should i get a powered subwoofer?

Question

I want to upgrade my Home theater system. I would like to get a powered subwoofer, what difference will I notice? Will it shake the walls and tick off the neighbors too much, maybe I should keep the passive subwoofer? The one I have is nice but it could be a little better.

Answer 1

yes, you will notice a difference. There will be a more focused or dedicated output of bass. A powered sub should hit tighter and lower than a passive one. Also thee is a volume control on the back of the sub so you can adjust the bass to your liking. I Suggest you buy a sub woofer from either Velodyne, SVS, or HSU Research. I do own a velodyne myself that i use in my stereo setup along with a pair of KEF Bookshelf's in a small room. It is a very musical sub with extremely accurate and tight bass. And for Home Theater is just awesome it has the ability to rattle my windos if i crank the output up.

Answer 2

Personally, I don't think you have real home theater until you have a good, powered subwoofer. The powered subwoofer will deliver low bass much better than the passive sub. You will experience the movies in a more life like way because the powered sub causes you to feel the really low bass you get from action scenes. The powered sub will also add a dimension to your music that you are now missing. By all means keep your passive sub in the system too!

Answer 3

Great speaker quality is very important. But before you go off the deep end, you have to have the right room, with the speakers properly positioned, and the furniture properly arranged. It even matters what the room is made of. The last house I had was terrible. I bought it new. It had a great room with combined kitchen/living/dinning areas. It also had a concrete slab floor and steel studs in the walls and a cathedral ceiling. I now live in a 130-year-old frame house with a very small living room. The sound is great. My powered subwoofer is in storage. My two rear speakers are in storage. I don't have room for them, but I don't need them or want them. IMHO, if you doan't have the proper room for home theater, just stick with the old tried and proven stereo. Home theater is sort of like owning a yacht. If you're not in that league, don't even think about it.

Answer 4

Hi there .Sub woofers are speakers that supplement the main speakers and only play the lowest frequencies (the lowest two octaves below 80HZ) Good subwoofers don't play that muddy one note bass. They are clean and clear and you can easily follow the bass line in music as well as the low rumbling sound effects present on some DVDs A powered sub woofer is desirable as it frees the amplifier from too much work possibly overloading it at high volumes.

To intergrate subwoofers properly into a system you should place the sub woofer at the same end of the room as the main speakers.To make the bass less directional and blend better you need to cross it over (or transition to the woofer) at a low frequency and ideally use a PAIR of SUB WOOFERS.(Only the very lowest frequencies are not directional.)

Like everything else in audio ,QUALITY is more important than quantity. Choose the clearer sub over the bigger sub woofers .By using TWO SUB WOOFERS you are balancing the overall sound better as they are extensions of your TWO FRONT SPEAKERS.And you will find you will not have to have them turned up very high to enjoy their sound.

One other consideration to take into account is the shape , size and furnishings of the listening room.Unless your room is very long the sub will not be able to produce the longest notes properly because they are bigger than the room dimension. What you hear are only a half or quarter of a wavelength which will bounce off nearby walls and cause standing waves where the bass is loud in one area and hardly heard in another. Because the fundamental notes are not heard properly you will hear the harmonics which are produced instead .These are multiples of the notes that are higher than the fundamentals. This is one reason i don't use subs .They are more trouble than they are worth.If you have a good set of speakers that go down to say 30 or 40 Hz,and are controlled by an amplifier that is unconditionally stable with any load and any signal you will have far superior sound than a lesser quality amplifier driving more speakers.

So the bottom line is if you want to upgrade your home theater and you are serious about sound quality ,get a better amplifier to give your existing speakers a better signal to give you a better sound.

Answer 5

Yes, the sub you indicated will work. Since you don't have a subwoofer out on your Samsung, you'll connect the left and right speaker wires from the Samsung (not the subwoofer speaker wires) to the left and right speaker input terminals on the Polk (labelled "speaker in" in the Polk picture), then connect a separate set of speaker wires from the "speaker out" terminals on the Polk, to your Samsung left and right speakers. The Polk will essentially take the speaker signal from the Samsung and lower the level to a subwoofer out level. This set up has the added advantage of being able to control the amount of bass going to your Samsung speakers by using the "low pass" knob on the back of the Polk. Best of luck.

Answer 6

a powered sub is fine for a home system. they are capable of shaking the house, but on the back of most powered subs you can control the output levels. what difference will you notice? well it depends what type you buy. just get a good brand name (plese no sony speakers cause they suck!!) sub that handles low mhz levels and it should be great. mainly its more of a compact speaker unit and just convienient overall.