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are subwoofers anti-audiophile?

I have been into this hobby 25 years now and have noticed not a lot of us use Subwoofers in our systems.

I have 2 systems, one which is a Celestion SL700 with their Celestion System 6000 subwoofer pair with a outboard crossover-----my other system has changed quite a bit, but with always large floorstanding speakers. I have also always had adequate power to the speakers.

My floorstanding system cannot match the realism i get from my Celestion/subwoofer system. In my floorstanding system, it is almost like the bassist is backstage playing, while the rest of the band is front stange and center. This leads me to my question. Why don't most of us use subwoofers? I am a member of an audiophile club and we do system hops and no one has a subwoofer in their 2 channel systems.
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martykl
3,578 posts
 
Drew,

There are now class D amps. Let's say 2 or 3 subs times 1kw per sub amp. You never run out of headroom.

Marty
magfan
1,583 posts
 
Kij,
Bosendorfer Imperial Grand goes an octave lower than the standard '88'.
I have an early CD by Telarc, CD-80040 which shows the instrument off to best advantage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bösendorfer

Low pedal tone on a pipe organ goes to about 16hz.

But, you are correct in that unless you are a pipe organ fan the very low extensions don't do much or any good. Indeed, I had a preamp which featured a 'rumble' filter and my old NAD had a 20hz lowcut on the backpanel for the same reason.
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,394 posts
 
Magfan - thank you for the link. I didn't realize that ocatve down requires 97 keys.
nandric's avatar
nandric
4,086 posts
 
Hi Kijanski&Drew, I am an admirer of Gerhard and enjoyed Virgo 2 and Calderas very much. The Medea was an very confusing loudspeaker to me; never heard something similar.
But those were to expensive for me so this problem was 'solved' anyhow.
But I am not an 'technical guy' so I was glad to see some explanation from knowlegable persons. Thanks! But whay is Stereophile so persistent with 20 -20.000 Hz?

Regards,
tbg
5,263 posts
 
I cannot speak for others, of course, but my experiences with subwoofers have all been unfavorable. Mating one with a speaker system, especially horns or electrostats is all but impossible. Typically, after much trial I simply give up.

I have a Zu Method that I just bought and am going to give it a try, as it is reportedly much faster than others as it is to mate with the Zu horns.

I should say that I have no home theater system and no intension to ever get one.
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