Why the obsession with the lowest octave

To ignore the range from 20 to 40 Hz is to deny the FACT that there are harmonics down in that range that do affect realistic music reproduction. Not to mention that there are also ques down there that give us the impression of a large hall for example.

Don't believe? Listen to a cello on speakers that cutoff at 40, and then listen on a full range pair. Many people do live with the lowest octave, and many live without much above 12kHz, but this does not prove there is no valuable information there.

Elizbeth,

I usually find your posts to be very informative, but I have to say that your passing this off as some testosterone-laced fantasy is beneath your knowledge. Maybe you just meant to poke fun at us guys. ;-)

Can't say for others but I "get" the harmonic content from mathematics. You guys are all free to believe what you want and setup your systems any way you see fit.

:-) Hook up a spectrum analyzer. It would probably shock you to think that there is sometimes bass content in some cymbal whacks.

Mapman, that kind of sa probably uses frequency bins but may help show what is going on. The issue people forget is that we're not dealing with simple sinusoid signals. A single note from a musical instrument is a very complex sinusoid. That is how the same note from a sax and from a trumpet sound different, or at least they should or our system is really crap.

Yeah, and a snare drum whack is maybe an even better example of the very complex sounds we listen to.

I think what sometimes happens is we read the definition where is says that the harmonics are "integer multiples" but we forget that there is a negative integer series that fills in below the fundamental and we get that bell curve shape around the fundamental. This is in the frequency domain.

Thanks for the correction, Eldartford and Kihanki! I am mixing myself up. The fundamental IS the lowest sinusoid. I'm sounding like Irwin Corey again. ;-)

Bob, implementing this highpass in a post-amp crossover will require some really large values. To design this correctly would take knowledge of the drivers and the network in use. It would make sense for a poll that low in frequency to look to an active line level crossover solution. There are good ones for a couple hundred bucks.