The Gearhead

 B&W ASW855 15" Powered Subwoofer Sometimes in life, we have to find things out the hard way. We all hope to have a perfect track record of learning from others’ mistakes or heeding the advice of the experienced, but something about the human spirit spurs us to trust only what we can measure and analyze. I don’t know if you’re like me, but I tried for the longest time to get an 8” subwoofer to make enough bass in my listening room. And like asking grass to not be green (Purple Hulls reference), I was expecting the mighty little wonder to do things he simply couldn’t. My measurement and analysis of my own happiness about my system was that I was not happy about it. I could have paid attention to the myriad articles, forum posts and conversational advice online about subwoofers, and I could have enjoyed benefits of using a large driver for the task. I don’t know what it is about me. I guess I’m pretty stubborn with some things. I thought that if I tried an exotic design or ...

B&W ASW610 Powered 10" Subwoofer One funny memory from my recent attempt to build a subwoofer for my listening rig at home was the advice I got from other builders to steer away from certain open baffle designs because they “are for music and not for home theater.” Which of course made me chuckle a little. Made for music, and not for home theater? What does that mean? A good sub should be able to handle both, right? It turns out that the expectations for a subwoofer are very different if you’re only using it for music, as I was intending. I thought all subwoofers should be accurate, nimble and should be able to plumb the depths at a moment’s notice. After some research I realized it’s more about cost and “you get what you pay for.” A basic ported sub could do just fine in a home theater, since the LFE output of most multichannel movies is mostly there for thumps, door slams and explosions. For music though, I prefer a sealed subwoofer design that doesn’t toss out-o...