What are home theater subwoofers and how can they affect your home theater experience?
Subwoofers are specialised speakers that reproduce base audio frequencies, the lowest frequencies, from for example 150Hz to as low as 20Hz. These are the sounds that you can feel right through your body; that shake you in the gut.
Home theater subwoofers come in two types: active and passive...
Active or powered subwoofers have their own self-contained amp, which is optimally matched to suit the characteristics of the subwoofer. This takes away the large power requirements from your amplifier, and allows the amp to power the mid-range frequencies with more ease.
Passive subwoofers are rarely used in in-a-box home theater systems, however they are still popular in the professional sound industry. Like other speakers in your system passive home theater subwoofers are powered by an external amplifier. A note must be made that producing the low frequencies provided by subwoofers requires a lot of power, you need to make sure your amplifier can output enough power to sustain the base frequencies, with being drained.
When choosing a subwoofer for your home theater it is important to get the power outputs right. This will depend on the size of your home theater room. Remember, there is a fine balance between home theater subwoofers which provide an excellent and exhilarating home theater experience, and those that make provide too much, often nauseating, base.
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