Best Songs to Test Subwoofer

You’ve finally decided to go get yourself a subwoofer and integrate it into your sound system so as to enhance your music listening experience. But you are wondering if it will be enough to use your favorite music to test the performance of the subwoofer. From our experience, using the music you are very familiar with and have listened to a lot will be a good choice to test the potential subwoofer. If you want the best songs to test the subwoofer then please continue to read on.

Adding a powered subwoofer into the mix is not just about shaking your room with bass or dishing out an extreme amount of sub-bass frequencies which is absolutely nothing wrong with it but a high-quality subwoofer could do more. It could add more bass details, textures, and depth to the overall music delivery. The added presence and energy of the lower frequencies could provide listeners with more music ‘feel’. The potential subwoofer will also need to be agile and articulate enough to keep up with most music genres or at least the ones you like. This is where the songs to test the bass performance of the subwoofer come into play and we will be sharing with you some of the best.

Songs to Test your Subwoofers

You can go through the below list of songs and start playing them to see if they fit your preference or simply start using them to test the potential subwoofer.

Angel by Massive Attack

Angel by Massive Attack is an excellent song to test the mantle of your subwoofer and to see how well it could cope with the dynamic shifts. The subwoofer should be subtle enough during the start and able to keep up with the song’s progression without messing up the details. As this song starts to get louder, the subwoofer should be able to handle the peaks without sounding bloated and/or losing the bass textures. The Angel by Massive Attack is an intense song under the genre trip-hop industrial rock electronica and you might want to explore more into this genre.

Time by Hans Zimmer

This is an absolute instrumental masterpiece coming from a movie that we love so much. Like the movie Inception, Hans Zimmer’s Time invokes a lot of emotion and it builds up progressively as well. The start comes off slow and the subwoofer shouldn’t interfere with unnecessary production of low frequencies. When it is time to show off the low-end prowess, the subwoofer must be able to produce tight and powerful sub-bass frequencies. This is to ensure the sub is keeping pace with the music without ruining the ‘feel’ and emotion by spurting out loose bass or simply being sluggish.

Act Like You Know by Fat Larry’s Band

Love the energy and complexity of this classic, this is a fantastic R&B song to test your subwoofer. There should be enough punch coming from the bass notes without losing its details. Also, the lower frequencies produced by the subwoofer should sound accurate and don’t overshadow the upper registers. This is to ensure the low-end performance is keeping pace with this pick-me-up song while adding more weight and depth. Act Like You Know by Fat Larry’s Band is a must listen and probably would make your day better.

For Whom The Bell Tolls by Metallica

From R&B to heavy metal classic, For Whom The Bell Tolls by Metallica is a powerful song to test your subwoofer. Their more recent songs may be slightly heavier but it doesn’t have the complexity and energy of their older classics. The faster music pacing will keep your subwoofer on its toes, the bass delivery needs to be tight and has the weight as well. Metallica & San Francisco Symphony songs are excellent and you might want to use a few of them for testing too.

Cure For The Itch by Linkin Park

They are certainly one of the greatest bands ever, at least in our books. They have plenty of high-energy songs to go for and you can start with Faint which has an assortment of powerful vocals, instrumental sounds, and bass. If you are interested in more ‘bass-focused’ Linkin Park music then you should definitely check out Cure For The Itch. The bass delivery should be clean and agile, any additional decay or delay will ruin the flow of the song. There are so many great songs that you can use to test your subwoofer, do take your time to at least have a listen to a few of them.

Animality by JVLA, Maga & Zupay

This is heavy and powerful, right at the start you are hooked and Animality will make your subwoofer work. As the name suggests, this song builds up the emotion and raw energy rather quickly and unleashes visceral bass slams. Low-quality subwoofers will probably start to get boomy and overshadow the details with bloated bass frequencies. Animality gets better when you turn up the volume but do make sure the subwoofer has enough amplifier power to handle the peaks.

Cheap Thrills by Sia

How about a more modern pop song to test out your subwoofer? Cheap Thrills by Sia is not as bass-heavy as the earlier song Animality but there are enough of the lower registers to warrant it as a subwoofer test song. This pop song has a lot of presence and with the right subwoofer, you can really feel it without being intrusive. Also not to overwhelm Sia’s vocals by muddling the subtle nuances and adding unnatural warmth. Cheap Thrills by Sia will be an ideal song for those who listen to a lot of modern-day pop songs.

The Red Circle by Le Castle Vania

One of the OSTs from the John Wick franchise, The Red Circle is an awesome soundtrack to test your subwoofer’s might and refinement. The subwoofer needs to be fast, agile, and powerful so as to keep up with the flow, to give us the tight bass punch which makes this OST so addictive to listen to. LED Spirals is another great OST to test your subwoofer but we still prefer the former as it is a bit more complex and faster-paced than the latter.

Bangarang feat. Sirah by Skrillex

Bangarang is another amazing song to test your subwoofer mantle and wake your neighbors. Right at the start, your subwoofer will need to work and dish out enough punch with ample weight. The low-end delivery needs to be tight or else the bass decays will start messing up the fast-paced song. Since it is a constant barrage of low frequencies, it does make it easier to use this song for subwoofer testing and you don’t need to spend time waiting for the bass to drop. You should check out other songs made by Skrillex as they do give you plenty of varieties to test your powered sub.

The Batman (2022) Club Soundtracks

For those who have seen the new Batman movie, you will know how solid the club music is during the Iceberg Lounge scenes. Not only do they fit the scene, but they also sounded amazing. They are certainly heavy enough and the variety of each track will test how articulate your subwoofer could perform. The Dark Knight trilogy OSTs would be ideal for subterranean bass performance as they could reach really deep into the bass extension.

Rockafeller Skank by Fatboy Slim

The speeding up and slowing down of the tempo could be the downfall of many subwoofers if they couldn’t keep up with the pacing, as it would definitely ruin the song. When playing classics like the Rockafeller Skank by Fatboy Slim, the bass responses need to be detailed and fast. Low-quality subwoofers would add overly exaggerated and dull low frequencies which makes the bass sound unnatural. Too little and you wouldn’t have enough energy in the room to enjoy this masterpiece.

To Conclude

These are some of the best songs to test a subwoofer and if you are also interested in finding out what are the best movies to test a subwoofer, you can check them out at our site. If you are still wondering whether to get a subwoofer for yourself, maybe our post about “Do I need a Subwoofer” would shine some light on this matter.

For music playbacks, we highly suggest going with a sealed subwoofer but don’t just take our words for it, you should arrange an audition with one of them. Use some of the songs listed here along with your favorite tunes to test a potential sealed subwoofer for your sound system. We will suggest checking out sealed cabinet subwoofers made by SVS, Rythmik Audio, HSU Research, etc., as they specialize in making high-quality subs at a reasonable price.

Testing potential subwoofers inside your own listening room together with your own speakers would be the most optimal audition to have as you can immediately tell if you like the bass quality or not. You will need to check with the manufacturers and/or your local dealers, to find out do they have such arrangements for home demos. We also suggest going with higher resolution audio files or music streaming such as Apple Music when testing the subs.