What is subwoofer

English Language Learners Definition of subwoofer. More from Merriam-Webster on subwoofer Britannica. Get Word of the Day daily email! Test Your Vocabulary. Test your visual vocabulary with our question challenge! Love words? Need even more definitions? Just between us: it's complicated. Ask the Editors 'Everyday' vs. What Is 'Semantic Bleaching'? How 'literally' can mean "figuratively". The dynamics are more compelling, the soundstage widens, and the stereo imaging becomes more accurate.

Even if you prefer spinning folk records and watching dialogue-driven indie dramas, a subwoofer helps produce a more vibrant, all-encompassing sound. Honestly, you can place your subwoofer anywhere. But since all rooms are constructed differently, the results are going to vary. We get it. Not everyone has a dedicated home theater or listening room with the flexibility to place your subwoofer anywhere. Along with placement, acoustic treatment is another factor to consider if you want to get the most out of a subwoofer.

It calibrates each speaker to create a more harmonious home theater experience. Placement can also be determined by whether you've opted for a down-firing or front-firing subwoofer. While there's no discernible difference between how each option sounds, there are certain factors you need to evaluate depending on the space you're looking to fill, specifically whether you're placing the sub in a home or an apartment.

Shop Subs Now. Your subwoofer and loudspeakers should act as one unit. The bass coming from the subwoofer should blend seamlessly with the rest of your speakers. Crossover is the frequency where your speakers begin to roll off, and the subwoofer starts to produce bass notes. Basses contain a lot of energy, so the placement of a subwoofer can quickly go wrong. It is therefore possible that your furniture will vibrate. This means that a certain low frequency is amplified in your room, making it sound louder than the rest.

This is possible, for example, if your subwoofer is placed too close to a corner. This attenuates certain frequencies, making the basses sound very thin. Placing a subwoofer is quite a challenge. What can help with this is to imagine that your room is a pond.

If you throw a stone into a pond, you will get expanding circles around the point where the stone hits the water. These circles are similar to how the circles of low sound waves move. Each stone is then a bass sound that comes out of your subwoofer. These circles are sent in all directions, while speakers send the mid and high tones in a certain direction.

That is why you have to point speakers to your listening position, while a subwoofer can theoretically be anywhere in your room. Back to the pond. Ideally, the circles stay as pure as possible until they reach your ears. However, if you throw a stone too close to the edge, you will notice that the circles bounce back and affect the other waves. However, this becomes a lot more complex in a space with many surfaces. This is the problem with subwoofers placed too close to an angle.

The sound waves that come into a corner are amplified and pushed back into the room. This distorts the rest of your sound waves, giving you a distorted view. The tricky thing about these stumbling blocks is that they are not so easy to identify and solve. In general, larger spaces experience fewer problems than small ones.

These can solve many problems for you. But for the heavy issues you quickly need a very advanced model, which you will of course see in the price. Nowadays you see more and more subwoofers with their own measurement and equalization system.

However, this does not apply to everyone. There are some rules of thumb that are a good basis for placing your subwoofer. It is usually advised to place it at the front of your room, not near a corner or against a wall. Because this is not always possible, subwoofers can also be placed in the back of the room. In this case, it is wise not to set the crossover too high. Many people find it tempting to tuck the subwoofer away in a cabinet. An understandable idea. Subwoofers are often not the most beautiful devices and they take up a lot of space.

By placing it in a cabinet, you simply create an extra housing for your subwoofer. A housing that is not designed for music and therefore has a negative influence on the sound. A measuring system can solve many problems in your room. To do this properly it is important that you know something about audio. In addition, it can be a time-consuming job and such a system is not cheap.

However, you can also start with a simple application on your phone or tablet. Before the inner audiophile comes up in you: such an app is a nice start, but it certainly does not solve all possible problems.

This article focused on external sub woofers. A better solution is to integrate the subwoofer into the speaker.