Best High-Value Subwoofers for Your Church Sanctuary

If your context is a church sanctuary, all the same subwoofer-buying conventional wisdom applies, as it would in other rooms or situations.

I'd start with these three pieces of advice:

1. Be ready to spend a bit (don't cheap out) 
2. Don't mix passive and powered speakers/subwoofers 
3. Make sure your subwoofer handles crossover (most powered subs do)

So go with a powered subwoofer AND powered speakers. Below are the four subs I'd recommend. The QSC is the one we bought for our church, one on each side of the stage.

Four Subwoofer Picks for Church Sanctuaries

1. QSC KS118
2. Electro-Voice ELX200
3. JBL EON718S (pretty much anything by JBL is solid)
4. Alto Professional TS18S (the most economical)

The question I can't answer for you is the size of your room.

Our sanctuary holds about 300-400 people total and we have two subs at (roughly) 1500W each. You can drop down to one sub if your room is smaller, which is what we had when we met in a gym, or you could just go with a lower wattage sub.

It's hard to say for sure because it depends so much on the room size and even the shape.

But feel free to leave a question below if you want me to give an answer based on your situation.

Crossover

Almost all powered subs handle crossover. So first, this means you should go with powered and not passive.

Crossover means the sub automatically sends all of your mids and high frequencies to the PA speakers and keeps the low end all to itself.

If it doesn't handle crossover, you'll have to do it manually through the mixer.

That's a pain and easily avoidable with a good sub.

Crossover means the sub automatically sends all of your mids and high frequencies to the PA speakers and keeps the low end all to itself.

All the subs I recommended up top are powered and handle crossover.

Powered VS Passive Subs

This is very important: Do not mix powered subs with passive speakers or vice versa, unless you really know what you're doing.

Even then, I'd argue it's better to avoid this complexity. Get powered everything.

Better yet, get the same speaker and sub BRAND.

This will further simplify the process and make setup a lot clearer. 

You don't necessarily have to buy the bundles (I'm not crazy about those), but the same brand for speakers and subs are a good call. JBL sub? Go with JBL speakers too.

Let me Know if You Have Questions

I'm a guitar guy (obviously) but I've learned a lot of pro audio over the years, especially with my church, so feel free to ask questions.

If I can't help, I have a couple buddies who sometimes jump on here and answer pro audio questions better than I can, so I'll get them to help if needed.

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