I’ve had many people ask me, “What makes a good SQ subwoofer?” I am finding that this is a sorely misunderstood topic, and the sheer lack of understanding behind the science of it is overwhelmed by the amount of strictly anecdotal evidence available. Making a decision on the purchase of a subwoofer for sound quality purposes is certainly not an easy one. The intention of this article is to serve to assist you in making that decision. I will only cover subwoofer drivers in this article. Look out for another article on enclosures. Please note, I won’t go into specific motor technologies or the presence of shorting rings and such. This is intended to be a fairly basic article to give someone a general understanding.
An SQ Subwoofer (one that is designed for sound quality) is able to reproduce a linear frequency response in a generous frequency range, while maintaining excellent transient response and transparency. Today we will look at a few features that can often be found on high-quality SQ subwoofers for mobile audio use.