My general rule of thumb is that 1 percent distortion in the subbass is equivalent to 7-10 percent distortion in most other parts of the frequency range.

You’ll remember from my old Jason Sound story above that when our woofers changed from 4 percent to 1 percent distortion, the effect was very obvious.

Most modern woofers are rated for maximum output at 5-10 percent distortion. That’s a big part of the problem.

There’s another kind of challenge facing good concert bass: Because many, if not most, touring sound professionals haven’t heard good bass, they aren’t asking manufacturers for it. 

As a result, there are very few low-distortion concert woofer products available.

In studio monitoring and serious home stereo, the situation is somewhat different—many people know what good bass sounds like. In those markets, many manufacturers are serious about low bass distortion, and there are a number of successful products.

For really good concert bass in the 40 to 100 Hz range, I think horn-loaded woofers are the best solution. I’ll talk about horns and other kinds of bass loudspeakers in the upcoming article about woofers.

Getting It Where You Want It
If you do have a system capable of producing good bass, you’re still faced with the task of designing the woofer arrays for best coverage. 

Bass coverage is very predictable, although sometimes the predictions dictate difficult loudspeaker arrangements for production. 

This has lead to a lot of denial in the business, in which sound people pretend to have good bass coverage in order to avoid conflicts with lighting, video, and staging colleagues.

Jeff Berryman served as the director of Jasonaudio, a touring sound company based in Canada, and is a senior scientist with Electro-Voice.

Related Article:
Discussion & Analysis Of A Variety Of Bass Coverage Patterns

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