There have been topics around subs for 2.1 hifi systems. One can love or hate subwoofers for music and I am an active user who is pro sub.
But I would like to the devil's advocate here. I kind of understand why the best sub placed in the most ideal room conditions and finest tuning is often still problematic as in that there is no perfect setting for music.
I can't speak for the world. But I can speak at least for Europe where subs for music were never really a thing in homes 'for music' . This fact also meant that producers in certain areas and eras just didn't care about anything that went under the frequency monitoring radar.
When taking movies and modern series as a reference there seems to be an excellent uniform management production wise of these frequencies, that might also be the one and only reason why subs in home cinema are out of the question. If we would play movies for a weekend, we could turn the knob to alter the volume, but we would never really have to turn the knob because there would be too much fluctuation.
But in music.. when setting up a sub in a way that it sounds just about right track 1, let's say a live or recorded Jazz track with upright bass. It will sound completely in balance. Then letting things go, A random style track 2 would lack bass and track 3 is like a bulldozer in bass because track 3 was probably mixed just on small bookshelve monitors without a sub in mind and pumped the bass out to the max to make a fat sound on smaller speakers.
And that is why I kind of understand why really difficult to draw a line onto what the ideal setting is to get everything right. And also why an ideal middle is a kind of average speaker 'without' sub because the frequencies happen to be problematic.
Fortunately a few older and some modern recordings are produced with a sub or at least a sub in mind. But in my opinion the whole pro-sub and anti-sub in Hifi probably comes to the core in the content. A lot of tracks are in my opinion ready for a remaster for this reason.
Agree? / disagree? I wonder.
But I would like to the devil's advocate here. I kind of understand why the best sub placed in the most ideal room conditions and finest tuning is often still problematic as in that there is no perfect setting for music.
I can't speak for the world. But I can speak at least for Europe where subs for music were never really a thing in homes 'for music' . This fact also meant that producers in certain areas and eras just didn't care about anything that went under the frequency monitoring radar.
When taking movies and modern series as a reference there seems to be an excellent uniform management production wise of these frequencies, that might also be the one and only reason why subs in home cinema are out of the question. If we would play movies for a weekend, we could turn the knob to alter the volume, but we would never really have to turn the knob because there would be too much fluctuation.
But in music.. when setting up a sub in a way that it sounds just about right track 1, let's say a live or recorded Jazz track with upright bass. It will sound completely in balance. Then letting things go, A random style track 2 would lack bass and track 3 is like a bulldozer in bass because track 3 was probably mixed just on small bookshelve monitors without a sub in mind and pumped the bass out to the max to make a fat sound on smaller speakers.
And that is why I kind of understand why really difficult to draw a line onto what the ideal setting is to get everything right. And also why an ideal middle is a kind of average speaker 'without' sub because the frequencies happen to be problematic.
Fortunately a few older and some modern recordings are produced with a sub or at least a sub in mind. But in my opinion the whole pro-sub and anti-sub in Hifi probably comes to the core in the content. A lot of tracks are in my opinion ready for a remaster for this reason.
Agree? / disagree? I wonder.