AES E-Library

How Many Subwoofers are Enough?

From an intuitive standpoint, putting a large number of subwoofers at different locations in a room might seem likely to excite room modes in a more 'balanced' manner, as compared to a single subwoofer. This idea has particular appeal where there is not a single listening location, but rather a listening area. In this case one looks for consistency of acoustical response with in this area. Typical approaches to this problem involve exciting all modes evenly, or trying not to excite modes at all. With this in mind, an investigation was made to determine if using a large number of subwoofers is advantageous, and in particular what configurations give the best results. Several interesting and surprising results were uncovered along the way.

Author: Welti, Todd
Affiliation: Harman International Industries, Inc., Northridge, CA
AES Convention:112 (April 2002) Paper Number:5602 Import into BibTeX
Subject:Room Acoustics and Sound Reinforcement

Click to purchase paper or login as an AES member. If your company or school subscribes to the E-Library then switch to the institutional version. If you are not an AES member and would like to subscribe to the E-Library then Join the AES!

This paper costs $20 for non-members, $5 for AES members and is free for E-Library subscribers.

Learn more about the AES E-Library

E-Library Location: (CD aes19)   /pp2002/pp0205/000191.pdf

Start a discussion about this paper!