To emphasize that point about subwoofers, Alan, mind if I reprint one of your articles you wrote 10 years ago? It influenced me to buy a sub, I'm sure it would others. (also wish you'd reprint your loudspeaker article entitled "No Place for Amateurs" for the Axiom crowd.)
From the Editor - An Audio Revelation (S&V Vol 10 No 5)
Audio, for most of us, is addictive.
I've never nailed down what it is that's so attractive about hi-fi music reproduction in the home. It's not just the love of music; if it were, I'd actively participate in music more than I do. After all, I studied formally and play several instruments; even earned my living for some time in musical theatre. You'd think that active participation as a musician would be far more satisfying than the essentially passive activity of listening to speakers, spinning CDs and twiddling knobs, wouldn't you?
But there's more to it than just musical appreciation. I believe it's the pursuit of perfection that's so alluring - the desire to stage, just once, that perfect three-dimensional illusion of a performing group right there in the living room. When it succeeds, it's like magic, a kind of audio alchemy. The obverse of this, the darker side, is the fundamentally flawed nature of stereo (audiophiles rarely if ever mistake mechanically reproduced music for the real thing when they hear it coming from a room and can't see the source). We almost get there, but just fall short.
Still, that's part of the attraction. There are always small improvements to be made, new devices that promise another increment in fidelity, in realism. And also it's why we're sometimes willing to grasp at straws, to irrationally place our faith in absurd accessories - exotic braided speaker cables of virginal copper or silver, gold interconnects, AC power "conditioners" and the like, which do essentially nothing but massage our psyche into thinking the illusion is just a bit more real.
But we persist, and every now and then a revelation occurs - a kind of audio epiphany.
A few weeks ago I enjoyed dinner with a friend, David, an editor by day and double-bass player by night (he played professionally with the Winnipeg Symphony for years), an avid audiophile and collector of vinyl. After dinner, I asked David to play his double bass, a wonderful Tyrolean instrument made around 1800 and previously owned by Julius Levine, who recorded on Columbia records (the Music from Marlborough series). The bottom string on a double bass is a low "E", which is at 40Hz. David's bass, like those owned by many professional bass players, is equipped with a special extension at the top of the finger-board which lengthens the string and lets the bassist play a low "C", at 32 Hz. When I heard that low C played - in what is absolutely a normal-sized room - I was staggered by the energy from the instrument. Rob, another double-bassist who, with David, plays regularly with the North York Symphony, was there as well, and he played too. I couldn't get over the rich sonority and sheer presence of the instrument. It was as though the room were suffused with bass. I tried playing it myself (the bowing wasn't foreign to me because I studied violin for years) and again was struck by the resonance of the instrument. Rarely, perhaps never, had I heard a loudspeaker come close to replicating that kind of bass instrument.
Later in the evening, we fired up David's audio system to audition his latest acquisition, the Mirage BPSS-210 subwoofer, a servo-controlled model with an internal-250-watt amplifier and an outboard adjustable crossover/controller. It was linked to a pair of bipolar Mirage M-5si's, a highly musical and pleasing speaker which, by itself, had fairly impressive bass output down to about 30 Hz. I'm familiar with the Mirage M-5, I've listened to a pair for several years. But it can't begin to recreate that palpable resonance of the live bass fiddle -at least not by itself - nor can any other large full-range system I've heard in recent years.
However, after connecting the Mirage BPSS-210 sub to the M-5si's, and auditioning some recordings with well-recorded double-bass passages, the results were, well, wonderful. There it was, that suffusing resonance that was previously missing.
What's the lesson in this? I'm convinced that all conventional domestic loudspeakers can benefit from a true subwoofer - indeed demand it - if the listener is to experience anything approaching the real live energy of live bass instruments. (see "The Stalwart Subwoofer," by Edward J. Foster, on pg. 10 of this issue.)
Of course, as Ed Foster points out, if your musical tastes run to classical guitar or similar fare, you've just saved yourself a whack o' dollars. Oh yes, if you meet a double-bass player in your journeys through life, don't ever let him or her perform in your living room - unless you're prepared to save those pennies and a BIG subwoofer.
Alan Lofft, Editor
