It's not news that I am a passionate advocate for the use of subwoofers. I've been called everything from a bass freak to simply crazy—especially when I first took possession of the Infinity IRSV system with its twelve, 12" woofers.
The thing is, most of my listening does not focus on music with tons of bass. No, in fact, the first time I was gobsmacked by the IRSIII system the music was performed by a small acoustic trio. What would twelve, 12" subwoofers provide with this kind of music?
A sense of scale.
If you've never been in the presence of a big well tuned system, this sense of scale is hard to adequately describe. Imagine standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon with your eyes closed. You get a sense of scale from the way the wind sounds. Close your eyes while listening to a big 2-channel system with proper subs in a good room and you know you're in the presence of something bigger than the room itself.
You do not have to have subwoofers to make this happen. We get 95% of this in the new Listening Lab when the Aspen FR30s are playing—and it's easy now to differentiate between FR30s and FR20s with eyes closed.
The difference is in scale.
