Using a woofer in a surround sound system?

Question

Is it possible to use a woofer instead of a subwoofer on the LFE channel in a 5.1 surround sound system?

Also, if i was to set up a surround sound system, would it be best to connect the video directly to the tv or have it run through a a/v receiver?

Answer 1

1 A Subwoofer is designed to take in the Low Freq Effect signal and they have a separate amp to power them selves. A regular woofer needs an amp so no this will not work nor will it give you anything near good base even if it was possible.
2 From a calibration and technical stand point yes it would be best to take your video sources straight to your monitor. From a more practical standpoint it depends on if you have enough inputs on the tv, if you want to deal with switching inputs on the receiver and tv and the amount of space to run wires to the tv.

Answer 2

sorry but borg is wrong yes you can use a woofer on the LFE channel-in fact that is exactly bose does-they use a total of 3 5" woofers in a ported box for bass, it just won't be the same effect as a speaker that is designed to produce the effects- technically any speaker that is not a tweeter is a woofer- so so yes that means that you can have a half inch diameter woofer. So it is all dependant on what size woofer you are talking about. The unwritten standard is that subs should be no smaller than 8" simply because anything smaller really can't move enough air to reproduce the wavelenth required for movies.

the prefered method for video switching is through the reciever only because than you only have to switch the source on the reciever, making it just plain simpler-that means you need one remote instead of two and you press one button instead of two.

Answer 3

Hi. A subwoofer is still a woofer .There are full range speaker systems where the bass frequencies can go down to 20 HZ,but they are not called subwoofers .They are still called 3 way systems (tweeter,mid,and bass) .This is a much better alternative than having a separate sub.The sound would be seamless from treble to bass and would fill the room evenly with the low frequencies.coming out of two front speakers And if you get them with a high sensitivity rating they will not require huge amounts of power to drive the woofers.(A pair of Klipsch full range horn loaded speakers with enormous sound down to 20 hz driven by an amplifier of 10 watts rms/channel)

Answer 4

i believe no becuase the lfe channel is made for a subwoofer the signal and frequency is made for a subwoofer it would blow the woofer speaker upand would not sound right so just use a subwoffer preferably a powered subwoofer i have a mtx 12 inch 100 watt subwoofer .