SR ) writes:
I bought The Tivoli Audio Model 2 last week. It came with an additional
speaker. I also bought the Tivoli Audio subwoofer speaker.
However the subwoofer speaker is not very loud. Before I bought the
subwoofer, I thought it will work well giving nice deep tones, but I can
not hear it very much even when I have the vol. all the way up.
And this would be better in an audio related newsgroup.
Subwoofers don't make bass louder. They just better reproduce what's
there.
If you've got no bass from the source, then a subwoofer can't do a thing.
If a speaker can't reproduce low frequencies well, then of course those
frequencies will be attenuated. A subwoofer covers those lower frequencies.
But their purpose is not to make the bass "louder", it's to ensure that
the bass frequencies are there in the proportion to the rest of the signal
that was the original case. Bass frequencies aren't "loud" in a simple
speaker setup not because there's not enough amplification, but because
the speaker can't reproduce those frequencies.
Before you can claim that a subwoofer isn't loud enough, you need to
know whether there is much low frequency signal in the audio to begin
with. And when fiddling with level controls, you don't want an exagferated
amplification, you want to set the level so it simply reproduces the
low frequencies to the extent that they would be in a decent speaker.
Take note of two things. One is that a real subwoofer is about reproducing
really low frequencies. They are not about making a mediocre speaker better,
but about extending the range of good speakers to reproduce frequencies
that you may feel as much as hear. You can get away with a single subwoofer
because at those frequencies there is no directionality, so stereo makes
no sense. But they have to be used with speakers that can properly reproduce
frequencies down to the point where a subwoofer adds something.
The other thing to note is that most "subwoofers" aren't. They are there to
try to make up for crummy speakers that can't reproduce bass frequencies.
So you get a tweeter like speaker in the main speakers, and then a single
maybe larger speaker to handle bass. But by then it's supposed to handle
a much wider range of bass frequenecies, and above the point where the
signals become directional. And the reality is that many of these
"subwoofers" aren't really capable of dealing with low frequencies, because
they are smaller than a "bookshelf" speaker that can do a better job
at low frequencies.
Michael
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