CockneyRebel
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Age: 51
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12 Dec 2018, 12:53 am
auntblabby
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Location: the island of defective toy santas
12 Dec 2018, 1:35 am
12 Dec 2018, 6:21 am
12 Dec 2018, 10:24 am
a subwoofer is a big electronic box on the floor, with a big woofer or multiple smaller woofers in it, whose sole purpose is to produce loud deep bass to augment the bass reproduction performance of an existing stereo sound system. a regular ordinary stereo sound system tends to peter out below about 40 cycles per second, or roughly the low E on a string bass [41.3 cycles to be exact]. subs reproduce the range from about 40 cycles all the way down below 20 or even below 16 cycles which is the lowest tone a 32' pipe organ can produce. movie theatres have them hidden behind the screen, they reproduce the boom and rumble on movie soundtracks. the movie "Earthquake!" in 1974 used about 10 refrigerator-sized Cerwin-Vega subs to reproduce the sounds of a southern California earthquake on screen. I knew somebody who attended a showing and said it made his teeth rattle and his guts quake.
Subwoofers make you feel the sound more than you hear it.
But yeah. You Krafty, have heard of "woofers and tweeters", and are familiar with how "tweeters" are the little round things inside your stereo speaker that put out the high notes, and woofers are the big round things underneath that put out the low notes (and sometimes they put a middle sized thing in the middle position for the midrange notes). A subwoofer is just taking it one step further and putting an even bigger ginormous horn underneath the woofer for the sub bass beats (like you hear in post 1990 rap music). So you can...turn your car into a moving boom box, and drive down the street and blast rap music and crack the masonry in all of your neighbors homes!
12 Dec 2018, 11:41 am
I love them only if I am the one using them. I hate hearing them but not the music itself when others like my neighbours or someone driving down the street is using it. I enjoy feeling my music and watching movies a sub.
12 Dec 2018, 11:54 am
auntblabby
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Location: the island of defective toy santas
13 Dec 2018, 1:23 am
13 Dec 2018, 6:24 am
We have one in the rec room. I declare that I can't tell what difference it makes. I know I'm not sensitive to sound, though. Did some testing before and I had no idea where the sounds were coming from. I always turn the sound off for my phone and my computer, and I almost never listen to music. 
13 Dec 2018, 4:42 pm
auntblabby
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Location: the island of defective toy santas
13 Dec 2018, 9:55 pm
13 Dec 2018, 10:25 pm
auntblabby
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Joined: 12 Feb 2010
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Posts: 115,281
Location: the island of defective toy santas
13 Dec 2018, 10:46 pm
14 Dec 2018, 7:12 am
14 Dec 2018, 4:25 pm
auntblabby
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Location: the island of defective toy santas
14 Dec 2018, 8:26 pm
it should be noted, that if a subwoofer is adjusted correctly, with most music you won't hear much from them. the people who can't hear their subs in operation may not have them turned up far enough or are listening to bass-shy music. 
16 Dec 2018, 4:52 pm
Sounds kind of contradictory.
If adjusted correctly, you hear (virtually) nothing.
If not adjusted correctly, you hear nothing (or are listening to bass-shy music).
So, what purpose do they serve, other than to be turned up to the point where the bass is blasting obnoxiously?
