An active subwoofer is a great choice for a home theater or listening room where you are looking for full frequency sound with deep bass frequencies. You can buy an active subwoofer at many e-commerce shops online, or at an electronics store closer to your home.
What is an active subwoofer?
A subwoofer is a speaker which is specifically designed to reproduced low bass frequencies that other speakers typically cannot reproduce well. This type of speaker typically has a larger woofer type speaker cone which is designed for produced strong deep sound. Usually this woofer is at least 6 inches in diameter and can range up to 15 inches or more in huge subwoofers. The subwoofer won’t have much impact on the dialog or treble of your system. It will show it’s true colors with bass-heavy music or with sound effects-laden movies. A normal subwoofer will require amplification and will connect to your amplifier or receiver with heavy speaker cable. Your amp will provide the power that the subwoofer needs to create the low bass sounds.
An active subwoofer is different: It has both it’s own power cable and a line-level audio input. It requires a power cable since it contains it’s own internal amplifier that needs to be powered. An internal amplifier is a good idea since the manufacturer will be able to better match the speaker cone and amplifier for better results. It also takes some strain off of your main amplifier since it subwoofers can require a large amount of power. This means that the active subwoofer doesn’t connect with standard speaker cable: instead, it takes a line level or pre-amplified signal over an RCA or XLR cable. Running an amplified signal from the receiver to active subwoofers is wrong and will damage them since they are expecting an unamplified signal.
Buying and installing an active subwoofer
The main ways in which active subwoofers differ is the size of the unit, and the amount of power it can generate. If you have a lot of room and want the best possible bass, buy a large subwoofer with a large power rating. A smaller room can probably get away with a smaller subwoofer tucked into a corner.
When adding a subwoofer to your sound equipment, see if your main speakers have a switch that allows them to “roll off” the lowest frequencies. This means that your stereo speakers will be able to ignore the deep tones and focus on the frequencies they are better at while the subwoofer takes care of the deep sub-bass.