B&W PV1 Instructions

PV1 Active Subwoofer

Why don’t bubbles have corners?

Simple, really. It’s all about the best way of
enveloping a given volume of gas. Bubbles always
adopt the form with the least possible surface area

- which is always a sphere (and never a cube or
a pyramid or anything else with corners). It’s the
most stable form there is, too. The air pressure
inside a bubble pushes outwards, equally in all
directions, but surface tension balances the air
pressure out and holds the bubble together evenly,
all the way around. No corners, no straight lines.
Just a lovely, round bubble. Beautiful.

When we decided to create a new, powerful, com­pact subwoofer for use in home theatre or two­channel set-ups, we weren’t going to contradict
nature. We wanted to deliver big bass from a small
speaker, as purely and naturally as possible. We
needed something that could withstand the huge
variations in air pressure that very low frequency
sound generates. We needed to design a pressure
vessel that wouldn’t do a wobbly at high volumes.

So instead of making a box, we made a bubble.