What's the difference between real bass and unreal bass? One of the latter's most defining characteristics can be described with a single pejorative word: pump. Real music, with the possible exception of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, is not pumped at the listener, nor is it squirted, hurled, shot, pummeled, thrust, or thrown at the listener. Yet the majority of "high-end" systems I've heard throughout my lifeand the vast majority of the ones I've heard at audio showsdo just that. The effect is not unlike trying to make a corpse seem lively by shooting it out of a cannon: The force with which the thing arrives isn't realisticjust horrifying.
Let the record show that virtually all of the bad bass I've heard from domestic playback gear has come from bass-reflex loudspeakers, usually driven by high-power amplifiers. As a general rule, high-excursion/small-diameter woofers have tended to sound worsepumpier, if you willthan their larger comrades.
Real bass, on the other hand, as created in real settings by real musicians, simply happens: It is there, existing as a very long sinusoidal wave that's audible to listeners and detectable by microphones over a wide range of distances from the source. Acoustic instruments that produce audible tones pitched below 80Hz can excite the air in a performing or recording space by means of: large physical size (the soundboard of a grand piano); a large, enclosed volume of air that's open to the room via an aperture of predetermined size (the bell of a contrabassoon); or some combination of the two.
And there is always a sharply physical, tactile component to real bassa sense of tautnessthat is welded to the fundamental component of its sound in a manner that's all but indescribable. Real bass isn't merely fast: It's natural.
Let the record show that, of the relatively little good bass I've heard from domestic playback systems, most has come from woofers that measure no less than 12" in diameter, usually built with very tight, low-excursion surrounds. Some of those drivers have been horn-loaded, but that wouldn't seem to be a requirement. And most were manufactured before I made my First Communion.
