JBL Subwoofers: An Introduction Part 1

JBL Subwoofers: An Introduction

Have you ever had the pleasure of experiencing the eardrum pounding, heart racking, hardcore sounds produced by the audio system from a car? Sure you have and maybe you want your car to sound this way as well. There is good news; all you need to do to get more bass that you can possibly stomach is to add subwoofers to your audio system.

Subwoofers are skillfully crafted speakers with its main purpose to reproduce low frequency bass sounds ranging from 20Htz to 125Htz.

To produce these frequencies the subwoofers uses an enclosure system. This enclosure can be sealed or ported. Sealed enclosures are easily designed and constructed and will consume less space in your car. They will also provide you with high sound quality with a clean bass.

With the ported enclosure, the design and construction will go a long way in determining how your system sounds and the amount of clean bass it produces. There are also a lot of other considerations to be taken when installing a ported enclosure unlike the sealed one. Some of these considerations include the volume of the box, the port area and length and the tuned frequency. Once all of these are carefully matched for optimum performance the advantages are huge in terms of bass reproduction.

It is important to note however, that both the sealed and ported enclosures can produce the same clean sound. The difference will be that the ported enclosure will give a slight rise in tuning frequency and snap back very quickly and smoothly.

Besides the enclose type, there are the sensitivity and power handling factors that must be considered when dealing with subwoofers. The sensitivity of a subwoofer is a measure of how the speaker will perform with a specified amount of power at some distance. It is measured in decibels, the standard being 1 watt, 1 meter. A subwoofer with a higher rated sensitivity means the speaker will produce louder sounds than a speaker with a lower sensitivity rating.