What music lover doesn't dream of perfect music listening equipment? All kinds of speaker systems promise heavenly pleasure and powerful sound, but in order to choose between them, you must first decide whether you need a passive or an active subwoofer.
Passive and active subwoofer
A subwoofer is a special additional speaker that reproduces low frequencies. Regular speakers contain mid and high frequency speakers. Even if your speakers are hung on the walls or on a table, it is still better to place the subwoofer on the floor, this will improve the bass sound. But when buying a powerful subwoofer, it is important to make sure that your love for beauty is shared by the neighbors below.
A passive subwoofer is pretty simple. Its body contains one or more low-frequency "heads" that are connected to an external amplifier. Passive subwoofers are of two types. The device of the first type differs in that a signal is supplied to the stereo amplifier simultaneously for speakers of all frequencies. Thus, the speakers must reproduce all frequencies, including those unusual for them, and the sound is unclear. The second type of passive subwoofer is equipped with an additional electronic crossover filter that sorts the frequencies, so that only the corresponding signal is sent to each speaker.
An active subwoofer contains everything at once: there is a crossover filter and its own amplifier. The device contains various line inputs and outputs, as well as crossover frequency controls and signal level adjustments for different frequencies. An active subwoofer is often the preferred choice because it produces good sound by expanding the dynamic range of the speaker system.
Which subwoofer to choose
If you want to connect everything, and for the audio system to work well right away, without additional settings or other actions, then choose an active subwoofer. The standard settings of such a device in the absolute majority of cases satisfy the sound of heavy or dance music, the bass frequencies are deeply transmitted. Plus, the active subwoofer already has an amplifier and you don't need to worry about it.
But if you are able to do a really good job of setting up your audio system (and are willing to figure it out), then a passive subwoofer may well be your choice. An expensive and high-quality audio system with a professional passive subwoofer allows you to control the sound much more fully than with an active subwoofer. Despite the fact that tuning can be quite painstaking and difficult, and you need to feel the sound of the music in order to cope, nevertheless, true lovers of good sound often choose this option.
To summarize, we can say that accurate and very high-quality tuning of a passive subwoofer allows you to get a much more spacious and dense sound than a speaker system with an active subwoofer. But the latter option sounds good right from the start and is noticeably better than a cheap passive subwoofer.
