To Subwoofer or Not to Subwoofer your Studio Monitors. That is the question

Choosing why to or why not to add a subwoofer to your studio monitors is trivial once you have a balanced understanding of the purpose and use of a subwoofer for the studio. In the studio, a subwoofer is only used to extend frequency range to the current studio monitor setup. Now if your current monitors go down to 40 Hz, you might think you got it covered. But lately specifications of all our gear have extended down to 5 Hz and no longer rolls off at 40 Hz. This means there is a lot of information getting through below 40 Hz that you will not be able to hear if you do not have a subwoofer. When you add that to the extended range of all playback devices including cars, you can be in for an eye opening experience when you test one of your mixes. So for critical listening environments, like mixing in a studio, I highly suggest adding one. Now if you are not doing critical listening and are just composing/ tracking or doing late night work at home where you do not want to bother the neighbors, then it would be good to turn off the subwoofer or not add one in those applications. Here is a short video on specifically critical studio monitoring.