Sound & Vision

SUBWOOFER SETUP STEPS

SUBWOOFERS ARE LIKE the magic beans of audio, expanding a playback system’s dynamic range in a way that dramatically enhances the listening experience. There’s an attitude among some audiophiles that subwoofers represent, if not the spawn of the devil (there are numerous such spawns in audio lore), a bad compromise at minimum. But the truth is that adding a modest but well-designed subwoofer to speakers, even compact bookshelf models, can result in better performance than what you’d get from full-range towers that cost considerably more.

Full-range speakers present a room-friendly option, particularly for dedicated two-channel systems, and can sound very good (decades of audiophile experience isn’t necessarily wrong). But where you position the speakers for best performance—in particular to

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