Does your soundbar need a subwoofer? Yes. Well, yes, with caveats. We’re assuming you’re not reading this article because you want to listen to digital AM radio or hear C-SPAN more clearly. You’re reading this to find out if you need a subwoofer to truly enhance your viewing experience without committing to an expensive, space-consuming surround system setup. You need a subwoofer to enjoy the full depth and impact of your music and movies.
Subwoofers free your music to explore places soundbars can’t take you. If you watch “Mad Max: Fury Road,” you want to hear the distinct sounds that animate the grinding, dirt-spewing chase scenes. If you listen to Khruangbin perform in the KEXP studio, you want to hear Laura Lee Ochoa’s deep resonance in harmony with the funky twang of Mark Speer’s guitar. A subwoofer and soundbar combo can let you hear these layers more clearly than a soundbar alone.
Soundbars have their uses. With multiple speakers packed into one enclosure, you’ll hear a wide soundstage in a small space. The best soundbars can cost you upwards of $1,000, but they’ll come with premium features like side- and upward-firing drivers for Dolby Atmos effects, room calibration, and EQ controls that let you get the best possible bass from your soundbar. Some soundbars even have built-in woofers with respectable bass punch. But the small enclosure has its limits. For example, built-in woofers can cause vibrations within the speaker, which send vibrations to other speakers. In “Fury Road,” the deep roars of the engine can overpower and mask the metallic rattles and small rhythmic details that give the film its metronomic, thrilling energy.
How a subwoofer fills in the bass your soundbar is missing
Subwoofer dominance is not a low-end theory. There are scientific reasons why you want a subwoofer, especially when you’re streaming A Tribe Called Quest’s “The Low End Theory” through your TV and soundbar. Double entender aside, the album was built around bass, drums, and the spaces between them. Q-Tip asked the engineers to make the background as heavy as possible to highlight the sampled jazz bass lines and Ron Carter’s bass on “Verses from the Abstract”. Most soundbars don’t reproduce bass frequencies with the same weight as a dedicated subwoofer. A subwoofer extends the low frequency range, giving the bass greater depth and easing the workload on the soundbar. The rest of the mix then has more headroom, giving the drums and vocals room to punch without losing definition. It preserves the stark, hard-hitting rhythms that critics said made the second album a leap forward from Tribe’s debut.
If you’re more of a movie buff, you’ll need a subwoofer to immerse yourself in the immersive bass of the “U-571.” The 2000 film earned two Academy Award nominations for sound work, winning the Sound Editing category. A soundbar will have the most difficulty with film strength. Solidity is the sound of a depth charge shaking you, like a haptic feedback controller. Immersion places you inside a German submarine as the hull is subjected to the stresses of explosive impacts and crushing water pressure. However, the cracks of the metal pipes resonate. The dialogue is crystal clear despite the absolute chaos. Beneath these loud peaks, low-frequency aftershocks continue to shake you. If this is the kind of audio experience you’re looking for, then yes, your soundbar needs a subwoofer.
