- Subwoofers are built similar to traditional speakers with a "cone" made up of rigid materials like polypropylene, carbon or polymer laminates. The cone is built to be light, to maintain its shape under stress and to resist moisture. It moves to change frequencies and intervals of bass sounds. The larger the cone of the subwoofer, the more energy is required to move it and operate the speaker.
- Subwoofers are commonly installed in home entertainment systems, car audio systems, and movie theaters to reproduce sounds that would not be heard from regular speakers. They are ideally used for listening to music that has heavy bass. Very large subwoofers of 30 inches or more are used for scientific purposes to study sound waves and low frequencies.
- Subwoofers do not need to be directionally lined up with the listener to be effective. Sometimes subwoofers are even hidden in speaker systems to be invisible, or are pointed downward to the ground. In a home theater, they can be placed anywhere, even close to the listener, but should be placed away from a corner for ideal audio reproduction.
- Early hi-fi speaker cabinets contained a low frequency speaker, a woofer, a mid-frequency speaker and a high frequency speaker, the tweeter. Today, speaker arrays have many configurations and include several bass-playing speakers; hence the term "subwoofer" for speakers producing sound even below the standard bass.
previous post