Home Speaker Asylum

General speaker questions for audio and home theater.

of course

This sounds like a variant of the old Klipschorn ads from the 1960s where PWK argued that box speakers couldn't reproduce the 22 foot wavelengths like his corner horns.

You can certainly test this empirically by dumping a subwoofer in your room and feeding it some bass tones . . . and listening to the result.

The problem with rooms that are smaller than the wavelength (i.e. anything less than a concert hall) is that the smaller room generates reflections and the long wavelengths stack up on each other at certain frequencies, producing -- sometimes -- a wildly uneven response. HT buffs don't care much about this -- all that matters is the kick in the stomach.

Music listeners do care about this, so they work with any one of: equalization, speaker placement, and bass absorbers to smooth out the response. OTOH, someone whose ears have been subject to loud, uneven bass may forget the idea of deep bass reproduction as being detrimental to the overall experience and own a pair of speakers with essentially zero response below 60 Hz . . . like Lowthers or something. Those speakers reproduce the bass harmonics generated, in varying degree, by every acoustic bass instrument, but not the fundamental tone. So, the listener can be somewhat satisfied with that, especially since the harmonic frequencies are high enough not to excite room resonances.

Speaking personally, I would not own a subwoofer or a speaker with low bass response, without the ability to control it with a parametric equalizer that is calibrated to compensate for room resonances, which is what I have. In my room, the system will accurately reveal the distinction between what an acoustic bass and an electric bass sounds like playing the same notes, so I think it's pretty good. (And, yeah, they do sound quite different.)


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  • of course - Bruce from DC 16:25:51 11/09/10 (0)

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