Why so much bass?

Why? Easy. Sub bass is additive, quantifiable, and easily perceived. Sound quality has none of these elements. Additive: Sub bass actually ADDS frequencies to the system that wouldn't be present otherwise. Sub bass ADDS characteristics described with terms like "hitting" "booming" "pounding" to the music. This additive nature impresses us and it impresses others. Sub bass instantly jumps out at even the most inexperienced listeners. "WOW! My car doesn't do that!" Quantifiable: Not only is bass additive, it is quantifiable, so we can compare bass against our buddies. We can make more of a sport of it. We can hit specific numbers. We can say, "car A has more bass than car B." Our nature is to compare. Our nature is to win. Our nature is to want more. This is very easy to do with bass. Easily Perceived: When is the last time your chest cavity shook because of sound quality? Your rear view mirror? When is the last time you turned heads on the street or annoyed grumpy guys like me with your sound quality? We like easily perceivable bass for the same reason someone wears gold chains outside of his shirt. We desire to be seen a certain way. ------------------------------------------- Anyway, I think it is easy to see why so many folks gravitate towards bass. We live in a world of limited resources. People, young men in particular, would rather dump money into bass than into sound quality. This makes a lot of sense given the three characteristics I described above. Young men, in general, are very competitive, want to be noticed, and want to impress others. --------------------------------------------------- I can see why some folks are interested in sub bass SPL. I simply can't get excited about it. Why? How much sport is there really to get an impressive amount of bass? Not much. More driver area, more power, semi-intelligent application. Repeat. Woo hoo. (Yes, I agree, there is _some_ sport. The most woofers don't always win.) The additive nature of bass only makes it fun with a couple kinds of music. I like vocals. I want to hear vocals. It is hard to hear vocals over heavily added bass. Perception? Most adults are annoyed by extreme sub bass and think it is an unnecessary joke. Hence the noise laws. ------------------------------------------------- Sound quality, on the other hand, is an almost unreachable nirvana. Undefinable and perfection is unattainable. The nuances matter more. It makes ALL music sound better. It is more cerebral. It is more challenging. On the negative side. It can be freaking expensive and there's almost more misinformation, strangely enough, in the sq world than the SPL world. Anyway, sorry for the rambling post. Blah. Stream of consciousness. You can tell I don't want to do work. New Project: 2003 Pathfinder

I think a lot of it is the "look at me" factor.  Big booming bass replaced the rumbling exhaust and wide tires in muscle cars from my youth.  Every time I get mad and want to strangle some kid in a Civic shaking every window in my house with his insipid low-C drone I flash back to my 1971 Dodge Challenger with cutouts on the headers and how I loved to pop those babies open at midnight and nail the 440 and smoke the rear tires through 3 gears just to set off the buglar alarms at a local jewelry store...Support the12volt.com

Well...I'm not sure why I started with the bass, but I can tell you why I have continued. It's simple really. I'm almost deaf and pounding bass is the only thing I can hear anymore.Nik

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Alien509 wrote: Another fact is that if you had highs that matched that kind of power from a sub, the intensity of such a dramatically higher frequency would surely make you go deaf. The bass floods out in a way that high frequencies won't do......

WWhere are you getting this information from?

Ya, when I read that statement I was kinda confused as well. I would like to know what is your basis for that statementdouble-secret reverse-osmosis speaker-cone-induced high-level interference distortion, Its a killer

If Alien509 is speaking in SPL terms he is correct. If you made your comps match the SPL of your subs, you would have a very overpowering sound. If thats even possible. I've never seen it.Nik

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Dyohn hit on a realistic parallel of how it is now compared to how it was then.  There are so many emissions requirements in cars now that you can't build the engine and get your horsepower in the same way you did then.  Now your horsepower comes from the BASS because about all you can do now is Pep Boys the little machine up with fart can tailpipes and oversized minimal rubber tires.  I would probably be building an SPL system today if I were 25 or 30 years younger...and the more chrome the better!  And I might have gone half deaf 10 years earlier too..

for me, when i first started getting into car audio i was all about the "boom factor" one of those high school clique-ish type things almost. seeing how that was only 4 years ago i'm more into makin everything sound good. i sat in my friends ride the other day and even he said that his bass is too loud, but yet he refuses to turn it down so he can hear his mids and stuff. though, i also think that with music, especially the kind you hear coming from "booming" cars playing rap, hip hop, techno type stuff, something about bass is mesmerizing. when you go to a club you keep beat with the bass. bass keeps the rhythym going. girls shake their butts to the bass. i dont know how to explain but you almost get entranced by the bass. just my two cents.