Resonant Frequency – the frequency at which a woofer or subwoofer in a sealed enclosure resonates.
RMS – an abbreviation for Route Mean Square. RMS is the widely accepted metric of measuring and stating continuous power capabilities of audio power amplifiers as well as power handling capabilities of speakers and subwoofers.
* RMS power ratings of audio power amplifiers are typically stated at a specific impedance and at a certain level of distortion. Otherwise, they are meaningless. IE – 100 watts RMS per channel into a 4Ω load with less than 0.1% distortion.
* RMS power ratings of speakers and subwoofers are typically just given. IE – 250 watts RMS power handling.
Pay no attention to PEAK or MAX numbers, as they mean nothing.
Side Bias – side biasing is a result of sitting much nearer to one speaker than the other. The result is that the near speaker’s sound arrives to your ears sooner than that of the far speaker and the image is pulled to the near side. This is not desirable and can cause long term listening fatigue.
Subsonic Filter – a high pass filter with a very low crossover point. For example, a high pass filter at 30Hz would prevent musical information below 30Hz from reaching a subwoofer amplifier (and the connected subwoofer(s) ) connected to this filter. Subsonic filters are designed to prevent damage to subwoofers when used in vented or BandPass enclosures and connected to high power amplifiers.
Subwoofer – a speaker designed to reproduce the lowest frequencies of music, specifically the lowest two octaves*. Typically, this would be from 80 Hz to below the range of human hearing (lower than 20 Hz).
Tweeter – a speaker designed to reproduce frequencies between 5,000 Hz and 20,000 Hz . . . plus or minus a few . . .
Woofer - a speaker designed to reproduce frequencies from 20 Hz – 500 Hz (or even higher). Woofers are commonly used in home and pro audio speakers, where their frequency response has to extend all the way to the lower crossover point of the midrange (300 Hz – 500 Hz or so) in a three way system or to the crossover point of the tweeter (1,000 Hz or higher) in a two way system.
car accessories