Why the obsession with the lowest octave

The reason most hifi home audio gear has almost always been spec'ed from 20hz-20000khz is because that covers the useful range in the audio spectrum that people can generally hear.

Individual hearing ability varies though. Many cannot hear this full range and some may be able to hear even more, but these are fairly rare and extreme outlier cases.

Many recordings have little or no content towards the extremes. Some good ones do though.

Put the common limits of human ears and the recordings played together and the cases where a low end of consequence exists, can be heard and the listener actually cares are relatively few.

If you care, in general you will pay a premium of some sort generally to enable it in a home system in a quality manner that does not negatively impact all the other good stuff.

Onhwy61,

I think Mapman's quote re:T-Rex was illustrative. My point was that, if you hear an elephant or hippo in the 'hood, it would be a good idea to go the other way - as these animals will cause damage to your person. Rhinos, not so much.

If "predator" was too narrow a noun, mea culpa. In any event, I was just speculating on the origins of a phenomenon that many report.

Marty

i believe the lower the frequencies go in a loudspeaker, providing it does it cleanly w/out distortion, adds body and foundation to all music. frequencies have fundamentals that are lower then the frequency itself.
you mentioned your speakers go down to 28 htz, at how many db's down? distortion and sound pressure levels play a role in low frequencies. for example: my speakers with a 2.5 watt electric input will generate 100db sound pressure level at 4 ft. second harmonic distortion at 40htz 0.5%.

A friend plays the pipe organ, I often attend his practice sessions. No reproduction even come close to the power of such an instrument, however-the organ produces enormous amounts of noise. There is the air rushing through the pipes, the sounds of the mechanical opening and closing of swell doors,not to mention the opening and closing of valves, the operation of compressors.....
An orchestra on stage is also the venue of extraneous noises. At a concert we ignore these noises, yet they can make up an important part of the experience we remember. Until recent years I did not realize how many of the noises were recorded and reproducible on modern equipment. Sometimes they add a great deal to the sense of realism- sometimes not. Those of us fortunate enough to not have to worry about our neighbors hearing our systems have a real advantage in this area.

Several posts up I think someone mentioned that larger drivers are not as effecient as smaller drivers which make them require a much larger amp.

I have always thought that larger speakers are more effecient, like compare a JL 8w7 at 82.7db to a JL 13w7 at 86.3db

Or a Exodus Audio 12in sub at 85.1db vs their 21in driver at 89.6db......

Seems like the days of effecient drivers are over

The larger drivers do have a bit more mass to get moving however they also do not have nearly as far to travel to reproduce the same sound of the smaller driver.