Woofer VS Subwoofer

A woofer is any speaker that is not a tweeter.  A woofer plays lower freqs and a tweeter plays the higher ones.  Any subwoofer can also be called a woofer, a speaker or a driver.  8" drivers are not always referred to as subwoofers, depending on their role in the system.  If they are used to play the deepest notes, they are the subs.  But sometimes they're used in conjunction with larger woofers in a system.  The larger ones would be the subs, and the 8" would be mid-bass woofers, using a crossover to sort out the frequencies.

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Awesome, thanks for the information, stevdart.

stevdart is correct.  All subs are woofers.  But not all woofers are designed to function well as subs.  A woofer desgned as a subwoofer will (in general) be optimized for the lowest parts of the musical spectrum (16 to 100Hz) will have larger excursion capability (higher Xmax) and lower free-air resonance (lower Fs) and in general lower total Q and are much less efficient for higher power handling capability than a standard woofer.  A subwoofer also tends to have a much narrower frequency response band, which is the trade-off for greater complaince at lower frequencies.  That being said, nearly any woofer can be used as a 'subwoofer" if the system is designed correctly, but speakers designed as subs have greater capabilities at the lowest frequencies and are severely limited at the higher frequencies.

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