You know that feeling when you are in a loud movie theatre or listening to loud music and you can feel the low frequencies in your body? Or you are dancing to that thumping beat in the song? That is "Bass", or low frequency audio waves.
In Music it is often delivered by the Bass instrument or the Kick Drum. And a Subwoofer like the SpinSub or Model-One SubWoofer help deliver that feeling with greater Bass amplification. This is a really cool video which illustrates Bass frequencies well. Here's a photo of Bootsy Collins, a funky bass player from the 70s who rose to fame playing with acts like James Brown and Parliment-Funkadelic.
You can deliver the higher frequency sounds with smaller speakers and the lower frequency sounds with the larger speakers. Sound waves are bursts of energy traveling through air, and with larger speakers you can push more air and get more volume. Thats why we generally associate bigger speakers with more volume or loudness.
What's cool is you can place a Subwoofer anywhere in your listening environment and it won't heavily change the audio performance. Our brains are able to locate sounds in high frequencies from instruments, such as cymbals and singers, fairly easily; low frequency sounds, on the other hand, like the bass guitar, kick drum, or thunderous rumbling SFX don't really offer any direction. They can come from anywhere in the space where you are listening. (Example: Have you ever heard a loud car stereo system thumping but you can't quite tell where it is coming from?.)
You could place a Subwoofer anywhere in the room and you would still get the same experience. But if you moved your SpinBase or main speakers, which output higher frequencies, you would certainly notice the higher frequency sounds coming from a different location.
So next time you are enjoying some music or a good movie, take note of the Bass. It matters!
