems, including a killer 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos home theater. But my pride and joy is my two-channel system with vintage Mark Levinson amplifier and preamp, Linn turntable, and SVS Ultra Tower speakers!
Related Posts:
- The Best Subwoofers for Deep Bass
- Which is Better a Ported or Sealed Subwoofer?
- Subwoofer Calibration Tutorial: How to Make Your Sub Sound Better
- Review: New SVS SB-1000 Pro & PB-1000 Pro Powered Subwoofers
- New from SVS: A Review of the PB-3000 and SB-3000 Subwoofers
- Review: GoldenEar ForceField 30 Vs. 40 Compact Home Subwoofers
- Review: SVS 3000 Micro Subwoofer
