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Car audio subwoofer in home theater

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WATCH RELATED VIDEO: How to setup subs in your own home

What to Do When the Subwoofer Isn't Working Properly


If you really want to craft your bass end, a subwoofer can be indispensable. Here's the low-down When I was first getting interested in all things audio, home subwoofers were rather specialist devices that were only of interest to two groups of hi-fi enthusiasts: those who listened to large pipe organ recitals and those who enjoyed reggae! Things have moved on a great deal since those distant days, and today subwoofers are now considered — more for the 'domestic acceptance' factor than any potential sonic benefits — to be an almost standard part of modern hi-fi and studio monitoring systems.

It is therefore becoming increasingly common to have smaller 'satellite' left and right speakers, plus one or more subwoofers — a format often referred to as 2. The two refers to the main pair of stereo left and right speakers, while the '.

In the same way, a surround sound system is often denoted as 5. However, in the case of 5. The fact that this sub usually also doubles up, through the use of bass management explained later , to handle the bass content of all five main channels as well, is just a convenience that allows the use of smaller satellite speakers. Again, I'll come back to this topic later, but I first want to consider 2. When designed and used appropriately, subwoofers can be extremely effective and very convenient.

Equally, though, it is very easy to destroy any chance of good monitoring quality with an inappropriate or badly set-up subwoofer — and it is worth stating that I have probably seen nine unsatisfactory installations for every good one! Poor subwoofer installations usually suffer from too much, or poorly defined, bass. Often there is an obvious 'hole' in the frequency spectrum in the crossover region between the satellite speakers and the subwoofer.

It is the 'integration' through this crossover region that really makes or breaks the system as a whole. The worst kind of subwoofer system will only provide a boomy or monotonal 'woomf' of energy, regardless of the pitch or dynamics of the bass instrument, and the bass might thus appear to be slow or late relative to the main speakers. On the other hand, a well-designed and well-configured system will usually enable more accurate imaging, and have a clearer, more transparent mid-range thanks to lower distortion and intermodulation levels and higher overall output than could be achieved with the satellites alone.

From a practical point of view, a satellite and subwoofer combination is much easier to site and to move around. The individual speaker cabinets are more compact and lighter than full-range speakers, and that is often an important consideration — especially in small home studios and for location-recording rigs.

So the aim of this article is to try to explain the hows and whys of choosing and using a subwoofer, in the context of both stereo and surround sound applications. The first thing to understand is the basic concept of a subwoofer system. What it is trying to do, and how does it work?

Obviously, the fundamental idea is to reproduce low frequencies. In most cases, this is roughly the bottom two octaves, from 20Hz to 80Hz. However, here lies the first major issue we need to take onboard: having a special box that generates low frequencies doesn't guarantee good bass in the listening room — in fact, far from it!

The room's own acoustic properties are of paramount importance. If you put the world's best subwoofer in an acoustically poor room, you'll get very poor bass performance! I have frequently come across monitoring systems where the owner has added a subwoofer in the hope of curing a weak or lumpy bass response, only to discover the situation either doesn't improve or actually gets worse! If the room has nasty standing-wave problems — and almost all home studios do — it's vital that these acoustical problems are sorted out first, before you spend money or time on a subwoofer.

You can often improve a room's acoustics dramatically for minimal cost with some basic DIY. And with a treated room you may well find that your existing speakers actually deliver much more and better bass than you thought! Another useful benefit of a subwoofer is the additional power handling accorded to the system as a whole. The acoustic energy in music is highest at low frequencies and tails off with increasing frequency. So employing a dedicated box to handle much of the power-hungry bass takes that burden from the satellites, with useful benefits in overall power handling and clarity.

Most stereo systems have two main speakers, yet we have only one subwoofer. Why not two subwoofers as well? In some situations there can be advantages to having two or more subwoofers, but in general one is usually sufficient. The reason for this is connected to the fact that, for frequencies below about Hz, our sense of hearing measures the phase difference between a sound arriving at each ear, whereas above this frequency it uses mainly level differences.

Out of doors, our ability to determine a sound's direction remains quite accurate down to remarkably low frequencies, but this ability collapses when listening indoors.

Sources generating low-frequency sounds below about Hz tend to do so more or less omnidirectionally the sound wave travels from the source in all directions because the wavelength of sound is usually larger than the object itself. When a low-frequency sound is generated within an enclosed space, the spherical sound waves created will reflect off the boundary surfaces of the room to arrive back at the ears with a multiplicity of phase variances, due to path-length differences.

This confusion of signals makes it impossible for the ear and brain to extract a reliable phase difference, so normal directional acuity fails. So in theory, since you can't tell where the low frequencies are coming from in a room, one subwoofer will be entirely sufficient. The harmonics of the bass notes will be reproduced by the satellite speakers — which typically start to take over above about 90Hz — and these will provide plenty of directional information through phase and level differences, in the usual way.

So, although the bass itself is folded down to mono, the impression of stereo imaging is actually preserved perfectly satisfactorily. This theory is all well and good, but I often hear people comment that they can hear where a subwoofer is placed in the room.

This isn't because of some special acoustic ability on their part, though —rather, it is because of the poor performance of some subwoofers!

Designs constructed at a low cost, employing inferior drivers, and those designed to favour efficiency above all else, tend to generate a lot of 'out of band' noise — lots of harmonic distortion and audible port noises, or other artifacts. These occupy the mid-frequency range, which not only makes their position easily detectable, but also obscures and masks the critical mid-range frequencies from the satellite speakers.

So adding a cheap subwoofer to quality satellites will actually tend to make the system less rather than more accurate. A good subwoofer needs to have a very linear driver which is expensive , an accurate and powerful amplifier which is expensive , and a well designed and built cabinet which is But cutting corners on any of these aspects is a false economy. I've listened to and used a lot of different subwoofers, and the best are, for all the obvious reasons, produced by the same companies you associate with good monitor speakers.

They are all relatively easy to set up because of the inherent close matching and the appropriate electrical alignment facilities. Whereas many subs are large cuboid boxes, the TLE1 has the form factor of a computer tower case, which I find both aesthetically and practically appealing. When buying a sub, the key is to try it in your own listening environment, with your own satellite speakers — particularly if the subwoofer is from a different manufacturer.

Some combinations will integrate far better than others, and only a home audition will reveal the success or failure of a particular combination. The diagram shows a bass-management system. Each of the five main channels goes through a high-pass filter to remove the low-frequency element of the signal, before being passed on to the appropriate amplifier and speaker. Bass management is the process of removing the bass element of the signal fed to each satellite speaker, and routing it instead to one or more subwoofers.

In essence this is no different to a normal crossover — it's just that the bass driver happens to be housed in a separate enclosure, and there needs to be some sort of mixing facility included to combine the low-frequency contributions from at least two channels.

In the case of a simple 2. There are various approaches to wiring, but most route line-level signals from the controller or preamp to the subwoofer first, which filters the signals and outputs them for the satellites. Some systems work the other way around, connecting the signal to the satellite first, and then down to the subwoofer.

Systems intended for domestic use often work with speaker-level signals. For 5. The diagram on the previous page shows such a system. All five channels are also summed and passed through a low-pass filter to remove the mid- and high-frequency content. This signal is then combined with the dedicated LFE signal which is also low-pass-filtered and boosted in gain, according to the appropriate specifications , and routed to the subwoofer speaker.

It is worth bearing in mind that, since each of the five channels in a 5. So you shouldn't really expect a very small box to be able to cope if you like listening at serious levels. Of course, different systems implement bass management in slightly different ways.

Some employ active filtering everywhere, whereas some only low-pass-filter the signal feeding the sub, relying on the satellite speakers' natural roll-off for mechanical high-pass filtering. Some will allow the filter turnover frequencies and slopes to be adjusted. Professional units usually do this with meaningful technical parameters, while domestic controllers tend to have simpler 'large' or 'small' speaker descriptions. The better systems often include some sort of limiting or overload protection for the subwoofer, and some also include facilities for delaying the sound to each speaker, in order to compensate for less than ideal physical positions.

Most domestic systems only apply bass management to digital surround inputs Dolby Digital and DTS sound tracks but not to discrete multi-channel analogue inputs, and this can present problems if you want to use a cheap domestic surround controller for your surround monitoring. Another common trap is that some DVD players have their own bass-management facilities built in, which means that you need to make sure you don't end up duplicating the processing!

While it is relatively easy to generate high levels of bass over very small bandwidths and that's what most cheap subwoofers tend to do , designing something that can generate a high output over a broad bandwidth, with very low distortion, and remain a sensible size, is pretty tricky. Creating low-frequency sound at studio replay levels requires the movement of a lot of air. This requires a powerful amplifier, a very large bass driver or several smaller ones , and a lot of diaphragm displacement.

An easy way of achieving high efficiency is to place the driver in what's called a 'band-pass cabinet'. This is essentially a resonant, tuned box, with the driver hidden inside and the sound escaping through one or more ports.

You see these quite commonly on cheap home theatre systems and in car 'boom boxes. This is great for film explosions and crashes, but is not much use if you want to hear which notes the bassist is playing, so it is best avoided for serious monitoring duties. The majority of subwoofers employ some form of 'reflex' design, which combines practical efficiency with useably wide bandwidth, and in convenient sized enclosures. The design principles are thoroughly understood, with the front of the driver radiating directly and its rear contributing via the enclosed cabinet volume through one or more ports.

Not all reflex designs are born equal, but most studio-quality subs will be of this kind of design. A rather less common alternative is the 'closed box' design.

The cabinet is sealed, and only the front side of the driver contributes sound to the room. Efficiency is relatively low, and significant demands are placed on the amp and driver the latter needs to be able to cope with unusually large excursions.

However, this approach has considerable benefits in terms of its phase response, timing and distortion. Another close variation on this theme is the 'transmission line' approach, which aims to combine the best elements of both sealed and reflex cabinets. These two types tend to be the most expensive, but also the easiest to align and integrate, and with the most accurate sound. Don't be fooled by the size of the subwoofer.

Bigger doesn't necessarily mean better, or even greater low frequency extension, although it does usually equate with louder; that business about needing to move a lot of air, again. The physical and electrical alignment of a subwoofer is a much misunderstood process, but to get it wrong is to destroy the accuracy of the monitoring system as a whole.

Firstly, it is vital that the subwoofer and satellite speakers are all in the same phase as each other — by which I mean their electrical polarity and time alignment.

If this is not the case, the crossover region will have an obvious bulge or dip in level.


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The EV powered home theater subwoofer is a perfect choice for the bass enthusiast. Designed to accurately reproduce source material at extremely high levels.

How to Use a Car Audio Subwoofer in a Home Theater Setup


Probably, your car sound system is not delivering the kind of bass output you want. However, a top-quality car subwoofer may be a huge investment for many people. Your budget may not allow you to buy one at the moment. Luckily enough, if you have an extra home theatre subwoofer, you can use it in your car stereo and save money. However, home subwoofers differ from car subwoofers. Thus, using a home theatre subwoofer in car requires some modifications. Essentially, home subwoofers are powered by alternating current AC from the mains power while car subwoofers are powered by direct current DC from the car battery. Thus, a home subwoofer is powered by a voltage of about volts AC or volts AC depending on AC voltage standards in different locations. A standard car battery delivers 12 volts DC. Another key difference between home and car subwoofers is that home subwoofers are typically active subwoofers while car subwoofers are passive subwoofers.

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Yes, car subwoofers are used for home theater by detaching power supply, remove the car subwoofer, carefully connect it with the home theater system. If you want a better sound quality at your home theater system you can attach a subwoofer meant for your car stereo system.

How To Hook Up/Install a Powered Subwoofer In Car


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Difference Between Car and Home Speakers

The ultra compact S powered home audio subwoofer leads the pack with deeper extension, more thunderous output, and better overall sound quality. The S subwoofer is the new standard for ultra compact sealed subwoofers. The EV powered home theater subwoofer is a perfect choice for the bass enthusiast. Designed to accurately reproduce source material at extremely high levels, the EV delivers concussive output during the most intense action movie, and accurate musical definition like you've never heard from a vented subwoofer.

Before you decide to remove and replace a supposedly bad subwoofer, run through these quick steps similar to when a stereo system won't make any sound to diagnose and fix the problem. Worst-case scenario? You might get to go shopping for an upgrade. Before you get started, make sure all equipment is turned off, including the subwoofer. You never want to connect or disconnect any cables while anything is on, lest something incurs accidental damage.

Subwoofers are an invaluable piece of sound equipment and can be found within cars and homes alike. Because of this, many people have been asking about whether or not a car subwoofer is good for home use.

This is the story of a speaker company that helped shape home theater and even music recording into what it is today. Nobody does it better. This gives us the ability to create the powerful, yet subtle and persuasive soundtracks that are the hallmark of the Star Wars films. Experience bass that is not just heard - but viscerally felt More details. Previous Next. Eddie Simonsen, Mainstream, Copenhagen. Find a distributor near you.

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