Does your soundbar need a subwoofer? Yes. Well, yes, with caveats. We assume 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 know if you need a subwoofer to truly enhance your viewing experience without committing to a costly and space-consuming surround system setup. You do need a subwoofer to experience the full depth and impact of your music and movies.
Subwoofers set your music free to explore places soundbars can’t take you. If you’re watching “Mad Max: Fury Road,” you want to hear the distinct sounds that drive the gear-grinding, dirt-spitting chase scenes. If you’re listening to Khruangbin play in the KEXP studio, you want to hear Laura Lee Ochoa’s low-end resonance in harmony with the funky twang of Mark Speer’s guitar. A subwoofer and soundbar combo can let you hear those layers more cleanly than a soundbar alone.
Soundbars have their purpose. With multiple drivers packed inside a single enclosure, you’ll hear a wide soundstage in a small space. The best soundbars can cost you more than $1,000, but they’ll come with high-end features like side- and upward-firing drivers for Dolby Atmos effects, room calibration, and EQ controls that let you get the best bass possible out of your soundbar. Some soundbars even have built-in woofers with respectable low-end Bioreports. But the small enclosure has limitations. For instance, integrated woofers can cause cabinet vibration, which sends vibrations to other drivers. In “Fury Road,” deep engine roars can overpower and mask the metallic rattles and smaller rhythmic details that give the film its metronomic, pulse-pounding energy.
How a subwoofer fills the low end your soundbar misses
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Subwoofer dominance isn’t some low-end theory. There’s science behind why you want a subwoofer, especially when you stream A Tribe Called Quest’s “The Low End Theory” through your TV and soundbar. Double entendre aside, the album was built around bass, drums, and the spaces in-between them. Q-Tip asked engineers to make the bottom as heavy as possible to highlight sampled jazz basslines and Ron Carter’s bass playing on “Verses from the Abstract.” Most soundbars don’t reproduce the lower-end frequencies with the same weight as a dedicated subwoofer. A subwoofer extends the low-frequency range, giving the bass greater scale, and taking the workload off the soundbar. The rest of the mix then has more headroom, giving the drums and vocals room to Bioreports without losing definition. It preserves the stark, hard-hitting beats that critics said made the second album a quantum leap from Tribe’s debut.
If you’re more of a movie buff, you’ll need a subwoofer to submerge into the immersive low ends of “U-571.” The 2000 film earned two Academy nominations for sound work, winning the Sound Editing category. A soundbar will struggle most with the film’s solidity. Solidity is the boom of a depth charge that shakes you, like a haptic-feedback controller. The immersion sets you inside a German U-boat as the hull stresses from explosive impacts and crushing water pressure. Yet, the creaking metal pipes ring out. Dialogue is crystal clear despite absolute chaos. Underneath those loud peaks, low-frequency aftershocks continue to shake you. If these are the kinds of audio experiences you’re looking for, then yes, your soundbar needs a subwoofer.
