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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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jburidan
803 posts
 
It all depends on the system. For example, the powered subwoofer of the Infinity Prelude MTS is perfectly integrated. However, this is an exception not the rule.
johnk's avatar
johnk
1,973 posts
 
TBG try center placement of your subwoofer. Also try moving forward and back this might reduce the localization effect. Of small subwoofer. Massive design just produce pressure and detail to bass, small forced designs bloat notes can be located in sound stage, to me at 40hz or lower you shouldn't hear where sub is but standard designs are easy to hear where they are. Maybe cabinets vibrating at frequency that are locatable and higher up than crossover point crossover might not have proper filter so frequency above cutoff come through.
rleff
1,065 posts
 
TBG-I have no experience with horns;what kind of problems do they present;one day I may wander into this area of audio;it seems interesting especially with SET amps.Seems like Johnk has some good ideas for you to try if you have not already.
unsound
7,310 posts
 
One could argue that only audiophiles should use subs. As has already pointed out, mating subs with standard speakers is a challenge. Who else besides an audiophile would be willing to spend the money and the time to do it right? After the expense, perhaps the biggest problem is the room. How many of us have a room that can truly handle extreme low frequencies with out serious room treatment or correction? In as much as perhaps 80% of musical content is in the mid-range, this is the high end, shouldn't we have access to all that is available on our recordings? I enjoy the foundation of appropriate low frequencies and miss it when it's inappropriately missing.
unsound
7,310 posts
 
Ericjcbrera, there are plenty for full range speakers available.
Nandric, Stereophile is fixated on 20-20K because that's the limit of the recording mediums available to us. It is felt (ha!) that frequencies below 20 Hz such as the pedal tones of some organ music is felt through one's body rather than heard through one's ears. I wonder if most of our listening rooms rattle might swamp these frequencies if they were indeed available.
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