Hi All!
I am currently seeking an really strong bass or subwoofer, that you can feel in your bones. Unfortunately I am unsure where to look first, can anyone please make some recommendations, by any chance?
Any assistance be greatly appreciated.
Cheers!
Excellent question and topic as superior bass is one of the most important ingredients toward having a truly musical playback system. Since you ask, I'm guessing you're already aware there are essentially two types of bass. There exists the average me too type of bass and then there's a superior or musical type of bass. Many have the me too bass (hence its name) whereas it seems few are even aware of the existence of musical bass.
Assuming we're talking middle-of-the-road or better full-range speakers and/or subwoofers, musical bass actually has very little to do with make and model. Rather perhaps 75-85% of this musical bass is free and achieved by careful speaker and/or subwoofer placement within a given room. When dealing with a subwoofer it helps immensely if there are plenty of toggle switches and knobs to help dial things in. Without this placement / dialing-in ability, to the best of my knowledge one cannot cross over into the promised land of musical bass. If true, then perhaps this will help narrow your search immensely. Then again, since few seem aware of this magical bass, there's probably not much info to search for.
If per chance you're starting from scratch, I'd suggest first and foremost considering a good pair of full-range speakers with woofers at least 10-inch in diameter with the ability to go down to 24Hz or lower. If you're able to find AN or especially THE optimal full-range speaker placement position within your listening room, your need for a subwoofer just greatly diminished and your life just got immensely more simple. Not to mention a cleaner and simpler install/config with less boxes and wiring. Less is more, right?
Adding subwoofers can be quite rewarding but can also really complicate things unnecessarily as you not only have to locate a superior position for the main speakers but then also the subwoofers. Moreover, you must strive to ensure a potentially seemless integration exists between the mains and subs as well as determine how best to connect the subs and wilth what cabling. All of which takes potentially much time and in the end could still leave you with a me too bass and much frustration. If you pursue a subwoofer, I highly recommend your subwoofer cables be an exact match of cables eleswhere in your system i.e. interconnects and speaker cables as all cables carry a sonic signature and different cables can make any integration rather difficult if not impossible.
Perhaps the point I'm really trying to make is, when it comes to performance it's not so much what you have but rather what you do with what you have.
BTW, I've included above a typical nondescript 1960's track to hopefully better illustrate my points about bass.
