I'm shopping/hunting for a subwoofer. I wanted to pull together some good auditioning discs from my library. My library is all ripped to hard disk for play through a Squeezebox (http://www.slimdevices.com/pi_squeezebox.html). To make sure I picked discs with good/great bass, I figured it would be nice to visualize the music/sound, so I downloaded some software that produces sonograms. I ran a number of tracks through the software with good results.

Here (http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2034/2053348469_978e83c025_o.png) is one of the cannons at the end of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture on the 1979 TELARC release.

Has anyone else done this sort of thing? I found it very helpful to get an idea of what I should be hearing.

- Jasen.

P.S. I'm hunting for something in the <$500 range. The conventional wisdom around here seems to be to buy a HSU or SVS. My hesitation is that I'd much rather LISTEN to something before I buy - money back guarantees not withstanding.

I'm shopping/hunting for a subwoofer. I wanted to pull together some good auditioning discs from my library. My library is all ripped to hard disk for play through a Squeezebox (http://www.slimdevices.com/pi_squeezebox.html). To make sure I picked discs with good/great bass, I figured it would be nice to visualize the music/sound, so I downloaded some software that produces sonograms. I ran a number of tracks through the software with good results.

Here (http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2034/2053348469_978e83c025_o.png) is one of the cannons at the end of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture on the 1979 TELARC release.

Has anyone else done this sort of thing? I found it very helpful to get an idea of what I should be hearing.

- Jasen.

P.S. I'm hunting for something in the <$500 range. The conventional wisdom around here seems to be to buy a HSU or SVS. My hesitation is that I'd much rather LISTEN to something before I buy - money back guarantees not withstanding.
People have been doing waterfall charts for movies, so you'll find quite a few around here.

As far as the sub goes, I have a PB10. The best way to describe shopping for it was try all the subs in the <$500 price range, and the PB10 will likely best any of them.

Just for reference, I was playing with the PB10 and the 1812 overture in a ~7000 cubic foot room (sub only, mains off). In the middle of the room, it was registering 95 dBs. At 1 meter, it registered 102 dBs, and you can feel the "wind" from the port at that distance as each cannon went off. At the port, it was 113 dBs, and I wasn't sure that I was pushing it to the limits yet... :D