Is bass the most important frequency band?

Of cause, it’s a matter of personal preferences, but most musical informative is the middle. 

If the low to mid bass isn’t correct, it will smear the upper frequency harmonics. Therefore, the foundation is the most important IMHO. 

IME with both 'full range' speakers and sat/sub systems is that when the manufacturer voices the bass in their full range speakers it is done in their room with their equipment, which may not do well in your room.


Separate powered subs can be the solution IF their adjustments are of hi-end quality. Alas, my 10 yo SVS powered subs have far from hi-end adjustments, but what I can tell you is a tiny adjustment to the XO can make or break how far up into the mid range the bass goes, and even a little bit of overshoot smears the mids and even the highs
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Something I have found about my own tastes is the absence of bass is a lot better than the presence of bad bass.

Over a period of years I tried multiple subs + amps and multiple crossovers, both passive and active. No matter what I tried, I never got it to a point where I preferred my sound with the sub. To me, it just sucked the magic out of the sound.

The only time the sub really shone was when I used my two channel system for watching tv shows. So now I have a $500 tv with a +- $5,000 crossover/amp/sub connected to it - and the sub integrates with the tv speakers seamlessly.

Every speaker upgrade of mine has been for deeper, cleaner bass. Always progress, never full satisfaction. So swarm still needed if I ever get the right listening room. Hardest band to get right for sure (to my ears).

My friend made me some subwoofers 20 years ago.  They are still sitting in approximately the same spot.  I added some bass traps but could use a couple more.  I bought sorbothane hemispheres and now realize that's not good enough.  I have nice bass but it could be better, not much.  I dread the day when I have to replace these subs.  The price will be about 10X what it cost me the first time. 

As far as being the most important, I love bass but I love mids and highs that are not fatiguing so I can listen longer and enjoy that bass.  The last thing I want is a system that is tiring. 

This is why I took a long time to research what I felt made sense to add a subwoofer to my system.  It was between Rythmic and REL.  What made the most sense was REL's Speak On technology.  I like bass, but I want to hear it seamlessly integrated.  What is nice about REL is when dialed in properly they play like an added woofer all allow for additional bass extension.  They say if you can hear your subwoofers they are too loud.  I really notice this when playing jazz.  For example, the song Little Person by Michael Wollny.  When the string bass comes in during the first minute of the song, the bass note sound rich and drops through the floor.  It makes jazz sound exciting.

interesting topic/thread...
perhaps analogy is useful here, at least to me....what part of an automobile is most important?  Ride(sporty/firm/responsive, or softer/quiet/smooth), interior finish(plush/soft/expensive or firm/controlled/utilitarian), tech (high/complex, mid/ easy to use. low/minimal), appearance(finish, design, quality), Fuel/environmental  impact, etc....isnt this somewhat dependent on individual taste and how you use your car, how you drive?  In the end, they all get you from point A to point B.....
Well, though some of us  often would like to believe our systems are providing a true live experience, in reality this rarely is the case.  everything from the recording itself to the speakers, and all in between has modified the original performance to some degree.  Secondly, the type of music we chose to listen to may influence the frequency ranges we become  most aware of.  Thirdly, over time, we get used to certain types of sound and accept that as right, when indeed it might not be true-to-life.  And, lastly, "bass" perception can be deceiving....few recordings have  much in the lowest frequencies, and by adding emphasis to mid-bass regions, engineers(recording and speaker) often convey good bass, when indeed that is not really how it sounded originally....
BUT, in the end, it is subjective as to what sound you enjoy....THE ABSOLUTE sound is unobtainium, IMHO...

This is my opinion only. And I got no science or DSP to prove my point. Only lots of trial and error in lots of rooms.

Bass in not the most important.
It’s just the easiest for us to quantify. When bass is full and clean we think we nailed it.

With my last house, I realized that this can lead you to stop pursuing improvement.
A lot of what we don’t hear is time smear. It’s tougher to hear at low volumes and as we move the volume knob up the smear increases smoothly. So it's tough to quantify. Bass can seem fine, but it too will improve when smear is reduced.

Handling first reflection points help but I considered that ’stage one’ only and just a starting point.

My wife moved my record rack right up against the left speaker. Much too close to be the ideal first reflection point. A lot of things snapped into focus. The record rack was 3 tiers high so it was at tweeter height.

It looked wrong but it was doing something right. It made me experiment a lot more with the room. I was in component buying mode at the time and I briefly put a pause on it as I got obsessed with the room.

A year later, the room was 180 different. Rack was on the side. Nothing between speakers...nothing but carpet. Speakers alone on carpet. Was it ideal? No, because it was a dining room...so there was a big Danish dining room table in middle. But it sounded sublime.

Bass was less full than before but way deeper than it had a right to be. No subwoofer. I now had sub bass coming from Salk Songtowers with 5" woofers. Not on every track but when I got a good record on...holy moly. Sound was supremely holographic. Could it have been better? Sure. But it’s the best I ever had.

Time smear is always there because there is a room to deal with. Deal with smear that’s closest...that will give you clarity. Time smear at further intervals makes things sound more spacious. So it’s a tough nut to crack.

Here’s a generality: treat the whole area around the speakers with the utmost care and attention. Right up to the room corners. The rest of the space is important too but that area is sacred.

Don’t let good bass stop you from finding better sound. There is always a way to make something work and you don’t need purpose-made acoustic panels in your living room...just get creative.

Notice that the bass and drums are usually called the rhythm section. As to whether the bass is the most important, I'm not sure that is proper. However It is the back bone of the music which is built upon it. This is especially true with R&R.

Yes, you can measure bass. In order to get good bass a measurement microphone and something like REW helps a lot.

I use REW with a calibrated microphone. The question wasn't meant to be if we could measure bass, but if we could measure the goodness of bass. In other words, can we make measurements that tell us if the bass is likely to be good or bad? It's a rhetorical question because I think we can, to some degree. I'm wondering what anybody here may think qualifies as good bass in acoustical terms. What measurement criteria correlate strongly with the perception of excellent bass?

But to answer your question, that would be a flat response measurement,  as close as one can…

I agree with flat response, but also think group delay, and appropriately fast decay times are important, along with adequately low noise and distortion. There's a lot written up about what kinds of numbers there should be for these measurements and it does seem to get a bit complicated. Plus or minus 3dB comes to mind for flat response, but really narrow band peaks and dips can exceed that and still sound good, while really wide band anomalies might have to stay within less than 1dB to sound good.

Here's a paper on time domain issues with bass: https://assets.ctfassets.net/4zjnzn055a4v/5bzV3RQ7DwopgxW3Joc84i/8ba19fed08c24feb61dc8ddbdc120b0e/20...

"The main conclusion is that at typical listening levels down to 100 Hz  the modal decay time T60 is allowed to increase from about .3 seconds by .1  to .4 seconds, while at 50 Hz even decay times of up to 2 seconds do not make a noticeable difference." 

Keep in mind that they were EQing resonance frequencies down to make their perceived level the same in attempt to isolate just the perception of decay time, suggesting that to not notice the long decay times you will need an equalizer.

The addition of a distributed bass array was life changing. Bass is now "real". It's not bloated or uneven and it provides a blissful foundation to all the rest.

Do distributed bass arrays sound “tight?” I know that’s a hard word to define sometimes. I use it in the sense that the bass starts and stops on a dime without ringing and physically feels like a punch instead of a push. It seems counterintuitive to me that multiple subwoofers would sound “tight,” unless they are all equal distance from the listener. Furthermore, if you have multiple subs on one amp, wouldn’t the damping factor be poor? And if not the damping factor, how can one amp provide control over 4 subs? Amps seem to have a hard enough time controlling 1 sub. I don’t doubt their ability to provide incredibly smooth bass without valleys or peaks in the sound, but do they also provide “tight” bass? I’ve never heard a DBA before. The most subs I’ve ever ran is 2 and I found it harder to integrate than 1. I have heard the Infinity IRS V which has 12 subwoofers, I believe, but without being physically separated it probably doesn’t count as a DBA.

Some people might call me a bass head. I’ve been known to throw on some electronic music and push my system to near its limits, but that’s for fun, not critical listening. For critical listening, I might run the bass a little hot, but never at the expense of drowning out the other frequencies or letting the sub call attention to itself - what I mean by that is that it sounds like an extension of the mains. If you closed your eyes, you couldn’t tell if there was a sub or if my mains just play deep. A good example is the double bass stringed instrument or a kick drum. The lowest notes are heard and felt.

Maybe not most important but if you not have great bass you're life is not complete.

What a great quote!

Bass done right is otherworldly. Most people (specifically non-audiophiles) have never heard good bass. Heck, I’m sure there are people on this forum that would tell me I’ve never heard bass done right, comparing their fancy distributed bass arrays to my humble system. 😀 That only inspires me because I think my bass sounds pretty good right now. I can only imagine improving further upon it. 

Please do. I would appreciate hearing your feedback. 

Really good bass always was pretty much impossible to achieve. People came up with all sorts of solutions. Do a search, with enormous horns and speakers built into walls there are people pretty much turned their whole house into a subwoofer. I heard a bunch of systems with really powerful impressive and deep bass. But never anywhere heard really good bass until I built my DBA.  

The difference is hard to describe in a way people who have never heard it will understand. It is not so much that the bass goes really deep, although it does. It is not so much that the response is ruler flat, although if that is your thing it can be, and a whole lot easier than any other method. It is not even so much that the bass is clean and tuneful and articulate, although it is all of those and in spades.  

Mostly what it is, the DBA gives a sense of envelopment, of being in the recording venue and space. This helps make not only your speakers but your entire room disappear. This is something that is heard, better yet felt or experienced, even when there is no apparent bass to speak of being played. When I put my subs on Townshend Pods for example the improvement was immediately evident in these terms long before any real bass was even being played. 

I have heard plenty of mightily impressive bass. I have heard some exquisitely tuned systems that I am sure measure within a gnats hair of perfection. And yet I have never heard anything with that you are there sense of envelopment that is so easily achieved with a DBA.  

Ballpark $100 per Pod. They are priced higher https://www.audiogon.com/products/townshend-audio-seismic-isolation-pods but call and order direct from John Hannant he will give you better pricing. They like to recommend four per component, but I use 3 under most things and have played around and don't really notice any difference 3 vs 4. 

My first big surprise with Pods was how much resonance was coloring everything. The more Pods the more that goes away and the more every instrument sounds as it should. The cumulative effect is really something. I was listening to Brubeck last night. The whole record is a gimmick- Time Out, they are all different time signatures- and it usually gets tiresome and so hasn't been played in a while but last night I was struck over and over again how much more interesting it is when it sounds like a real piano, sax, and drum kit. 

The other thing, my room has hardly any treatment, it keeps getting put off and now I am so glad! Podiums and Pods removed a huge amount of "room" resonance that I would have sworn could only be handled with bass traps and diffuser panels! 

That is why when we did them recently at Brandon's he said it was worth a couple thousand in room treatment alone. That was Podiums, they have the biggest effect but also the biggest price tag. 

Hopefully that is enough info so you will be able to figure it out but if not you can always ask for more. 

I’ve also found that isolating the subwoofer from the floor makes a big difference. I use a cheaper product to good effect: IsoAcoustics Iso-200Sub Subwoofer Isolation Stand. It’s surprising how much vibration is carried through the floor into the room’s structure which causes distortion. Highly recommend isolation of some kind for higher fidelity. 

While I agree that low bass is hard to arrange, and it can muck up your sound if less than well integrated, I disagree that it is absolutely necessary for good sound.

In fact I think that a system that rolls off early may be preferable to one that has plenty if muddy bass.

One of my systems uses electrostats that are 2 dB down at 45 Hz and they are wonderful for non-bass heavy music.  Better tan they would be with supplemented bass badly implemented.

OP, all frequencies are important as that is what constitutes music and your proposition that bass should be optimised is solid. Achieving optimal bass is the quest and is what stymies the vast majority of enthusiasts mainly because of a lack of understanding and also because they have never been in the presence of quality bass reproduction.

Good bass needs to be flat and decay by a certain amount within a given time frame known as T60 and this time is obtainable from freely available sources and depends on the volume of your listening room. This is easy and inexpensive to perform. Once you see the plots of your room you can introduce corrective measures which consist of bass traps and adding subs as in a DBA. Doing one or the other will make very big improvements, doing both is truly optimum. It's WOW.

As has been mentioned mid frequencies are very important as this is where most of the music lies but then so are high frequencies which provide brilliance and spatial clues and now to bring them all together to get...music.

Let me also point out that good bass improves the mids and tops and adding a supertweeter improves everything.

Agreed, the so called presence (4-6kHz) and brilliance (6-8kHz) bands are the most important.
However, it’s the bass band that usually gives systems the most problems.

It’s also the bass band where most of the measurable distortion is to be found - and that goes for both loudspeakers and headphones.

Since sound is usually generated by the mechanical movement of a cone or diaphram, and bass requires more movement, structural and resonance issues tend to increase exponentially as you go lower in frequency in a similar way as when you go louder on volume.

The decision to not even bother to go down that low (flat sub 50hZ) is one that many designers decide to take in view of mounting technical and construction problems - heat, resonance, and deviation from a piston like cone movement etc.

Many audiophiles seem quite happy to accept this compromise, preferring to look for improvements elsewhere. On the other hand, quite a few are not.

Surely it’s no coincidence that as you go up in loudspeaker ranges offered by most manufacturers, dynamic range and bandwidth increases, not decreases.

https://www.teachmeaudio.com/mixing/techniques/audio-spectrum#presence

Hey mkgus,

In my focused experience and association with many music lovers over 75 years, bass seems to be the initial "magnet"...pun somewhat intended.  Over time, and increased genres, the high frequencies seem to be next, especially if things are fatiguing.  Then, the all important mid-range, the true host of all things important, completing the cycle.  For me, as my main system evolved in my younger years, finding an extended, coherent top end was a target to various speaker designs.  As a hopeless "conehead" the RAAL tweeters were a revelation, my "retired" Salk monitors.  The addition of a pair of well matched quality subwoofers serves to increase the purity of ALL the frequencies, a wonderful, often overlooked discovery!  My nearby best audio buddy and I are reaching out target, full range sound at the same time.  It is very exciting when there is nothing to critique and you can simply enjoy the artists and performances to the max.  And, don't forget...a Laser Ruler, essential to that goal.  More Peace, Pinthrift    

An example of very big bass sound is thunder from the sky. Very loud and awesome. But, we do not say the thunder is a kind of music. It is a just sound. So, if you like the bass much, I would like to recommend you a little incline to mid and treble which delineate true music made by human being.

Start at the Base opps Bass.

Hello mkgus.  Subwoofers are much talked about these days. They are very profitable. They are also not difficult to build. Think of all the people who are listening to what we consider sub-standard audio devices: ear buds, transistor radios, table radios, all those new, small, invasive and intrusive devices. No bass there, and people are not devastated. True, they don't know what they're missing; but, most folk music is made for dancing and the rhythm is carried by percussion instruments. How many small bookshelf/standmount speakers are sold in comparision to "full range" floor standers. Pipe organ fans are likely to miss 40Hz and lower tones. The bass notes are the most likely to be missing from the average commercial speaker. If the bass was most important, would small speakers sell at all. Don't let the opinions or preferences (rantings?) of others trouble you. Happy Listening!

This is my opinion. Bass is a foundation and what creates excitement to music. It is the guts of the music but without the rest of the body it is lifeless. The way different frequencies blend and form music is in fact an art. Thus, artists were defined. Music can be extremely exciting and beautiful without Bass. But add Bass to the right composition and you have dynamics greater than without to make a smile on your face. Bass that is wrong can ruin music. Resonances that are not supposed to be there, Honks instead of mid bass, Booms where they do not belong creates a circus with no ring leader. So if done properly Bass is Awesome.

@pcrhkr,

"Bass that is wrong can ruin music."

You mean the 2009 Beatles stereo remasters?


"So if done properly Bass is Awesome."

Yes, bass can be both exciting or extremely relaxing, but its first got to be there.