Talk:Subwoofer

Death burp
This is not a common term on Google. I mostly found this Wikipedia article and its reverberations. The source given for death burp is itself kind of rummy, what appears to be an offhand remark in an enthusiast forum, even if it is straight from the horse's mouth. This term is a neologism so far as I can see with respect to sources of record, and probably should be removed. &mdash; MaxEnt 19:29, 2 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I added that bit, where Danley says "target 94 dB at 250 meters is not the essentially fictional 'burst' or 'peak SPL' nonsense in pro sound, or like the 'death burp' signal used in car sound contests." I know that those words you question are not enough for an article on Wikipedia, which is why you do not see me trying to start Death burp. In context, though, their appearance is perfectly suitable—the phrase captures Danley's opinion very colorfully and the whole sentence conveys his disgust with subwoofer contests in which the drivers destroy themselves trying to get loud. It is a measure of why he designed the way he did. As far as it being a neologism, Danley himself placed the quotes around the parts he wanted to emphasize as worthy of contempt, so his use of the term is equivalent to his dismissal of it. Me, I love the full quote, and wouldn't change a hair. Binksternet (talk) 19:52, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Mythbusters Subwoofer
Should anything about the giant 50 inch subwoofer that the mythbusters built (that hit 160db) go into this article? It was pretty epic

Wildm4n (talk) 19:17, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Servo good? Sez whom?
"An advantage of a well-implemented servo subwoofer design is reduced distortion making smaller enclosure sizes possible."

Is that so? The footnote on that assertion refers to a web page that contains no evidence. I have seen actual tests by disinterested parties in which servo subwoofers came off rather badly in the harmonic distortion category. http://www.hometheatershack.com/forums/subwoofer-tests-archived/5756-diy-rythmik-audio-direct-servo-12-sealed-56l.html

I think the claim of reduced distortion should be removed or prefaced with "some say" weasel words. Jive Dadson (talk) 13:01, 10 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Above the mid 30s, it (a 12" servo sub) equals a 15" sub that costs three times as much as it. Compare to the tests shown here, although admittedly he doesn't label the dB levels as he should have (they were talking about 100 dB levels, however): http://www.avforums.com/forums/subwoofers-tactile-transducers/943658-how-much-thd-total-harmonic-distortion-acceptable.html


 * Considering that virtually all musical content is at or above the high thirties (excepting the lowest of the low - low organ, piano, some synthesizers, and rumble effects [where distortion isn't exactly a major issue]), I'd say that the Rythmik sub does absolutely excellent. And it's the least expensive servo sub available today AFAIK.


 * Rythmik also has a white paper on the topic: http://www.rythmikaudio.com/memory.html


 * Blackbeard Ben - 90.225.86.124 (talk) 17:40, 16 January 2011 (UTC)


 * The AV Forums test results are not verifiable as the author only goes by Ilkka, a guy from Finland. What's verifiable is the Ralph Calabria review of the Rythmik DirectServo kit, published in April 2004. Binksternet (talk) 18:40, 16 January 2011 (UTC)


 * It's true that neither is verifiable, although I didn't notice that both measurements are taken by the same guy. In fact, he has a ton of subwoofer tests: http://www.hometheatershack.com/forums/subwoofer-tests-archived/6015-index-subwoofer-tests-manufacturer-model.html


 * And he explains his testing procedure in great depth (as good as Stereophile or another publication would, although without an anechoic chamber) here: http://www.hometheatershack.com/forums/subwoofer-tests-archived/971-subwoofer-tests-explained.html  Perhaps someone with expertise on acoustics and audio testing could peer review his methods?  That seems a whole lot better than just inserting a weasel word...


 * Oh, there is some verifiable (I think; I'm still new to this) info in the Jan 1995 Stereophile interview of Arnie Nudell - he talks about the design of servo subwoofers: https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0Bycr3PSuxse4OWY2MmM4M2EtY2NiMi00NjRjLWIxNTQtMWUwOGIzMTc0OTdm&sort=name&layout=list&num=50


 * Blackbeard Ben - 90.225.86.124 (talk) 00:22, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

First Subwoofer
I'm not so sure about the accuracy of the claim that Ken Kreisel developed the first subwoofer. Infinity's Servo-Statik 1, which contains an 18" servo controlled separate subwoofer, was created in 1968 - before Ken had even met Jonas Miller in 1969. (He also graduated high school in that year) He never says when he designed his first subwoofer, although he does say that the first K&M subwoofer was the one for the Steely Dan recording sessions in 1973.  I have no idea what he says in Reference 6 in the article, the review in Audio - it may say otherwise.  But as far as I've read, there's all the evidence for Infinity having developed the first subwoofer (actually, it's referenced as a "bass speaker" in the Stereophile Servo-Statik 1 review), first servo sub, and first dedicated subwoofer amp/crossover in 1968.

http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/136/

http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/845

http://www.kkprofessionalsound.com/timeline.htm

http://www.bobbyshred.com/infinity/servo.html

http://www.infinity-classics.de/infinity/models/Electrostatic-series-since-1968/index-Electrostatic.htm

The January 1995 Stereophile interview of the founders of Infinity also covers the Servo-Statik 1. I uploaded it to Google Docs for everyone to see: https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0Bycr3PSuxse4OWY2MmM4M2EtY2NiMi00NjRjLWIxNTQtMWUwOGIzMTc0OTdm&sort=name&layout=list&num=50

Also, not a reliable source, but interesting nonetheless:

http://www.martinloganowners.com/forum/showpost.php?s=643cf80340aec482172fe578474f263b&p=60065&postcount=4

Blackbeard Ben - 90.225.86.124 (talk) 18:20, 16 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I was always wondering about the accuracy of the claim about who designed the first subwoofer. I came to this article to fix it up for GA status and it had some seemingly good text with seemingly good cites which I did not disturb much. I have never seen the Daniel J. Levitin piece about Kreisel that he wrote for Audio in 1996, so I don't know exactly what it says. I doubt it predates the Infinity servo. Is there a public domain photo of it? Binksternet (talk) 03:53, 17 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I couldn't find any with searching; and I certainly don't have access to one to take any myself. However, this guy owns a Servo-Statik and has his own photos of it; perhaps he can be contacted and convinced to release them in a CC-SA license.  Considering that those photos are copied on the other two most widely read vintage Infinity information websites, I think that there's a very good chance he would agree to do so - if he still responds to the e-mail address on his site: http://www.davidsaudio.com/html/infinity__speakers_and_audio.html


 * Or, did you mean a photo/scan/transcript of the 1996 Audio article? :D  No, I couldn't find anywhere with it.  The 1997 Stereophile interview does say at the very beginning that he had "25 years of experience in sound recording, audio retailing, and loudspeaker design and manufacturing", which reads as if it was 1971 or 1972 when he began his speaker design work.  That would make sense considering his influential 1971 trip to the east coast.  Again, it's not entirely unambiguous.  It's possible to contact someone on Ken's site, but that would constitute original research unless the webmaster were to publish it on his site.


 * Perhaps, without having further evidence, the thing to say is that the first known subwoofer is the one for the Servo-Statik 1.  That leaves the possibility for earlier designs.


 * Blackbeard Ben - 90.225.86.124 (talk) 05:49, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

GA status
Neat to see that this is a good article. It seems like it lacks some referencing, which I am assuming was let go a little on this due to copious amounts of allegedly professional insight on the topic, as is common with these genre of articles here. Almost every such article here has some well formatted parameter equation worked into it that I'm sure helps it's dazzle as well as confuse any reader or reviewer. I do think that the main picture should be more generic, not showing a brand name product on a coffee table, and should include the enclosure as this is the one type of man-made noisemaker that is most absolutely dependent on the box it's in as well as the other parts of it's system, adding to it's nature as the most impractical, unnecessary, and inefficient member of it's family of apparatusses. Daniel Christensen (talk) 04:52, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Also, aren't wind and air pressure masses in some way equivalent to extremely low frequency acoustic waves (i.e. .000000001 Hz), which means if the jet stream went crazy and 10 high and low pressure systems were passing each second there would be a phenominal 10 Hz acoustic wave? (and enough air moving fast enough to spell complete disaster to earth), because acoustic waves are, after all, nothing more than differences in air pressure. Whoops, this is not a forum; I added in small rooms to the localization statement, for even in an absorbent space that is fairly small the source is plainly localizable. Daniel Christensen (talk) 01:26, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

"Bass Cannon"
A search for the term "bass cannon" redirects to this page. I think people who search for it are looking for the song. Can we fix that? — Preceding unsigned comment added by FruitSalad4225 (talk • contribs) 06:29, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

help with relation in the size of drive/magnet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Science#Question_about_subwoofers
 * Iskánder Vigoa Pérez (talk) 15:22, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

20hz
I think saying 20hz is standard in the consumer market is inaccurate. 20 hz would only be for very high end, expensive subs


 * I agree with this totally. Though it will be hard to find reputable sources, around 30Hz and up would be more accurate. B137 (talk) 23:01, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Image


While this is also not an optimal image in terms of quality and relevence, I think it is better than the current one as it is more brand name neutral. Also "subwoofer" often refers to the enclosure as well as driver. B137 (talk) 23:00, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree that the current image should be replaced. But I do not thing the proposed image is suitable as the main image for this article. It, again, does not show a subwoofer. It shows parts of one. (Another problem with the image may be that the background structure is hard to explain - probably not relevant as content or context of image content, but not neutral enough to be obviously not relevant.) - Volker Siegel (talk) 12:53, 7 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Working on a montage but still looking for a good "commercial" or DJ image to replace Flickr image with different license. B137 (talk) 21:18, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Ambiguity
Under the cinema sound section, it should clarified whether or not it refers to high volumes in the middle and upper frequencies being too loud due to main speaker volume not being limited by low frequency performance. Furthermore, in the description of the cardioid pattern diagram, it should be further explained that this represents the two-dimensional theoretical space, in this case the x-y coordinate plane, and that in real life it would not be this symmetrical and perfect. B137 (talk) 20:43, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Subwoofer. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20120723231911/http://www.home-theater-designers.com/glossary.html to http://www.home-theater-designers.com/glossary.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers. —cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 05:56, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Audio hobbies category
Hi, I added the article to the Category:Audio hobbies category. This category was reverted. Of course, audio hobbyists build all sorts of loudspeakers and DIY audio projects, so I agree that we shouldn't tag every single audio article as an Audio hobby. But subwoofers have been the subject of DIY hobbyist interest, both for building DIY subwoofers for home audio listening, and for building huge subs in cars. I think adding the category helps readers to find this page, for which the following sources, just picked off Google's first search page, indicate hobbyist interest in DIY subwoofers OnBeyondZebrax • TALK :
 * [hometheaterhifi.com/volume_6_3/diy-11-sonotube-subwoofer-september-99.html]
 * [www.instructables.com/id/DIY-10-Home-Subwoofer/]
 * [www.rythmikaudio.com/diy.html]
 * [turbofuture.com › Home Theater & Audio › Speakers]



Evaluation
I think that all of the information of the page is adequately backed up by proper sources. The edits done to the page have also made it more accurate and more clear to the reader. The information is also neutral, one of the edits of the picture to not show a brand name helped with this. Great job! Robyduby (talk) 04:28, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

"Throw" of subwoofers
The Cerwin Vega website hosts a PDF guide that talks about long-, medium- and short-throw subwoofers. Their guide, written for musicians rather than sound engineers, is wrong about throw, and should be removed from this article. For the great majority of subs, low frequencies travel some distance through air depending on how much power was applied in the first place. The only variation on "throw" is when the subwoofer enclosure, or the arrangement of subwoofers into an array, has some amount of directionality, with more SPL sent forward, and less SPL sent to the sides and rear.

I don't have a source saying that CV's concept of "throw" is a bunch of nonsense, but on the other hand, the CV page can be seen as an outlier, and it can be removed as a very minor viewpoint, not supported by more authoritative sources. Binksternet (talk) 22:26, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Tang Band RBM drivers, isobaric loading, transmission line enclosures, bass reflex tuning
I'm planning on adding these at some point. Thoughts...? Anamyd (talk) 10:22, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

OK my bad, make that Tang Band RBM drivers only, as the other things have their own articles. Anamyd (talk) 10:24, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

I'm going to link the isobaric loudspeaker article on this, though. Anamyd (talk) 10:50, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Bass instrument amplification
Some misinformation here. The low E on a bass guitar is about 41Hz, but the pickup placement means that the first harmonic at ~80Hz typically dominates the sound, relatively little fundamental content is 'filled in' by the brain based on information in the other low order harmonics. This means that a relatively poor LF performance (e.g. from a 2x8 setup with a lower limit of 60-65Hz) can be acceptable for many types of music. That said, detuning (to D or lower) is commonplace, so the majority of larger bass speakers will handle notes with a 'significant' content below 41hz. Five-string basses with a low B, 31Hz are regularly encountered and any bass setup worthy of the name should be able to reproduce a reasonable sound from such a string but will rarely have a response right down to 31Hz - most quality bass cabs will be tuned to have a -3dB point between 41Hz and 35Hz. This will usually be achieved with the main driver, not with a separate subwoofer, possibly supplemented by a tweeter. Multi-speaker combinations such as 4x10 and 2x12 are popular, but this is usually to achieve higher efficiency rather than increased bass. Designs have greatly improved in the last decade or so and the use of 15" speakers is greatly declining as speakers with 10" and 12" drivers are proving more practical while equally suitable for bass guitar. High pass filters are chiefly used to reduce handling noise etc. and might have -3dB points ~30Hz with a slope of 12dB/octave. HPFs tuned higher are not unusual. Stub Mandrel (talk) 20:10, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Leiden
Leiden is one of the best insulated tumbler in this world 118.101.171.156 (talk) 12:05, 15 November 2022 (UTC)