Musical accuracy in subwoofers

Thanks all for your responses. As suggested, I tried disconnecting the mains & listened to the reproduction of various instruments. There are very clear differences between a closely miked electric fender bass, an acoustic bass, & tympani strokes. But so many of the clues we depend on for an instruments unique aural signature are well above the subs range. My initial posts reference to timbre was instigated by quotes from others who said this or that sub is more accurate at reproducing a given instruments timbre. I agree with Ezmeralda11, I don't want any inherent timbre in a speaker. Will.

The distortion figures in a sub effect the timbre of the reproduction more than is often realized due to the Fletcher Munson loudness curves. For a simplfied example: a 30 Hz pure sine wave with 10% second harmonic distortion played at around 70 db SPL (think the fundamental from a double bass or contrabasson) will also produce an additional tone at 60 Hz at about 10 db down. However, at that frequency due to the Fletcher Munson effect, the harmonic will be percieved as equally loud as the fundamental which will seriously distort timbral perception. While the effect flattens out at louder volumes even 3% harmonic distortion can shift the perceived timbres of of lower bass instruments (assuming of course that the room distortions don't swamp the lower bass response).

Its the timbre of the instrument being reproduced, I referred to, not the timbre a subwoofer might have. If the sub has timbre, a sound of its own, it distorts and you will never get the timbre of the instrument reproduced right. You have to have a lot of intimate experience with live music to test subs this way, i.e. to see if it reproduces the timbre of differet instruments properly. If you don't have this experience, Esmeralda is right, stick to maths. By the way, its necessarz to develop a language to describe musical experience. No maths will tell you, how a rig will sound.

I've only been to about 1000 professional live classical performances and counting. Aside from degrees in physics and EE so I know some math, I also completed a major in musicology and played french horn in a student orchestra. I have also have measured a fair amount of live and reproduced music. I stand by my example, 3%-10% harmonic distortion will significantly shift the reproduction of timbre in the lower bass octaves.

Nobody said it didn't.