Subwoofers. This page tells you what a subwoofer is and how it affects your Home Theatre experience. There is also information about the differences between Passive and Powered subwoofers.

Sub woofers are becoming more and more crucial to the home theater experience. When you go to the movie theatre, you marvel not only at the images projected on the screen, but the sounds emanating around you. What really grabs you, though, is the sound you actually feel; the deep bass that shakes you up and gets you right in the gut.

A specialized speaker, known as a subwoofer, is responsible for this experience. The subwoofer is designed only to reproduce the lowest of audible frequencies.


With the popularity of home theatre sound systems resulting in specialized speakers for center channel dialogue, main soundtracks, and surround effects, the need for a speaker to reproduce just the deep bass portion of a movie soundtrack is all the more important. Although these subs are not quite as "thunderous" as the subwoofers employed at the local movie theatre, these unique loudspeakers can still shake the house down or annoy the downstairs neighbours in your apartment or condo complex.

Subs come in two basic types, Passive and Powered.

Passive Subwoofers
Passive subs are powered by an external amplifier, in the same fashion as other speakers in your system. The important consideration here is that since extreme bass needs more power to reproduce low frequency sounds, your amplifier or receiver needs to be able to output enough power to sustain bass effects in the subwoofer without draining the amp. How much power depends on the requirements of the speaker and the size of the room.

Powered Subwoofers
To solve the problem of inadequate power or other characteristics that may be lacking in a receiver or amplifier, powered subwoofers are self-contained speaker/amplifier configurations in which the characteristics of the amplifier and sub woofer are optimally matched.

Gale STORM 10

The Storm 10 Subwoofers have a 10 inch long throw woofer, which allows them to reach down to a staggering 30 Hz!

Active or Passive: Active Auto On/Off: No Freq Response: (HZ) na

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