Below 20 Hz

Below 20Hz - Is there a point in it?

Just curious after hearing your subs recently. Is this accurate? I read it online:

Q: Reproducing content much below about 20Hz makes no sense for a number of reasons and is a completely unnecessary and gigantic burden for both drivers and their amps so it actually harms real world sound reproduction. Of course there are zillions of people who don't understand this so there is a great reason to include correction capability for infrasonic content below 20Hz.

My counter-quote to that is, "Reality doesn't have a high-pass filter." Beyond that, it's well documented that human perception isn't limited to the conscious. People can learn to "see" with their tongues or their backs if an interface device is made to provide consistent, corresponding inputs. It's estimated our brains, aka our unconscious, is aware of 40 million elements in our environment at any given time, and that our consciousness is only aware of up to about 30 specific elements. To ignore the possibility, in fact the reality, that we can perceive things in our environment beyond consciousness, and that those perceptions influence our experience of our reality, is miserably inadequate.

It's not easy to produce those very low frequencies, and the ZV28 goest the lowest of any of the BASSBOSS subs. Going below 20 does require a lot of power, a lot of excursion, and can, if done with the same transducers, or insufficient quantities of transducers, compromise the clarity of higher frequencies, but a blanket statement like the one you quoted doesn't take those factors into account. If you don't do it right, it doesn't turn out right. Shocker!

To put that another way, it is a burden to reproduce frequencies below 20Hz, but it's also a burden to put up giant video walls and huge, decorative stages. People do those things to enhance the experience of the audience, ie to give them an experience they can't have at home or anywhere else. Essentially to create a sense of awe. None of those elements will create the sense of awe that a 10Hz sine wave would cause, especially because the sine wave would be congruous and in context with the music, not separate from it and involving a different pathway to the brain.


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