Why Do Some People Have Several Different Sizes of Subwoofers in Their Car?

During the last decades, automakers have put increased importance in including in-car entertainment systems in their car models. In their quest of establishing outstanding sound quality for in-car sound systems, they have managed to simplify the complexity of actually wiring a complete assembly of sound system equipment into the limited space of a car interior. With that, in-car audio system components, such as the subwoofer speakers, have been installed right at the sneaky corners of the car. You will find a few at the door panel, in the trunk or even at the side wall panels.

Among the components of a car audio system, the subwoofer speakers are specifically designed to reproduce bass notes. They are the kind of speaker that takes the boost of signals coming from the power amp to deliver music to your ears. Essentially, they transform electrical signals or amplified signals into mechanical energy through the motions of its speaker cone. This concludes that the sounds coming from subwoofers are produced through vibrations that set of chain of frequencies that eventually causes the membranes of your eardrum to vibrate and interpret the signals as sounds or music. Along with the tweeters and mid-range drivers, subwoofers complete the speaker assembly of an in-car audio system.

Subwoofers are directly associated with bass sounds or bass notes since it has the capacity to reproduce the lowest audible frequency of sound. It can handle sound frequencies as low as 150 Hz to 20 Hz. They are specifically designed to augment the performance of main loudspeakers. There are actually two types of subwoofers; the active and passive subwoofer. The active subwoofer typically has a built-in amplifier and user-adjustable equalization that can reduce or increase the sound output at a particular sound frequency. The passive subwoofer does not have a built-in amplifier but they are typically used with third party power amplifiers to produce high quality sounds out of a crossover of single chain sound frequencies. This type of subwoofer is more flexible since it can work with virtually all types of amplifiers.

Now, you will notice that a car audio system may use various sizes of subwoofers to produce varying ranges of bass sounds, which may be lower than 20 Hz, and to establish optimum in-car audio quality by complementing the sound features of a particular set of car speakers. Subwoofer design variations include front-firing and down-firing and woofers used with ports or passive radiators. Front firing woofers are mounted right at the mounted speakers to radiate sound from side or front enclosure. The down-firing subwoofers complement mounted speakers by radiating sounds downwards. Hence, car enthusiasts make use of various shapes of subwoofers to increase bass response.

Car audio enthusiasts understand that a good set of subwoofer speakers will make a big difference to their in-car sound system. With that, they make use of big subwoofer speakers, particularly on cars that are cut out for SPL wars. To accommodate larger woofers, they usually have them installed at the back or inside the trunk of the vehicle. This enables the car to literally thump as the audio system plays into the beat of a particular song.