Most people equate subwoofers with the thump-thump they hear from other cars at stoplights. Volume at the expense of quality.  There is no sugarcoating the message: it’s called bad bass. In the world of the dedicated audiophile, this is what gave the subwoofer (and with it bass) a bad rep. But the idea with any speaker system is to accurately recreate all frequencies in the audio spectrum equally, including bass. What you want from a quality subwoofer, placed correctly in a room, is a deep realistic sound, not the thump-thump. So let’s be clear that a good subwoofer doesn’t make a boom sound, but just stronger (and lower) bass than is possible with normal speakers.

The world of amplifiers is riddled with terminology that-unless you been wandering the audiophile jungle for years- does your head in. It should come as no surprise really, considering amplifiers are complicated electronic devices where a lot goes on. While we have no intention whatsoever to make this blog a highly technical piece of reading that belongs in an electronics course syllabus, we do want to give you an idea what a lot of the words that get thrown around mean in layman’s terms. They are by no means scientifically accurate definition, but we really tried to keep it as close as possible to what a science purist could tolerate.

A few weeks ago we received a request from a customer who had balanced audio on his wish list. If you read much promotional literature for high-quality equipment, you’ll notice the phrase “balanced connection” tossed around. Balanced inputs and outputs are sort of a must for audio equipment that has any claim to quality. The word itself has promotional value, suggesting superiority over the long-established “unbalanced” connection.  But there are a lot of questions, and often confusion, surrounding balanced and unbalanced audio – What is balanced audio? Is balanced better than unbalanced? Why should I use balanced? How will balanced audio affect my system? What differences in sound quality can I expect to hear when using balanced? If balanced is so good, why isn’t everyone using it? …and the list goes on. What follows is some insight into balanced vs. unbalanced audio in an attempt to answer these questions.