Ask most people why they need a subwoofer and you’ll hear the same answer: to get deeper bass. But that’s not really why subwoofers matter—at least not in a properly set up high-end system.
The real value of a sub is freedom.
The best place in the room to put your main speakers for imaging is almost never the best place for bass. Low frequencies interact with room boundaries in powerful ways. Standing waves, nulls, and peaks—these don’t just affect the deepest notes, they mess with the whole bass and midbass region, right where the music lives.
Trying to get both imaging and bass from the same speaker position is a compromise. But when you hand off low frequencies to one or more properly placed subwoofers, something opens up. You can now place your main speakers where they image best, without worrying about what it’s doing to the low end. And with multiple subs, you can even out the room’s bass response entirely.
So no—it’s not about getting 20Hz. It’s about decoupling two jobs that rarely want the same real estate.
Add subs not for boom, but for clarity. You’ll hear it in the imaging as much as the bass.
