Enhancing the sound in your TV room is only going to make your viewing experiences better. Relying on your TV’s speakers is a fool’s errand — they aren’t built to be great on almost any TV, even though manufacturer jargon may tell a different story. So, most people will rely on a soundbar to up their audio game.

A soundbar can do a great job of providing a better atmosphere for your room. It can help you play music as well as TV audio and fill out your room. Depending on where you place it, it can make it so that people in the back of the room can hear like they’re in the front of the room. But in some rooms, a soundbar isn’t going to be enough.

Adding a subwoofer to your soundbar and audio system can make a huge difference. Getting that balanced sound can take a lot of work, but for audiophiles and regular folks alike, it can be game-changing. Investing in a subwoofer on top of a soundbar is a worthwhile purchase.

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1

A soundbar can’t do it all

You think you have something until you hear you really don’t

Bose

Soundbars come in all kinds of builds, and the way their speakers are positioned matters. Some shoot sound upward to bounce off the ceiling, while most just fire outward or to the sides — definitely better than TV speakers, but not mind-blowing. That’s where a subwoofer steps in… it’s not meant to work solo, but rather to handle the low-end stuff and round out the sound.

Subwoofers bring in the deep bass and low vocals your soundbar can’t quite hit, making everything feel fuller and more cinematic. On its own, a soundbar sounds good. After adding a subwoofer, no matter where you are in the room, you’ll hear the difference as it boosts the quality and richness of whatever you’re listening to.

2

Get rid of distorted sound

Balance it out no matter where you’re sitting

TCL

A lot of people turn on subtitles when watching Netflix or Hulu — and usually for one of two reasons. Either they’ve got the volume turned down and don’t want to miss anything, or their TV’s speakers just aren’t cutting it. You know the feeling: it’s like trying to decode whatever Farmer Fran is saying in The Waterboy. You’re watching, but you’re also guessing.

Distorted sounds can garble up what you’re trying to listen to and make it just hard enough to decipher. Adding a soundbar can help, but throwing in a subwoofer will eliminate your need for subtitles. Well, it may not actually make you stop using subtitles, as once you stop, you get used to it. But, the distorted sound will be balanced and more easily understood. So then it becomes more of a personal choice than a necessity.

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3

Your room is too big for regular audio

You need that immersive boost

Klipsch

In a smaller room, you might not need both a soundbar and a subwoofer — the acoustics could already be doing you a favor. But if you’ve got a bigger space to fill, it’s worth thinking about how to actually hear what’s happening on screen. Sound needs room to travel, and if your speakers can’t carry it, you’ll be stuck rewinding every scene with dialogue.

A subwoofer can be placed in a corner to help combat the sound that is coming from the front of the room, either from the TV or the soundbar. A soundbar typically has to go right by the TV because it acts as the primary speaker. Adding a subwoofer in a different part of the room helps provide a surround sound with more fullness. You can even add multiple subwoofers if your viewing room is large enough.

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4

You’re looking for the perfect sound setup

At the end of the day, get it right if you can

Bose

If you consider yourself an audiophile, you’re going to want to find the right spot to listen to your speakers. This can be listening to albums, records, TV, or while gaming. Depending on the acoustics of your room, it will depend on where you put your soundbar and subwoofer. One of the methods for finding this is to crawl around the room once you’ve placed your soundwoofer at ear height for where you typically sit and see what spot has the most balanced sound. While this may seem silly, it will help you find the area that has the perfect spot for your seat to be.

If you don’t care this much about your sound, you can still get the perfect sound setup if you are smart about your investments. Adding a subwoofer to any part of the room is one of those investments, especially if you want to hear frequencies below 100Hz, which is crucial if you’re listening to live music. The subwoofer handles everything low and the soundbar or speaker handles the rest of the audio spectrum. It doesn’t particularly matter where you place it, unless you want to have the sound just right.

Having one balances out your listening experience. Testing it with a bass-heavy song is an easy way to go. Once you find that bass-heavy song (if you’ve read any speaker review I’ve ever done, I always start with Billie Eilish’s Bad Guy when testing out a speaker, as those thumping bass drums provide a good test), you should be able to nail the spot that you want to listen from.