Do You Need To Add A SubWoofer To Horn Loudspeakers

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:00]We received a comment from one of our followers. From Daniel in our um Lady Pearl Horn Loudspeaker um video. Uh his comment is, "Do you recommend to add an subwoofer uh in some cases?"

[00:00:14]And my response to this absolutely no.

[00:00:18]This question um comes in the context of our Lady Pearl Horn Loudspeakers. As many may know, Lady Pearl Horns is a single driver crossoverless uh two-way firing bass horn. And the bass horn goes uh down as basically 100 hertz. And so, his question is, "Can Do I Do you recommend to that I add another uh subwoofer on top of the old bass horn?"

[00:00:45]That's not what you want. It's exactly goes against the design parameters.

[00:00:51]Well, first of all, you know, his other question he clarified his position. He was saying, "Well, your uh horns use an 8-in driver. Not a huge cone, right?" I don't expect an 8-in uh cone to produce very low frequencies and to beat, you know, play it very high sound pressure.

[00:01:09]We all have the experience. We know larger drivers produce lower frequencies. Smaller cone drivers produce cannot produce such a low frequencies. But in this case, um a very important aspect has been not taken into account. A bass horn is not your conventional uh cabinet speaker. In the conventional cabinet speaker, you you one needs to place a larger cone driver or multiple array of these drivers. One needs to increase the size of the size of the cabinet in order to increase the volume in order to to increase the FS or the lowest uh frequency acoustic enclosure can produce. Right? Obviously, one needs to match the drivers to go with this enclosure so that the lowest frequency is basically being reproduced. That is one way of doing it. It's not the best way of doing reproducing low frequencies.

[00:02:03]The advantage of a horn is in its design that is acoustic loading. So, larger cones cannot move that quick because of their higher mass.

[00:02:14]Higher mass prohibits or it requires even more force um to to achieve the same sort of movement and agility. They can produce low frequencies, but they can't move fast. In order to produce high sound pressure levels, uh one can get only a limited amount of efficiency or sensitivity from these drivers. One needs to basically multiply the number of these drivers to get the same efficiency at the low frequencies. With acoustic loading, the advantage is is that one can get away with smaller drivers, but when it's acoustically loaded, it's supercharged.

[00:02:53]One can produce same or higher sound pressure level because the the sensitivity, the efficiency of the drivers grows multiple folds. One doesn't need to play that that driver in a higher sound pressure levels because sound pressure levels is being magnified and amplified by the horn by the acoustic loading. And therefore, one gets a very high sound pressure level at minimum distortion, and one gets breathtaking dynamics, which is impossible to achieve with large cones in the cabinet. And by the way, there's another thing that I like to mention.

[00:03:29]Most people think, "Okay, 20 Hz is the lowest sort of frequency." What most people forget, there's no drivers that play at 20 Hz. And there's no sound almost virtually no sound. It's just very low rumble.

[00:03:41]It's nothing. There's no instrument that really plays at full apart from organs that do a little bit of rumble. Most of instruments are way above 100 Hz.

[00:03:51]I think the lowest kick drum notes that's around 100 hertz.

[00:03:56]So, when our horns play kick drums, most people are punched in the chest.

[00:04:02]They There's this energy and realism of of percussion which nobody expects.

[00:04:09]And they can play it more importantly at lowest distortion at a very high sound pressure. So, that's the where the realism and the feeling like somebody's playing percussion in the room is occurring.

[00:04:22]You can't achieve the same feeling with the conventional cabinets with large drivers. It's not going to happen.

[00:04:29]Too heavy cones.

[00:04:30]You can produce a sound pressure level higher, but at very high cost, at cost of distortion. So, once one experiences a proper bass horn, there's no way one anybody wants to go back to anything else.