Bass Extender

This Bass Extender circuit can give you as much as an extra octave of bass response from your existing hifi
speakers, as long as you are not running them near full power.
Design by Rick Walters
This may sound like black magic. Just how is it possible to get an extra octave of bass response from a hifi loudspeaker?
Well, the theory supporting this idea originates from Neville Thieles 1961 paper (1) on loudspeakers and vented
enclosures. He postulated that the response of a loudspeaker in a vented enclosure was similar to a fourth-order highpass
filter,
rolling
off
in
the
bass
region
at
-24dB per octave. For a sealed enclosure, the response was similar to a second order high-pass filter, rolling off at -12dB
per octave.

Fig.1: the response in a vented enclosure is similar to a fourth-order high-pass filter, rolling off in the bass region at -24dB per
octave (red trace). Similarly, the response in a sealed enclosure rolls off at -12dB per octave (green trace), much like a secondorder filter. This graph plots the response of hypothetical speakers with a cutoff frequency of 70Hz.

Fig.1 shows this for hypothetical speakers that are -3dB down at 70Hz (the cutoff frequency), in each type of enclosure.
Now if we apply bass boost with an amplitude of +3dB at 70Hz, rising to a maximum boost of around 11dB or so (for a
sealed enclosure), it will partially compensate for the speakers rolloff and thus extend the bass response by as much as
an octave.
As well see later, the Bass Extender can be tailored for either type of enclosure, applying less boost to a vented
enclosure than a sealed enclosure. This is the opposite of what you might expect but is necessary because the speaker
cone in a vented enclosure has little loading below the box resonance.
There is a limit to the amount of bass compensation we can apply anyway. A speakers cone excursion increases as
frequency decreases, so large bass boost levels would test the mechanics of the speaker as well as the damping ability of
the enclosure. Also, it is likely that some power amplifiers would run into clipping.