It's been a little slow in here lately, so I will try to liven it up a bit by stating some irrefutable facts about subwoofers and bass reproduction as topics of discussion:
1: Sealed subwoofer designs are all bad without exception. Sealed subs do not reproduce bass with any accuracy at all.
2: Ribbon drivers should be used in subwoofers: why don't sub manufacturers do this? Are they afraid of showing the public what good bass sounds like? But the best driver topology for a subwoofer would be a plasma driver.
3: Polk has created the gold standard of subwoofer design and performance. This is not debatable.
4: Drivers over 6" are simply unsuited for recreating bass with any reasonable fidelity. An elephant can not outrun a rabbit, so why would you think a lumbering 15" cone can outrun a 5.25"? If you like slow, bloated bass, stick with your 10"+ drivers. I suspect those with sub cones larger than 8" are really compensating for other shortcomings in their manliness.
5: If you want truly good bass, the subwoofer cabinet enclosure must be shaped like the instrument it is intending to reproduce the sound thereof. Example, a bass violin can only be convincingly recreated by a sub cabinet that mimics the bass violin shape. A orchestral bass drum only sounds good when the sub playing it back is shaped like the drum. The reason for this is the acoustic emission of the cabinet resonance shapes the timbre in a way a single driver can not possibly capture; simple physics really. It is for this reason that my own bass setup features subs in many instrumental shapes to correctly playback any recording on a whim. Anything less demonstrates a total lack of care for music fidelity on behalf of the listener.
Feel free to discuss these facts and share them with your friends!
